Jim Patterson at the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize 2014 New York.

Washington diplomat Jim Patterson recently attended the annual Dorothy and Lillian Gish Arts Prize in New York. The 2014 recipient was Maya Lin who designed the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. Lin received $300,000 and the Gish medal.

Patterson began a friendship with Lillian Gish, who gained international stardom in D. W. Griffith's 1915 Civil War epic “The Birth of a Nation,” in the late 1960s after she starred in an ABC TV production of "Arsenic and Old Lace" with Helen Hayes.

An Academy Award-winner, Gish was inducted into the Alabama Arts Hall of Fame in Birmingham in April 1977 along with Zelda Fitzgerald and director D. W. Griffith. Miss Gish’s last film was 1987’s “The Whales of August,” filmed on Cliff Island, Maine, where Patterson visited the remote location. The Gish Prize is administered by JPMorgan/Chase. For more information on the Gish Prize, check the Internet.

Gish Prize recipient Maya Lin with colleagues. MoMA, November 12, 2014.

"I am deeply touched and grateful to become a part of this astonishing line of Prize winners, all of whom were selected because of the very simple but powerful goal set down by Lillian Gish: to bring recognition to the contributions that artists make to society, and to encourage others to follow on that path." _Maya Lin, from the Prize program distributed by Museum of Modern Art, November 12, 2014.

David Henry Hwang served as 2014 Selection Committee Chair and committee members were Ella Baff, Fairfax Dorn, Clive Gillinson and visual artist Carrie Mae Weems. 

Former May Michael Bloomberg, representing Bloomberg Philanthropies, praised Lin for her work on New York's magnificent 9/11 Memorial.


Note on Lillian's program bio note: The author used the disputed 1893 date of birth for Lillian. 

The program noted and and speaker Jacqueline Elias stated Dorothy, Lillian and mother made their screen debut in D. W. Griffith's An Unseen Enemy. For Dorothy and Lillian that is true. Mother Gish did not, according to my research, have a screen role in that film. The only other credited female role was a woman who was part of the robbery, described as a "slatternly maid," by some critics and historians. Mother Gish likely worked on the film crew in some capacity.

It is also true Mother Gish appeared in Lillian's last film, "The Whales of August." In the scene where Lillian is dusting a framed photograph on the wall, it is a photograph of Baby Lillian with Mother. Lillian says, "Hello, Mother," in the scene.
   
Jim Patterson, Editor