UCI Professor Honored at the White House

Venice visual artist John Baldessari and actress Sally Field were honored at the White House today along with other recipients of the 2014 National Medal of Arts, while UC Irvine history professor Vicki Lynn Ruiz received a 2014 National Humanities Medal.

The nearly two dozen honorees were recognized by President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama. Other notable names on the list of honorees were author Stephen King, who received a Medal of Arts, and novelist/screenwriter Larry McMurtry, who received a Humanities Medal.

Baldessari, who was among a group of artists that financially supported Obama’s 2012 election campaign, was honored for an “ambitious” body of work that “combines photography, painting and text to push the boundaries of image, making him one of the most influential conceptual artists of our time,” according to the White House.

Field, a two-time Oscar winner -- for “Places in the Heart” and “Norma Rae” -- was chosen for a career of performances that “have touched audiences around the world” and her off-screen “advocacy for women, LGBT rights and public health.”

Ruiz, meanwhile, was hailed for her pioneering work documenting the history of 20th century Latinas “in a distinguished career that began with collecting oral testimony from Mexican immigrants who worked in U.S. canning factories.”

Obama said all of the recipients had one thing in common.

“They do what they do because of some urgent inner force, some need to express the truth that they experience, that ‘rare truth,”’ Obama said. “And as a result, they help us understand ourselves in ways that we might not otherwise recognize. They deepen and broaden our great American story and the human story.”

Ruiz said she considers the award as recognition of her field of study more than an individual honor.

“When I was a graduate student, I could not begin to imagine all of the stories awaiting interested scholars in public archives and personal memories,” Ruiz said. “That said, I am deeply honored by this once-in-a- lifetime acknowledgement of my work.”

City News Service; Photo: UCI