MacDowell National Benefit

About Our Honorees

Toshiko Mori is founder and principal of Toshiko Mori Architect. She is the Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design and was chair of the Department of Architecture (2002–2008). Her firm’s work includes libraries, museums, universities, workspaces, master planning, and residences. Mori has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2016 and the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 2020, where she is currently vice president of architecture.

Mori has received numerous awards, including the Asia Society Asia Arts Game Changer Award (2024), the Philip Hanson Hiss Award (2023), the Isamu Noguchi Award (2021), and the AIA/ASCA Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education (2019), among others. Her projects in Senegal, Thread Artists’ Residency and Cultural Center and Fass School and Teachers’ Residences, won the AIA Architecture Award, and her work on the Brooklyn Public Library–Central Library won the 2022 MASterworks Award for best restoration. Architectural Digest has featured Mori in its annual AD100 list since 2014 and named Mori to the AD100 Hall of Fame in 2023; she was also named an Elle Decor A-List Titan. Mori was guest editor of Domus magazine for 2023.

Joseph Mizzi is President and Chief Operating Officer of Sciame Construction. Sciame Construction has been entrusted to serve as Construction Manager / Builder for many of New York City’s most important museum and cultural buildings including The New Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Frick Collection, The Morgan Library and Museum, The Shed, The Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Arts and Design, The Judd Foundation, and The Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center. Joseph serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Bronx Museum of the Arts and as Board Treasurer of the Architectural League of New York. He also co‐founded the educational non‐profit 14+ Foundation in 2012, which develops, builds, and operates schools in underserved rural African communities, providing cost-free education to over 600 pre-school through university-level students annually.

About Our Host

Carmen Pelaez ('23) has been commissioned by Miami New Drama, Oolite Cinematic Arts and The Huntington theater to create new work. Most recently her play The Cuban Vote was presented in the Reading Room at the Folger Library in DC and her Macdowell supported one act play Waiting for America which was part of Musem Plays was chosen best theatrical experience in Miami in 2024. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, NBC Latino and Huffpo.

Constantly inspired by old and new Miami, because cognitive dissonance makes great drama, Carmen is always looking for ways to share the stories this incredible city hides in plain sight. Currently she’s working on her latest commission Caridad as well as developing a bilingual television series, Ventanita.

About Our Featured Fellows

Composer Huang Ruo ('10, '12, '24) has been lauded by The New York Times for having “a distinctive style.” His vibrant and inventive musical voice draws equal inspiration from Chinese ancient and folk music, Western avant-garde, experimental, noise, natural and processed sound, rock, and jazz to create a seamless, organic integration using a compositional technique he calls “Dimensionalism.” Huang Ruo’s diverse compositional works span from orchestra, chamber music, opera, theater, and dance, to cross-genre, sound installation, architectural installation, multi-media, experimental improvisation, folk rock, and film. His music has been premiered and performed by the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, National Polish Radio Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Asko/Schoenberg, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta. He has written 8 operas including M. BUTTERFLY, THE RIFT, BOOK OF MOUNTAINS AND SEA, BOUND, ANGEL ISLAND, BETWEEN TWO LIGHTS, PARADISE INTERRUPTED, DR. SUN YAT-SEN, and AN AMERICAN SOLDIER, which was named one of the best classical music events in 2018 by The New York Times. His new opera THE MONKEY KING will be premiered by the San Francisco Opera in 2025. He served as the first composer-in-residence for Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam. Huang Ruo was born in Hainan Island, China in 1976 - the year the Chinese Cultural Revolution ended. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s when China was opening its gate to the Western world, his education expanded from Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, and Lutoslawski, to include the Beatles, rock and roll, heavy metal, and jazz. He earned a BM degree from Oberlin College, and MM and DMA degrees from the Juilliard School. Huang Ruo is a composition faculty at the Mannes School of Music. Huang Ruo’s music is published by Schott/EAM. For more information, visit www.huangruo.com

Claire L. Evans ('24) is a writer and musician exploring biology, technology, and culture. She is the singer of the Grammy-nominated pop group YACHT, co-founder of VICE’s imprint for speculative fiction, Terraform, and co-editor, with Brian Merchant, of the accompanying anthology Terraform: Watch Worlds Burn (MCD Books, 2022). Her 2018 history of women in computing, Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet, published by Penguin Random House, has been translated into six languages and was named one of the Top 10 Best Nonfiction Tech Books of All Time in 2023.

Her writing has appeared in MIT Technology Review, WIRED, The Verge, Pioneer Works’ Broadcast, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Document Journal, Eye on Design, The Believer, and Aeon, among others. Her 2022 profile of the lost hacker Susy Thunder was nominated for an ASME Award; a feature film adaptation of the story is currently in development at Paramount Pictures. She is the author of the video game Blippo+, forthcoming for PC and Nintendo Switch.

She has given invited talks at the Hirshhorn Museum, Walker Art Center, TEDx, La Gaité Lyrique, Google I/O, The New Museum, XOXO Festival, MUTEK, Goethe Institut, Manchester International Festival, SXSW, Gray Area, Neural Information Processing Systems, the Association for Computational Linguistics, and the Decentralized Web Summit, among others. She is a 2024 MacDowell Calderwood Fellow for Journalism.

A.M. Homes is the author of thirteen books, including May We Be Forgiven, which won the UK Women’s Prize for Fiction and the internationally bestselling memoir, The Mistress's Daughter. Her work has been translated into twenty-two languages, and she writes frequently on the arts for publications such as Art Forum, Granta, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, and the New York Times. Additionally, Homes collaborates with artists and composers on a wide range of projects including operas which have premiered at The Flea Theatre in NYC and The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. A writer/co-executive producer with David Kelly of Mr. Mercedes, and on USA’s Falling Water, Homes was a writer/producer of the original L Word, and penned the adaptation of her novel, Jack, for Showtime. She has created original television pilots for the major networks and streamers. Additionally, Homes is a Contributing Editor to Vanity Fair, Bomb and Blind Spot. She is Professor of the Practice and Acting Director of the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University and lives in New York City.

Thank You to Our Sponsors

*notes MacDowell Fellow or Medalist
**all lists in formation as of 9/18/2025