Jacob Lawrence

A renowned educator and painter, Jacob Lawrenceis regarded as one of the foremost American Blackartists of the 20th century. Born in 1917 inAtlantic city, Lawrence studied at the Harlem ArtWorkshop in New York from 1932 to 1939. he taughtat the Pratt Institute. Art School from 1958 to1965.

Lawrence was a Rosenwald fellow from 1940 to1942 and a Guggenheim fellow in 1945.

He taught at the Art students League in NewYork between 1967 and 1969 and at the New Schoolfor Social research from 1966 to 1971.

Lawrence's major retrospective exhibition atthe Whitney Museum of American Art opened in 1974.In 1990, he was given the National Medal of ArtsAward by President George Bush.

Doris Lessing

Award-winning novelist and author Doris MayLessing has explored the colonial experiences ofSouthern Africa in her works. She is currently afellow in literary scholarship in English andAmerican studies at the University of East Angliain England.

Born in Kermanshah, Iran in 1919, Lessing hasbeen a prolific writer. She authored thefive-volume Children of Violence (1951-1969),Briefing for a Descent Into Hell(1971) and LondonObserved: Stories and Sketches (1992).

She received the Somerset Maugham award in1954, the Prix Medici in 1976 and the ShakespearePrize in 1982. Lessing lives in London.

I.M. Pei

Architect leoh Ming Pei is the renowneddesigner of scores of structures ranging from theglass pyramid outside the Louvre in Paris to theJohn F. Kennedy Library in Boston.

Born in Guangzhou, China in 1917, Peiimmigrated to the U.S. in 1935 and became acitizen in 1954. He received a bachelor's inarchitecture from MIT in 1940 and a master's inarchitecture from the Harvard Graduate School ofDesign in 1946.

After practicing architecture in New York Cityfrom 1939 to 1942, Pei taught as an assistantprofessor at the Design School from 1945 to 1948.

He joined the architectural firm of Webb andKnapp in 1948, and has run his own firm, now Pei,Cobb, Freed and Partners, since 1955. He was awheelwright fellow at Harvard in 1951.

Pei's projects include the West Wing of theMuseum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Dallas CityHall, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce inToronto and Robert E. Kennedy's grave at theArlington National Cemetery. He was responsiblefor the expansion and modernization of the Louvre.