Asia Society Museum Honors Professors David Henry Hwang and Sarah Sze

Associate Professor of Theatre and Head of Playwriting David Henry Hwang and Visual Arts Professor Sarah Sze are among this year’s honorees for the Asia Arts Game Changer Awards.

Now in its 10th year, the Asia Arts Game Changer Awards is the Asia Society’s signature event which honors important figures across the arts who have made a significant impact on our society. The event brings together artists, curators, filmmakers, playwrights, musicians, choreographers, international collectors, arts professionals, and Asia Society trustees and patrons to celebrate excellence in the arts from across Asia and the diaspora.

This year’s awards ceremony took place on May 19, 2022 at the Asia Society Museum in New York City. The evening’s reception featured a special performance featuring excerpts from The Rift, a new opera by Hwang and his creative partner and award-winning composer Huang Ruo about Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Read more about the fellow honorees here.

David Henry Hwang is a Tony Award winner and three-time nominee, a three-time OBIE Award winner, and a three-time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. He is the recipient of two GRAMMY Awards and also co-wrote the Gold Record Solo with the late pop star Prince. Currently, he serves as Chair of the American Theatre Wing, which founded the Tony Awards and presents the OBIE Awards. Hwang’s works for stage include M. Butterfly, Chinglish, Yellow Face, Kung Fu, Golden Child, The Dance and the Railroad, and FOB, as well as the Broadway musicals Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida (co-author), Flower Drum Song (2002 revival), and Disney’s Tarzan. He was a Writer and Consulting Producer for the Golden Globe-winning television series The Affair. His screenplays include Possession, M. Butterfly, and Golden Gate. He is an Associate Professor, and current head of Playwriting, in the Theatre Program at Columbia University.

Sarah Sze is a contemporary artist who builds installations and sculptures from everyday materials, including found objects, plants, photographs, wiring, and food detritus. Sze constructs her work by hand, building intricate and often gravity-defying towers that fill their exhibition space. Sze completed her MA in architecture and painting at Yale University, and later her MFA at the School of Visual Arts. She currently lives and works in New York, where she is a Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University. Sze is the recipient of numerous honors, including a 2003 MacArthur Fellowship and the opportunity to represent the United States at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Her work is collected in the Guggenheim New York, Museum of Modern Art in New York, The New Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others.