The Portrait Gallery
“Heart,” by Cara Barer © The artist. Courtesy Klompching Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
I went to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005 because I’d won a writing prize, and with that prize came an invitation to a luncheon and awards ceremony. Each honoree was allowed to bring a guest, and I invited my friend Patrick Ryan. We boarded the subway downtown and took it all the way to 155th Street, he in his summer suit and me in my best dress. I’m not a New Yorker by any stretch, and Washington Heights was unfamiliar to me. The Academy’s Beaux-Arts building, the long, sloping hill of Trinity Cemetery, and the view of the Hudson River made me feel like we’d caught the train in Kansas and resurfaced in Oz. Writers and artists and composers were coming toward us from every direction, people whose work we’d committed to memory and whose faces we knew on sight. The day was windy, and Patrick and I were so nervous we ducked down a few stairs beside the enormous building to smoke. When we finished our cigarettes we were brave again.
I have such fondness for that memory, that moment, as that would be the summer I would quit smoking for good. No more cigarettes for courage while staring into an elegant cemetery. I had known very little about the Academy before we got there, and understood nothing about how the place worked. At the registration desk, I gave my name and received a program and our table number. Someone introduced me to Tony Kushner. Tony Kushner! While shaking his hand, I asked him whether he had won a prize as well. He told me no; he was being inducted.
