Watermill Center Gets A Big Boost
The Comitato Taormina Arte in Taormina, Italy, is far from the first to recognize the world-renowned avant garde director/designer/visual artist/perform er Robert Wilson. But it is the most recent, having honored him on Jan. 5 with its 1996 Europe Prize for Theater, which brings with it a $65,000 cash award.
That money, plus the $200,000 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize awarded to Mr. Wilson in October, has been donated to Mr. Wilson's Byrd Hoffman Foundation in Manhattan, which will put it toward for the continuing renovation and expansion of Mr. Wilson's Watermill Center.
Founded in 1992, the center, housed in the former Western Union Laboratory on Water Mill Towd Road, is projected to be a year-round multi-disciplinary and residential hub for artists and students from around the world.
Building Progress
In recent months, progress has been made toward realizing the vision.
The first phase of the renovations, concentrating on the complex's south wing, has been completed, and work on the north wing is slated to begin next month. Most of the living accommodations will be in the north wing: dormitories and kitchen and dining facilities.
Steven Parkey, who was named the director of the Byrd Hoffman Foundation in August, hopes the second phase will include work on the south wing's basement as well, to transform it into an archive for Mr. Wilson's work.
Work on the center has progressed as funds have been available, and its annual summertime fund-raiser has already been scheduled for Aug. 17. The event will include cocktails, a brief performance, and dinner.
Lifetime Achievement
Mr. Wilson, a native of Waco, Tex., who now lives part-time in Water Mill, accepted the Taormina Prize at a ceremony there. Taormina, a world-famous winter resort in Sicily, lies at the foot of Mount Etna and looks out over the Ionian Sea.
The award was presented by the Taormina Art Committee, made up of visual artists, journalists, and others with connections to the European art world.
Mr. Wilson was recognized not for any one dramatic production or artwork but for his extensive body of achievement, according to Steven Beer, a spokesman for the Byrd Hoffman Foundation.
The prize, established in 1986 under the auspices of the European Union, is awarded to the individual or production "that has best contributed to helping mutual knowledge and understanding among people belonging to different cultures," the foundation's press release stated.
"Visionary"
The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, an annual cash award, was set up in the will of the actress Lillian Gish, who died about four years ago. Its goal is more general: to recognize someone who has created beauty. Mr. Wilson is the third person to receive this honor.
The director has been the recipient of Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships as well as Obie, Bessie, and Drama Desk Awards. "Einstein on the Beach," Black Rider," "Medea," and a performance of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" are among his multimedia theatrical productions.
Mr. Wilson "is a futurist and a visionary," Martin Bernheimer wrote in The Los Angeles Times in 1990.
"Wilson can be considered this country's - or even the world's - foremost vanguard theater artist," John Rockwell wrote in The New York Times Magazine two years later.
Mr. Wilson is now in Paris, where "Time Rocker," his new musical collaboration with the singer- songwriter Lou Reed, has just opened.