Summer Awards Celebration
Save the date: Saturday, July 13, 2024

Thank you for visiting the Summer Awards Celebration page. We are pleased to announce that our 2024 celebration will be held on Saturday, July 13. To stay updated on ticket reservations and the announcement of the honorees, we encourage you to check this page frequently or sign up for our mailing list. We look forward to celebrating with you this summer! 

2019 National Book Award Winner and 2023 Honoree Susan Choi accepts award at Summer Awards Celebration—photo by Michael Cestaro.

Celebrating Creativity and Community
2023 Summer Awards Celebration

We were thrilled to come together last year to Celebrate Creativity and Community at the beautiful Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum. On behalf of our Summer Awards Host Committee, thank you to everyone who joined us to support the Fine Arts Work Center and our vision to nurture artists and shape our community.

We were delighted to toast our honorees: critically acclaimed writer and past Fellow Susan Choi; longstanding friend and advisor Michael F. Fernon; and contemporary visual artist and past Fellow Tala Madani.

Special thanks to our talented host Janet Wu and singer-songwriter Tianna Esperanza, for their impressive performance. Thanks as well to our partners at MAX Ultimate Food and GlenPharmer Distillery.
2023 Honorees

Photo: Heather Weston

Susan Choi, for her achievements in the literary arts

Fine Arts Work Center Writing Fellow 1997-1998
Fine Arts Work Center Writing Committee Member
National Book Award Winner for Fiction 2019

Michael F. Fernon, for his leadership and guidance establishing a new level of financial sustainability for FAWC

Fine Arts Work Center Board of Advisors Past Member
Senior Vice President/Senior Consultant, Fernon/Arabadzhiev Group at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management

Photo: Brigitte Lacombe

Tala Madani, for her groundbreaking contributions to contemporary art

Fine Arts Work Center Visual Arts Fellow 2006-07
MOCA LA Survey Exhibition 2023, Whitney Biennial 2017
Work in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Tate Modern, London; among others

Learn more about our honorees here.

A Closer Look at 2022-2023 FAWC Fellows
Please browse through photos from the Friday Patron Evening and the Summer Awards Celebration. You can also watch the featured video of our 2022-2023 Fellows above. A special thanks to Michael Cestaro, from UpAbove Creative for capturing the work that matters.
About our Honorees

Photo: Heather Weston

Susan Choi is the author of five novels, including Trust Exercise, which received the 2019 National Book Award for fiction. She has also been the recipient of the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award, a Lambda Literary award, the 2021 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She serves as a trustee of PEN America and teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Choi was a Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center and currently serves on the FAWC Writing Committee.

 

Michael F. Fernon is a Senior Vice President/Senior Consultant with the Fernon/Arabadzhiev Group at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. For the past two decades, he has been working with high-net worth individuals, their families, and selected non-profit organizations on the lower Cape. Fernon and his team have worked together with the Fine Arts Work Center leadership to help establish a new level of financial sustainability and advance the organization’s mission to nurture artists and writers. Prior to joining Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, Fernon was the Director of CCBT Financial Companies. In New York City, Fernon held the positions of Director of American Express Trust Services, Director of Prudential Securities Trust Division, Senior Vice President of Merrill Lynch Trust Company of New York, and was a trusts and estates attorney in New York City.  He is a graduate of St. Lawrence University and Pace University School of Law. Fernon and his partner are avid art collectors and they split their time between Provincetown, MA and Fort Lauderdale, FL.

Photo: Brigitte Lacombe

Tala Madani (b. 1981, Tehran, Iran) makes paintings and animations whose indelible images bring together wide-ranging modes of critique, prompting reflection on gender, political authority, and questions of who and what gets represented in art. Madani has been the subject of solo exhibitions at a number of museums worldwide, including Tala Madani: Biscuits, the artist’s first North American survey at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2023). Other solo exhibitions include Start Museum, Shanghai (2020); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2019); Secession, Vienna (2019); Portikus, Frankfurt (2019); La Panacée, Montpellier, France (2017); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2016); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2016); Nottingham Contemporary, England (2014); and Moderna Museet, Malmö and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2013). She recently participated in the 16th Istanbul Biennial: The Seventh Continent, Istanbul, Turkey (2019); Whitney Biennial 2017, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Made in L.A. 2014, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, among many other international group exhibitions. Madani’s work is in the permanent collections of institutions including Moderna Museet, Stockholm and Malmö, Sweden; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Modern, London; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. She was a 2006-2007 Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center. Madani lives and works in Los Angeles.
2023 Event Committee

Honorary Chair
Ada Limón, US Poet Laureate

Co-Chairs
Neal Balkowitsch and Donald Nelson
Marty Davis and Alix Ritchie

Vice Chairs
Ted Chapin
Yvette Drury Dubinsky and John Dubinsky
Ken Fulk and Kurt Wootton
Gavin Kennedy and Stephen Baker
Lynne Kortenhaus
Robert Lieberman and Brian Schneider
Rick Patt and Jose Labrador
Bryan Rafanelli and Mark Walsh
Maxine Schaffer and Sharon Fay
Carol Warshawsky

Host Committee
David Altarac and Brian Koll
Christine Barker
Derik Burgess and Deborah Bowles
Tom Burke and Axel Brunger
Bruce Skiles Danzer, Jr. and Tom Huth
Ken Dietz
Doug Dolezal and Greg Welch
Ron and Julie Druker
Russ and Betty Gaudreau
Gabby Hanna and Marcy Feller
Ron Hartwig and Robert Pierce Jr.
Cheryl and Jeffrey Katz
Peter Kazon and Paul Cunningham
David Keller and Mary Maxwell
Patrick Lenihan
Maria Lopez
Russell Lopez and Andrew Sherman
Rob McBride
Sandi and Sean McKinley
Terrence Meck
Neal Minahan and Eric Archibald
Elisa New and Lawrence Summers
Patrick Nolan and Clément Gaujal

Dave and Lindsey Pollack
Christine Robert and Clarissa Filgioun
Mark Wunderlich

3LOGOS5

24 Pearl Street
Provincetown, MA 02657
508.487.9960

© 2023 Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown