On Tuesday, January 28, the International Center of Photography (ICP) will present the Spotlight Award to visual artist Shirin Neshat at the 2014 ICP Spotlights, an annual luncheon honoring women seminal in visual arts, particularly photography or film. An innovator using image to explore gender, society, politics and identity in the Arab world, Neshat will discuss her work with Anne Pasternak, president of the global public art nonprofit Creative Time.

The event will also feature the first annual ICP Legacy Award, presented to longtime faculty member Chuck Kelton.

Support raised through this event benefits education and exhibition programs at ICP.

Shirin Neshat

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian-born visual artist. Using still and moving images, she provides a panoramic view of contemporary Islam. Neshat’s poetic imagery responds to the complex ideological underpinnings of Islam and explores the tension between tradition and modernity, east and west, expression and censure. For Neshat, women and men are emblematic of societal transformations; in particular, the position of women provides a more holistic understanding of a changing cultural landscape. Neshat’s early work is mainly photographs; she later shifted focus to video installations and more recently to film. In 1999, she received the International Award of the XLVIII Venice Biennale for Turbulent and Rapture. Neshat made her directorial debut in 2009 with Women Without Men, for which she won the Silver Lion for best director at the 66th Annual Venice Film Festival. Neshat lives and works in New York and is represented by Gladstone Gallery, and Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont in Paris.

Anne Pasternak

Anne Pasternak is president and artistic director of Creative Time, which she joined in 1994. The organization was founded in 1974 to commission innovative public art in New York City. During Pasternak’s tenure, Creative Time expanded its mission to include projects around the globe. Notable projects including Playing the Building (David Byrne), during which the Battery Maritime Building was transformed into an interactive musical instrument, and Tribute in Light (Julian Laverdiere and Paul Myoda), the twin beacons of light that illuminated the former World Trade Center site six months after 9/11. Pasternak also initiated Creative Time Reports, a website devoted to artists’ perspectives on the important issues of our day.

Pasternak is the 2011 recipient of the Public Art Dialogue Award for Achievement in the Field of Public Art, and was honored with the Governors’ Award for Outstanding Service to Artists by Skowhegan in May 2011.

Chuck Kelton

Chuck Kelton is a photographer, educator, and master printer. Kelton Labs, which he founded in 1988, specializes in exhibition and portfolio gelatin silver prints. His clients have included ICP, Magnum Photos, The Menil Foundation, Vogue, Larry Clark, Saul Leiter, Danny Lyon, Mary Ellen Mark, and Steven Meisel. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and publications and is in the collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. Kelton shares his expertise as an adjunct professor of photography in the graduate programs at ICP. He has also taught at the Woodstock Center for Photography, Project Basho in Philadelphia, and Anderson Ranch Arts Center, among others.