NYAB Event - “The Original Art 2015 An Annual Exhibit Celebrating the Fine Art of Children’s Book Illustration”

“The Original Art 2015 An Annual Exhibit Celebrating the Fine Art of Children’s Book Illustration”

The Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators

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The Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators is proud to present The Original Art, an annual exhibit celebrating the fine art of children’s book illustration.

Founded in 1980 by illustrators’ agent and art director Dilys Evans, this exhibit showcases the original art from the year’s best children’s books. The 2015 exhibit features 152 books selected by a jury of outstanding illustrators, art directors, and editors.

Gold and silver medals were awarded by the jury to three artists for their outstanding books. This year’s Silver Medal winners are Ekua Holmes for Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement (Candlewick) and Anton Van Hertbruggen for The Dog That Nino Didn’t Have (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.). The Gold Medal winner is JiHyeon Lee for Pool (Chronicle Books).

Each year, The Original Art honors two artists, one living and one posthumous, with a Lifetime Achievement Award for their distinguished accomplishments in children’s book illustration. The 2015 awards go to Peter Sís and the late Virginia Lee Burton.

Peter Sís is a filmmaker, muralist, magazine illustrator, and the author and illustrator of complex, visually enticing books for children. As Booklist noted, his works “are less picture books than little miracles of design … masterful and moving.” They are consistently named to the New York Times Best Illustrated list and have earned him a MacArthur Fellowship, the Sibert Medal, and both a Gold and Silver Medal from the Society of Illustrators. He has created pictures for everything from board books to poetry to fantasy, and three books he wrote as well as illustrated have received Caldecott Honor awards: Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei; Tibet Through the Red Box; and The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain (all Farrar Straus Giroux). He is also the 2012 recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Award, given to an artist whose complete works are judged to have made lasting contributions to children’s literature.

Virginia Lee Burton (1909–1968) was known for her attention to detail and for determining the design, typeface, and layout of each book she wrote and illustrated. She was a pioneer in turning vehicles into beloved children’s book characters. Her first title, Choo Choo, featured an anthropomorphic train engine. She followed it with Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, Katy and the Big Snow, and Maybelle the Cable Car. She also broke ground with her use of a comic strip format in Calico the Wonder Horse, or The Saga of Stewy Stinker. In 1943, she was awarded the Caldecott Medal for The Little House, based on moving her family’s home from a busy street into “a field of daises with apple trees growing around,” and in 1947, she received a Caldecott Honor for The Song of Robin Hood by Anne Malcolmson and Grace Castagnetta. (All Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.)

Created in 2005, the Dilys Evans Founder’s Award celebrates the most promising new talent in children’s book illustration. This year, Leo Espinosa will be awarded the prize for Jackrabbit McCabe & The Electric Telegraph (Schwartz & Wade Books). “To have been juried into this exhibition is alone a major achievement and should be celebrated,” says Dilys Evans. “To be selected by the Founder’s Award jury as the most promising new talent is a tremendous vote of confidence in an artist’s ability and future in the field of children’s book illustration.”