Preservation and the Public Realm

The Fine Arts Federation of New York 2013 Annual Meeting

Thursday, May 30, 2013
6:00 p.m.
The National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South
New York City

At the 2013 Annual Meeting, The Fine Arts Federation proudly honored Richard J. Moylan with The Fine Arts Federation medal for his leadership in renewing Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery as a signature cultural landscape of New York City. Through more than 40 years at Green-Wood, serving as President since 1986, Mr. Moylan has transformed this historic landscape into an important public green space and cultural destination. He opened its gates for educational tours, art exhibits, lectures, book readings, dramatic productions, concerts, and other events that draw on the cemetery’s great historical significance and natural beauty. Under Mr. Moylan’s tenure, the Green-Wood Historic Fund was created to maintain the cemetery’s monuments and buildings of historical, cultural, and architectural significance, as well as an expanding outdoor sculpture garden that includes the noted recent acquisition Civic Virtue. Last year alone, more than 250,000 people took advantage of these offerings, testimony to Mr. Moylan’s visionary cultivation of Green-Wood as a 478-acre civic asset.

Following Mr. Moylan’s acceptance of the award, the Federation welcomed Kent L. Barwick for remarks on the public realm as New York prepared to select its next mayor and set a new political agenda for the civic environment. A champion of enlightened city planning in New York, Mr. Barwick has played a key role in protecting the city’s cultural integrity through more than four decades of civic leadership. From 1978 to 1983, Mr. Barwick was chairman of New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, and, prior to that, was director of the New York State Council on the Arts (1975-1976). From 1981 to 1987, he was an advisor to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and its north-east regional chairman from 1988 to 1990. As President of the Municipal Art Society from 1999 through 2009, and from 1983 to 1995, Mr. Barwick led major campaigns for causes including sensible development, waterfront reclamation, and historic preservation.