Everett Raymond Kinstler Portrait of Juilliard President Joseph W. Polisi To Be Unveiled at Juilliard on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 On The Occasion of Dr. Polisi's 25th Year as President of the World-Famous Conservatory of Dance, Drama, and Music

25th Anniversary Year To Include Gala At Juilliard On April 26, 2010

An Everett Raymond Kinstler portrait of Juilliard President, Joseph W. Polisi will be unveiled in a ceremony at the School on Wednesday, October 7, 2009, honoring Dr. Polisi's 25^th year at Juilliard. Administrators, faculty and students will attend the boardroom unveiling with celebrated portraitist Kinstler, who has painted six U.S. presidents among his more than 1,200 likenesses. Dr. Polisi and Mr. Kinstler met several times over the course of the year, and the painting was done in Mr. Kinstler's NYC and Easton, Connecticut studios. The portrait is an informal pose of Dr. Polisi and features NYC in the background. Joseph W. Polisi became the School's sixth President in September 1984.

Everett Raymond Kinstler, regarded as one of America's finest portrait painters whose work includes portraits of personages from business, education, entertainment, society and government, including portraits of U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerard R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, is a native New Yorker. Mr. Kinstler began his career at age 16, drawing comic books and hundreds of book and magazine illustrations. He studied at the Art Students League, where he later taught from 1969 to 1974. Mr. Kinstler ultimately made the transition to portraitist, and soon established himself as one of the nation's foremost portrait painters. For over four decades, he also has devoted time to painting landscapes and watercolors. The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. has acquired 75 of his original works for its permanent collection. Mr. Kinstler also is represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Butler Institute of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, among others. In 1999, he was awarded the Copley Medal from the Smithsonian, National Portrait Gallery, its highest honor.

Dr. Polisi's 25-year tenure at Juilliard has brought many changes to the vital and world-famous conservatory of dance, drama, and music, which itself is in its 104^th year. Several of its new programs bring it squarely into the 21^st Century as one of the world's finest performing arts schools. Most recent and most visible is the $200 million expansion and renovation of the School's 1969 home on the Lincoln Center campus. In addition to the creation of a fifth new theater (the Rosemary and Meredith Willson Theater) within its walls, the project created new spaces for its highly-praised jazz program, and a special laboratory and performance space for technology and mixed media. Under Dr. Polisi's direction, Juilliard established new student services and alumni programs; strengthened the liberal arts and humanities academic core; revitalized Juilliard's Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degree programs and has established several advanced programs as tuition free. Dr. Polisi also created the School's first degree programs in Jazz Studies and Historical Performance. There is a new emphasis on leadership and arts advocacy among its students; greater interaction between the three Juilliard divisions of dance, drama and music; and substantial community outreach. In addition, a first major expansion at Juilliard was the creation of the School's first residence hall in 1991.

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