Americans for the Arts (AFTA) announced today that Award-winning actor, producer, and Academy Award nominee Jeffrey Wright will deliver the 35^th Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on March 12 at 7:00 pm EST.  The event will also be livestreamed; register to watch online here.

The Nancy Hanks Lecture has featured the nation’s most preeminent voices in and outside the arts. Prior distinguished speakers have included Maya Angelou, Darren Walker, Billy Taylor, Norman Lear, Yo-Yo Ma, Rita Moreno, and Robert Redford, among others.

“It’s a profound honor to have Jeffrey Wright, a D.C native, deliver the highly anticipated 2024 Nancy Hanks lecture,” said Nolen Bivens, President and CEO of Americans for the Arts. “Through his inspiring advocacy efforts, including the sharing of captivating narratives of wounded veterans and their transformative encounters with the arts, he shines the spotlight on the infinite potential for the arts to permeate and enrich our collective daily lives, transcending any challenges we face. We are grateful for his unwavering commitment to demonstrate and advocate for the profound healing power of the arts, resonating both within our nation and across the globe.”

Jeffrey Wright won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his role in the 1993 Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. He reprised his role in the 2003 miniseries on HBO, earning the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. He went on to star in a number of films and appeared in several more series for HBO, including Boardwalk Empire and Westworld, which earned him three more Emmy nominations. He continues to work on the large and small screens. Wright is nominated for the 2024 Academy Award for Best Actor for his work on American Fiction.

Of particular note is Wright’s 2018 work as a producer of the HBO documentary We Are Not Done Yet, which tells the stories of veterans who discover the power and healing to unite and find resilience in the face of post-traumatic stress through arts workshops at Walter Reed National Military Hospital. Wright grew up in Washington, DC.

Also during the event, Congressman James. E Clyburn (D-SC), who has represented South Carolina in Congress since 1993, will receive the 2024 Congressional Arts Leader Award, presented by Americans for the Arts to honor an elected official who has consistently advocated for the expansion of federal support for the arts and culture and/or arts education.

Congressman Clyburn has led efforts to preserve and restore historic buildings on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) campuses in the last three decades.  He sponsored legislation creating the South Carolina National Heritage Corridor, the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, the Congaree National Park, the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, and expanding the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site to South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and Washington, DC.

Dedicated to making America’s greatness accessible and affordable for all citizens, his federal funding formula has been expanded from three to 15 accounts of the appropriations bills. His Rural Energy Savings Program also provided loans to families and businesses to implement durable, cost-effective energy efficiency measures. His “Accessible, Affordable Broadband for All” bill was included in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill and is funded at a level of $65 billion.

The evening will also include special remarks by Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, introduction remarks by Tanya Lombard, Vice President of Global Public and External Affairs at AT&T, and a special performance by Emmy-nominated singer-songwriter-composer Ben Folds, and more.

Established by Americans for the Arts in 1988, the Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy is the leading national forum for arts policy intended to stimulate dialogue on policy and social issues affecting the arts.  The annual lecture is named for the former president of Americans for the Arts and chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Nancy Hanks, who brought the arts to prominent national consciousness.

Americans for the Arts extends its gratitude for the generosity of this event’s sponsors: The Rosenthal Family Foundation and Brownstein.

The Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts & Public Policy is produced exclusively by Americans for the Arts. The event will be accessible nationwide via livestream and will include ASL interpretation.

For up-to-the-minute announcements and more information, follow @Americans4Arts.

About The Author

Dean Rogers

Editor-in-Chief/Entertainment Reporter

I knew early on that I wanted to take my place among the stars. One day, my mother saw me reading The Washington Post at a very young age. Who would have known that it would be the building blocks of my journey? Since that day, I dedicated my life to learn all that is learnable. I read everything from encyclopedias, to books, to dictionaries, to magazines. I’m also an avid consumer of television, with my favorite genre being game shows. If you’ve seen me on Who Wants to be a Millionaire or Wheel of Fortune, then you know that this interest has served me well!

My unique style of reporting began back in junior high school, when I started to chronicle the events that shaped my life. Whether it was the annual family vacation or the local science fiction convention, I shot numerous pictures and recorded my thoughts so I could truly appreciate the history. During my senior year at Friendly High, I wrote what was to be my first masterpiece, “Advanced Space Academy – A One Week Journey.” I sent the eleven-page article back to the U.S. Space Camp staff. The article was highly praised for being “one of the best written articles in the history of U.S. Space Camp.” From then on, I knew what I wanted to do for rest of my life — to be a reporter.

Since then, I have trained in Broadcast Journalism at Bowie State University (2008) in Bowie, MD earning a B.S. in Communications. I gained experience in news production and editing through field experiences with Bowie Community Media Corporation, Prince George’s Community Television, and Bowie State University Television. I also wrote scripts for a variety of quiz shows for over five years.

As a lifelong movie buff, I now see close to 100 films every year. I took this love of movies to the next step when I became a co-host for Eclipse Magazine TV in the fall of 2005. While at EMTV, I interviewed celebrities, worked red carpets, and attended a wide variety of movie screenings. In January 2009, I took a leap of faith and started my own entertainment news magazine, The Rogers Revue. Shortly afterward, my life-long journey of studying the silver screen and writing about what I learned finally earned me a place in the Washington Area Film Critics Association.

All of this has led me here, giving you the latest entertainment news for the DMV and the entire nation, and I am truly excited for whatever will come next.

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