A Toast to Downtown

On December 9, 2020, LMCC hosted a virtual evening celebrating visionary leaders and cultural life forces of Lower Manhattan.

This year, we honored Jessica Lappin, President of the Downtown Alliance, and Maggie Boepple, former President of the Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center and former President of LMCC, for their service as civic leaders and cultural giants.

We honored alumni artistic honorees, including Amina Henry, recipient of the Sarah Verdone Award; Eiko Otake, recipient of the Sam Miller Award for Performing Arts; and Paul Pfeiffer, recipient of the Michael Richards Award for Visual Arts.

Festivities included guest appearances by LMCC artists and alum Morgan Bassichis, Mona Chalabi, Ivy Mix, and Mariana Valencia.

Click here for the evening’s Full Program and to view ingredients for Ivy Mix’s cocktail.

Eiko Otake at LMCC's Arts Center at Governors Island

LMCC is pleased to present Eiko Otake with the 2020 Sam Miller Award for Performing Arts.

This work was performed in memory of Sam Miller, LMCC President and lifelong champion for dance and performance.

Filmed by Cyprian Films, New York at LMCC's Arts Center at Governors Island
Directed by Liz Sargent
Director of Photography - Minos Papas

Our Honorees

Jessica Lappin is the President of the Downtown Alliance. The organization manages New York City’s largest Business Improvement District and works to ensure that Lower Manhattan is a thriving and dynamic community. At the helm of the Alliance, she is responsible for providing sanitation and public safety services, manages a free bus service, and has made outreach to the street homeless a priority. She has also significantly expanded the free public WiFi network in Lower Manhattan, produced award-winning ads and marketing videos, instituted a district-wide solar-powered recycling program, and helped secure nearly $100 million in resiliency funding for Lower Manhattan. A lifelong New Yorker and former elected official, Ms. Lappin has a distinguished record in civic life and public service.

Maggie Boepple served most recently as President/Director of the The Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center (PAC@WTC), following a distinguished international career in public service, administration and government relations. Prior to her time at PAC@WTC, Boepple was President of LMCC where, under her direction, the organization ran the largest artist residency program in New York and created innovative arts programs, including Lent Space Art Park and studios on Governors Island. Previously, Boepple served as Senior Advisor to the Commissioner of Transport in London on the Private Public Partnership for the London Underground and held senior government positions at the MTA in New York and in the Koch administration, where she was the first woman to be appointed Director of Intergovernmental Relations. She currently serves as Vice Chair of The Fund for the City of New York. Boepple graduated from Brooklyn College. She is married to noted sculptor Willard Boepple and lives in Manhattan.

Amina Henry's recent productions include The Animals, Ducklings, Hunter John and Jane and The Johnsons at JACK (Brooklyn, NY), Bully (SUNY Purchase, Clubbed Thumb WinterWorks, Interrobang Theatre, and elsewhere), The Great Novel (New Light Theater) and Troy (HERO Theatre). Her work has been produced, presented at, and/or developed by: Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The New Group, Ars Nova, Page 73, Clubbed Thumb, The Flea, National Black Theatre, HERO Theater, Project Y Theatre, Dixon Place and other venues. She was a 2017-2018 LMCC Space Grant recipient. She is a New Georges Affiliate Artist and 2018-2019 Audrey grant recipient for her play Hamlet Is Dead.

Henry was a part of the 2017-2018 Workspace Residency.

Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement–based, interdisciplinary artist with a history of working for forty years as Eiko & Koma. Starting with the World Trade Center in 2000, LMCC offered many residencies to both Eiko & Koma and Eiko herself. Three consecutive River To River Festivals (2014-2016) presented EIko’s first independent work Two Women; her solo works A Body in a Station and A Body on Wall Street; video installation A Body with Water; the experimental “Talking Duets” with Emmanuelle Huynh and Okwui Okpokwasili. The last two works, and conversations with Sam Miller, led Eiko to develop her extensive Duet Project (2017-), in which she engages with artists of varied backgrounds and practices.

Otake was a participant in LMCC’s Process Space Residency in 2014 and presented work in the River To River Festival in 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Paul Pfeiffer was born in Honolulu, HI, in 1966 and grew up traveling regularly between Hawaii and the Philippines. He moved to New York City in 1990 where he attended Hunter College and the Whitney Independent Study Program. Pfeiffer’s groundbreaking work in video, sculpture, and photography revisits the history of popular mass entertainment to explore the role of images in shaping individual and collective consciousness. Reworking clips from YouTube, cable TV, and increasingly his own footage, Pfeiffer delves deeply into the aesthetics of non-linear editing to elucidate the hybrid forms of space and time that define day-to-day experience in the contemporary world. For the Performa 19 Biennial, Pfeiffer presented his first live performance in collaboration with The Georgia Redcoat Marching Band from the University of Georgia, at the Apollo Theater on November 11, 2019.

Pfeiffer participated in LMCC’s Worldviews Residency the Summer of 2000.

Our Supporters

As of December 9, 2020

Titanium Committee
Cisco
Citi
HLW International LLP
The Howard Hughes Corporation
Neil Parikh

Platinum Committee
American Express
Elizabeth & Michael Ashworth
Ken & Kim Blacklow
Bloomberg Philanthropies
BuroHappold Engineering
Conrad New York
Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association
Linda Genereux & Timur Galen
Neil Goldmacher, Newmark Knight Frank
Anne Goldrach/Greystone Management Corp.
Morgan Stanley/Ekene Ezulike
Cherrie Nanninga
Time Equities, Inc.

Gold Supporters
Sarah Arison
Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP
May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation

Silver Supporters
The Durst Organization
Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP
Jill and Peter Kraus
L&L Holding Company, LLC
Lendlease
Reidy Contracting Group
Sciame Construction LLC
Abby Pogrebin and Dave Shapiro
Structure Tone

Bronze Supporters
DeSimone Consulting Engineers
Meredith Kane
Richard and Ronay Menschel
Paula Cooper Gallery
Scott B. Salmirs, President & CEO ABM Industries
SL Green
Esta Stecher
WSP USA

Copper Supporters
AKRF, Inc.
Jay Berman
Richard Berney, Cozen O'Connor
Marcia and Noel Caban
Jerry Cifarelli, ANC
Cosentini Associates
Charles Maikish, Chairman Emeritus, LMCC
McDermott Will & Emery LLP
Anne B. Miller
Robert de Rothschild
Bruce Ehrmann and Sandi Slone
Thornton Tomasetti

Steel Supporters
Anonymous
Jacob and Angela Buchdahl
Elisabeth Santana-Borrico
Rachel Miller
Marc Ricks
Maureen and Timothy Sheehan

Board of Directors

Timur Galen, Chair

Francis Greenburger, Treasurer

Kimberly Brown Blacklow, Secretary & Vice Chair

Kevin Hoo, Vice Chair

Michael Ashworth

Jay Berman

Susan Boyle

Marcia Caban

Bruce Ehrmann

Ekene Ezulike

Dino Fusco

Anne Goldrach

Shari Hyman

David Jansen

Eric Johnson

Meredith Kane

Adam Meister

Richard Mines

Cherrie Nanninga

Neil Parikh

Peter Poulakakos

Cindy Quan

R. Sarah Richardson

Michael Rizzo

Brian Saluzzo

Craig Schwitter

Friends of LMCC Steering Committee

Marie de Foucaud, Co-Chair

Neil Parikh, Co-Chair

Michelle Grey

Jean-Christophe Laizeau

Peter Malachi

Luisella Meloni

Srenica Munthree

Ben Rawlingson-Plant

Edward Roussel

Olympia Scarry

About LMCC

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council is a partnership-driven nonprofit organization that has been working at the intersection of arts, business, and community in Lower Manhattan for almost five decades. In September 2019, we opened LMCC’s Arts Center at Governors Island—a 40,000 square foot creative space that serves as the gateway to Governors Island’s Arts & Culture District.