Distinguished Service Order, Contd.

The benefit gala season is upon the art world, making it the turn of distinguished artists, patrons, and scholars to bask in a little glory. The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art is presenting their medal to Richard Artschwager, Douglas S. Cramer and Jack Lenor Larsen while art critic and curator Klaus Kertess receives the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History. Their gala takes place at the Mandarin Oriental at Columbus Circle on October 29. A week earlier, on October 22, and at that institution’s home in Greenwich Village, the New York Studio School is also to honor a veritable archivist of the American avantgarde, biographer (of Duchamp and others) and New Yorker writer Calvin Tomkins, alongside artists Thomas Nozkowski and Martin Puryear. (9/7/2009)