Scholastic Awards winners from the 1920s!
While this year’s Gold and Silver Medals (and Keys!) are still shiny, and the artists and writers who earned them float on cloud nine, we can be sure of one enduring fact: the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards have delivered this kind of validation to creative teens for 90 amazing years! To celebrate this milestone, we dug into our vast archives and turned to esteemed colleague Bryan Doerries to tell the story that started in 1923 with just 7 submissions and is now the largest, most prestigious awards program in the U.S. Here’s a sneak peek at The Great Encouragement with Bryan as your guide!
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Norman Brandes won a 3rd Prize for Poetry in 1936.
Phyllis Heisterkamp won an art scholarship in 1942.
Doris Lynne-Garter won an Award for poetry in 1962.
Mesfin Million won an Award for a charcoal drawing in 1987.
Mike Lindenthal won an art Award in 1992.
Brittany Cartie won for American Visions in 2010.
Guest post by our Archivist, Haley Richardson
While preparing for the annual Scholastic Art & Writing Awards celebration in New York City, I’ve been hunting in the archives for photographs of past Award winners, which I’ve come to think of as tiny time capsules of teenage life. From the emphasis on neat up-dos and fancy neckwear in the 1930s to the more informal and whimsical self portraits of the ’00s, these snapshots are visual reminders of great amount of social change over time, but also of the broad shared realities of being a teenager. Read More
John Updike named as First Prize winner for “Gag” Cartoon in the 1948 Student Achievement issue of Senior Scholastic.
By Haley Richardson, our awesome Archivist
Today, I’m proud to announce a few additions to the illustrious list of Scholastic Art & Writing Awards alumni: film director Richard Linklater and writers John Updike and Stephen King!
Stephen King named as a Fourth Award winner for Short Story in 1965!
Richard Linklater is a noted filmmaker, and the writer and director of some of my favorite movies about my homeland, Texas: Slacker (1991), Dazed and Confused (1993), and Bernie (2011). In 1978, as a student at Huntsville High School in Huntsville, TX, Rick (as he was called in the Student Achievement edition of Scholastic’s Literary Cavalcade that year) won an Honorable Mention award for Short-short Story. Read More
1942 Scholastic National High School Art Exhibition Catalog, featuring Philip Pearlstein‘s award winning oil painting.
Guest blogger Haley Richardson is the Archivist for the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. She spends her days sorting through historical documents, photos of past Award recipients, and other unique archival materials to help organize and document the historical legacy of the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She will be highlighting her favorite materials from the collection each month!
Far below the sunny and bustling SoHo offices of the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, behind the Scholastic copy center and across the hall from the aged vending machines, is the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Archives Office. Filing cabinets and flat files are filled with Award-winning student writing and artwork, photographs of art exhibitions and awards ceremonies, and unique artifacts representing our 90-year legacy.
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This edited post originally appeared in Scholastic’s On Our Minds blog on February 10, 2012.
Our lobbies and hallways are brimming with inspiration every day. When you visit Scholastic headquarters you are surrounded by brilliant pieces of art made by artists you don’t know – yet – because every piece was created by a creative teenager that has won a Scholastic Art & Writing Award. All of these students are destined for interesting and creative futures, and some are sure to become household names. In fact, many Award alumni have.
In anticipation of the 90th Anniversary of the Awards, the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, which runs the program, has offered visitors to our building a sneak peek at a few inspiring items from their archives.
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Martha Hughes is an award-winning artist and photographer – and a distinguished alum of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards circa 1967! She is currently working on a couple of series of paintings and drawings called “Scenes” and “Grid”, which you can view on her website. Also, for the last 11 years, she’s posted a snapshot of her studio and work-in-progress on the website’s homepage every day. In March, her work will be displayed at the Thunderbird Hotel in Marfa, Texas. Learn more about Martha in our interview with her after the jump!
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