For years the art world has worn blinders. In the 1960s, it seemed that only poet-critics bothered with artists who were not allied with Pop Art, Minimalism, or Color Field painting. Since then, each decade and its theorists have focused on a narrow band of "significant artists" almost to the exclusion of all else. There were those who were considered central, and everyone else was assigned a lower rank. But for various reasons, that kind of hierarchical thinking no longer holds as much sway as it once did.
New York City, March 23, 2017 — The American Academy of Arts and Letters announced today the nine artists who will receive its 2017 awards in art. The award winners were chosen from a group of 35 artists who had been invited to participate in the Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, which opened on March 9, 2017.