More than 200 people attended Moore College of Art & Design’s 16th annual Visionary Woman Awards Gala on Wednesday, October 17. The event raised close to $375,000 to support scholarships for Moore’s undergraduate students who are members of the Visionary Woman Honors Scholars program.
This year’s honorees were New Yorker cartoonist and author Roz Chast, and photographer and art historian Deborah Willis, PhD. First Lady of Pennsylvania Frances Wolf introduced the Visionary Woman Honors Scholars. The evening, which began with a cocktail reception in The Galleries at Moore, also included dinner, an awards ceremony, a short film produced by Fresh Fly about the honorees and scholars, and a dessert reception.
Earlier in the day, the honorees spoke at the annual Elizabeth Greenfield Zeidman lecture in Graham Auditorium, in a talk moderated by Chief Academic Officer Patti Phillips. Both women recalled times in college when they were dismissed as artists. Chast, who attended the Rhode Island School of Design, said she was heartbroken when a group of male students who started a comics magazine rejected her work. But she gleefully told Moore students that not one of those men is currently working as a cartoonist.
Willis, who grew up in North Philadelphia, said she was silenced when she was studying photography in college. "A teacher told me that I was taking up a good man's space and that I shouldn't be in the classroom," she said. "I decided then that I was going to focus on my work, find a way to tell the stories of black photographers, to include that history."
Chast urged the students to "stick to your guns" with their art. "It's so important in the creative life to find that voice in yourself and to pay attention to it," she said.
Moore is the first and only all-women’s visual arts college in the U.S. for undergraduates.
