Transcript: Executive Director Chiwoniso Kaitano invites the crowd to contribute to Yoko Ono Wish Tree Installation on July 21, 2024.
Before I start my remarks, I wanted to just say “Welcome” to all of you. I know some of you have come from as near as 10 minutes away down the road, and some of you have come from further afield. Last year I called out my parents and they were really embarrassed, but they’re here again, and they came all the way from Zimbabwe, 10,000 miles away. Hi guys.
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A very special and warm welcome to a woman who I think many of you know. When I first started this job, I used to think to myself, WWCD. What would Cheryl do? And Cheryl Young, who was executive director of MacDowell for many, many years is here today. Hi, Cheryl, it’s great to see you.
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Nell mentioned in her remarks that we pulled together a Medal Day panel, and one of the members of the panel managed to make it from New York to join us today, Michael Hall, who is president of the Arts Student League. Hi, Michael.
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And I am saving my warmest welcome for our guest who is wearing the Yoko Ono T-shirt to the left. Hi!
(laughter and applause) I love a good theme dresser.
As Christine mentioned in her remarks, we have a lot of funders and supporters to thank for making MacDowell shine in the way that it does, but there’s also an entire team of people who, besides keeping this engine running for 365 days a year, make Medal Day stand out. I want to acknowledge Brett Solomon, who’s our director of public programming and events and his program coordinator Dan Millbauer. Everything you see here is them and their team making sure everything is running smoothly, thanks Brett, thanks, Dan.
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I also want to note the staff of kitchen, housekeeping, maintenance, and our gardeners for their hard work prepping the campus and getting it to this point. It looks beautiful today, but it looks beautiful every day because everyone is hard at work.
(applause
We’ve been awarding this Medal for 64 years, and would you believe that three MacDowell staff people, John Sieswerda, Courtney Bethel, and Deb Marsh, have been here for, I think, half of them, which is astounding.
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When Laurie Andersen and the esteemed Medal Day panel selected Yoko Ono as this year’s Medalist, I took it upon myself to learn all that I could about Yoko’s seven-decade career. This included, two weeks ago, a quick trip to London to see a powerful retrospective of her work called Music of The Mind. And it’s in one of the world’s greatest contemporary museums, the Tate Modern. I had a transformative experience. It is a very special kind of participatory art in action, that invites audiences from all over the world to think, engage, and contribute. It is truly, truly incredible and is everything art should be.
A special installation in the exhibit stood out. At the entrance of the retrospective is a Wish Tree, which–at its heart–is a peace project. And the peace project is the collected hopes and dreams and wishes of all of those who have paused a moment to write them down and loop it onto this tree. Today, not only will you be able to visit? artists in their studios, but you’ll be able to contribute to a Yoko Ono installation right here on campus. MacDowell is honored to join the ranks as one of a limited number of international locations with not one, but two Yoko Ono Wish Trees. You may have noticed our small orchard if you walked to the tent from our north parking field. Since 1996, Yoko Ono has invited people from around the world to write their personal wishes on pieces of paper and tie them to the Wish Tree. At the end of the day, the wishes will be collected and sent to Yoko and they will then make their way to the Imagine Peace Tower, a 2007 installation on Viðey Island off Reykjavik, Iceland, dedicated to the memory of John Lennon.
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Our wishes will be added to a collection of more than 2 million wishes that have already been placed there beneath the towering lights that pierce the sky on special days. Please join us in covering the branches of the designated peach and plum trees with your wishes after the ceremony. Cards and instructions can be found under a tent in our lilac garden adjacent to the orchard.
Last year was my first Medal Day, and we presented the Medal to an incredible artist, Alanis Obomsawin, the filmmaker. I was remarking earlier today to Christine and Nell that it’s actually quite extraordinary that two years in a row MacDowell has done this incredible thing, which is awarding a Medal to two women in their nineties who have been making art for many, many decades.
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Alanis was introduced by Jesse Wente, who spoke about the Abenaki philosophy of “seven generations.” And this idea really resonated with me. The idea is that (and I’m talking about this loosely), that what we build here today isn’t really for us, but it’s for our inheritors, seven generations in the future. These are people we will never meet but whom we are nonetheless responsible for.
One of my board members calls this “ancestral conversations.” MacDowell is a beautiful, sonic conversation with the past and the future. The mark of all of those who came before us is EVERYWHERE here, and so in our own way today we leave our mark for those who will come.
I urge you today to walk through the woods and listen to the whispers of all that have created art here. Listen to their whispers, but I also want you to leave a wish in the woods for generations to come.
And now, we are changing the batting order just a little bit, so may I introduce a person many of you are familiar with. I am fire, he is ice, he has ice in his veins. I call him my chill man. My friend and the hardest working Resident Director on earth, David Macy.
(applause)
Visit our Medal Day page for video and photographs of the day.
Read Nell Painter’s welcome to the crowd, describing MacDowell as a creative sanctuary
Read Resident Director David Macy's tribute to former board chairman Robert McNeil
Read curator Nora Halpern’s introduction to Yoko Ono as a loving and enduring force
Read David Newgarden’s acceptance of the 64th Edward MacDowell Medal on behalf of Yoko Ono
