2024 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal Celebration

Sandra Bloodworth has been the visionary behind ‘New York’s Underground Museum’ for more than thirty years. In the late 1980s, Sandra joined the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) newly created percent for art program established in 1985. From 1996 until her retirement in September 2024, she served as the Director of MTA Arts & Design, the program responsible for visual and performing arts throughout the transportation system. Under her leadership, public artworks by renowned artists including Nick Cave, Alex Katz, Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, Kiki Smith and Sarah Sze became a part of the daily commute for New Yorkers. The collection now consists of more than 400 permanent artworks.

In 2013, Sandra resurrected the popular Poetry in Motion program, run in collaboration with the Poetry Society of America. Sandra’s contributions to New York’s transportation network extend beyond the art program. She was instrumental in the aesthetic design of contemporary subway cars, and the ubiquitous Metro Card vending machine. She has balanced being a voice for historic preservation with an interest in innovation. In 2016, she co-led a major design initiative to establish a new vision to bring aging transit stations into the twenty-first century.

Bloodworth has co-authored three books on the transit system’s public art collection, most recently Contemporary Art Underground, released in 2024. She is the former Vice President of the Design and Culture Platform for Union Internationale des Transports Public (UiTP) and co-led the creation of current public art standards for the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). She is the recipient of the Sloan Public Service Award and the Gary Melchers Award from the Artist’s Fellowship. Bloodworth played a prominent role in the reconstruction of Cortlandt Street station post 9/11; commissioning Ann Hamilton’s inspirational CHORUS. In 2020, Sandra created and led the creative efforts of TRAVELS FAR, a poignant memorial dedicated to MTA employees lost during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sandra is also a practicing artist, working in oil, watercolor, and mixed media.

Spanning more than seventy years, Yoko Ono’s work as an artist, musician and activist remains singularly relevant.

Born in Tokyo, Yoko grew up in Japan with time spent in the United States. In 1956 she moved to New York City to develop her own art practice. In 1960 she began to present new music and ideas in a loft at 112 Chambers Street. Over the course of six months the performances were a sensation attracting art-world luminaries such as Marcel Duchamp, Peggy Guggenheim, Isamu Noguchi and Robert Rauschenberg. During the next decade, she developed her pioneering practice in art, performance, music and film leading to her groundbreaking work Cut Piece in New York in 1965.

In 1966, Yoko met John Lennon which began a personal and artistic partnership in art, film, music, and activism. By 1968 their “actions” to promote peace became world-wide news, including their 1969 Bed-In for Peace and WAR IS OVER! If you want it, a global billboard campaign that followed.

In August 1980, Ono and Lennon recorded the album Double Fantasy, which won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Less than a month after its release, Lennon was shot and killed outside the Dakota, their home in New York.

Ono’s memorial to Lennon, the world-famous Strawberry Fields in Central Park, is a living landscape surrounding the iconic Imagine mosaic. Opened in 1985 it remains a cultural touchstone and draws millions of visitors each year.

After an absence from exhibiting her art, Yoko’s 1989 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Yoko Ono: Objects, Film, signaled a renewed interest in her art. In 2018, she created SKY, an intricate mosaic rendering of cloud-filled skies, for the 72nd Street Station that runs under the Dakota.

Today, Yoko’s work continues to be honored with exhibitions in some of the world’s most prestigious international venues, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2015) and Tate Modern in London (2024).

Patti Smith’s role in helping to shape the early punk movement in New York City is well known, as are her accomplishments as a writer, visual artist, and activist over more than five decades.

Patti’s breakthrough performance at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery in 1971 presaged the poetic intensity and raw performative energy that would define her career. Her 1975 debut album Horses was inducted into the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress in 2010 and into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2021. Her early performances at CBGB, along with bands like Television, the Ramones, and Blondie, secured the club’s legacy in New York music history.

Patti released three more albums, Radio Ethiopia, Easter, and Wave, through the late 1970’s. In 1988, with her husband Fred “Sonic” Smith of the MC5, she released Dream of Life, which included the single “People Have the Power.” Patti dedicated her 1996 album Gone Again to Fred, who died in 1994. She went on to record another six studio albums, releasing her latest, Banga, in 2012.

In 2010, Smith published Just Kids, the story of her complex friendship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe told against the vibrant backdrop of 1970s New York. Just Kids received the National Book Award for nonfiction.

In 2005, Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Additional accolades include the ASCAP Founders Award for lifetime achievement (2010); the Medal of Distinction from the Barnard College Board of Trustees (2014) and the John Lennon Real Love Award (2017). She was awarded a key to New York City in 2021.

Patti continues to tour worldwide while advocating for human rights and environmental issues. She is a longtime supporter of Tibet House and heavily involved in Pathways to Paris, a nonprofit dedicated to addressing climate change. Most recently, Smith has spoken and performed in support of the Elizabeth Street Garden in Nolita.