Lena Dunham And Her Mom Win Arts Award Together

Nov 15, 2013

Yesterday, in front of a sold-out “Women in the Arts” luncheon at the Brooklyn Museum, HBO “Girls” creator Lena Dunham and her mother, internationally-recognized artist Laurie Simmons, were both honored for their contributions “in the field of visual arts.”  Simmons is highly recognized for her staged photographic works which appear in collections of the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA, and the Guggenheim Museum among others; Dunham has received seven Emmy nominations as well as an award for “Television Program of the Year” and a Writers Guild of AmericaAward for “Best New Series.”

The museum’s auditorium was packed and the conversation-on-stage between mother and daughter before lunch was slightly delayed due to “traffic, subway and bridge delays,” said museum director Arnold L. Lehman. “Everyone is coming to Brooklyn!”

Many Brooklynites attending the benefit felt proprietary about Ms. Dunham.  In many cases, she went to school in brownstone Brooklyn with their children. They had watched her grow up and were proud to have her in their museum, which like Dunham, is also having its moment.  Dunham, too, recalls Brooklyn in her work; in a recent New Yorker essay, she noted the abundance of bagel shops and squash players in Brooklyn Heights (and her genius is in lumping them together). Others in the audience were artists themselves like Carol Dunham (husband and father of the honorees), Mickalene Thomas, Wangechi Mutu and Piper Kerman, author of the book and Netflix hit, “Orange is the New Black”.

(For full story, see link below)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lynndouglass/2013/11/15/lena-dunham-and-her-mom-win-arts-award-together/