From charlierose.com – A look at the Annual DVF Awards, honoring women committed to improving the lives of other women, with Diane von Furstenberg and this year’s lifetime leadership award winner, Dr. Jane Goodall.
Women Who Redefine Beauty and Power Honored at the DVF Awards
April 11th, 2016Fighters, survivors, builders and advocates were among those honored with a $50,000 prize at the 7th annual DVF Awards
By ALLISON MCNEARNEY for The New York Times
The fashion was on point Thursday night at the 7th annual DVF Awards, but it wasn’t nearly as stunning as the accomplishments of the women who took the stage to be honored for their work supporting women around the world.
Backed by The Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation, the DVF Awards honor “women who have had the courage to fight, the power to survive and the leadership to inspire,” with a $50,000 prize. Among this year’s five winners were a survivor of Uganda’s Civil War who fights human trafficking around the world, an award-winning playwright, and a woman creating a community that encourages girls to throw off expectations and be their authentic selves.
“Year after year, this event is an absolute high point of Women in the World. So bold, so passionate are DVF’s honorees, so profound the difference that they make, it’s wonderful to think that she’s shining her spotlight — that magical spotlight that she has — on the great work that they’re all doing,” Women in the World founder Tina Brown said in her introduction of Diane von Furstenberg.
Von Furstenberg kicked off the evening by first saluting two women who were not present: the incredible architect Zaha Hadid, who passed away last week at the age of 65, and 2015 presenter and now presidential-candidate, Hillary Clinton. “Please spread the word. We want her as our president,” von Furstenberg exhorted the champagne-sipping crowd to loud cheers.
But it was the first winner who really stole the show. Sarah Jones is an award-winning playwright who has dedicated her life and much of her work to the empowerment of women. As presenter and actress Allison Williams put it, she is “one of the shepherds of the real revolution.” To accept the Inspiration Award — and to the delight of the audience — Jones brought along a few of her characters, like young Bella who took a group selfie from the podium, telling the crowd to “channel your inner DVF and just try to feel it.” Her last “guest,” an older woman “from the subcontinent,” left the room in stitches with her final message for DVF: “We love you. We want you to know we have been wrapping the sari for a very long time.”
While Jones may have been a tough act to follow, the two winners of the International Award had powerful messages of their own. Maria Pacheco was honored for her work to economically empower women through her company Wakami, which employees rural Guatemalan women to create fashion accessories that are sold in over 20 countries. And Agnes Igoye has dedicated her life to the efforts to end human trafficking around the world, a mission she became committed to after her childhood experience surviving the Ugandan Civil War and the brutal violence of the Lord’s Resistance Army.
“As many of you know, and what I’ve learned through the two decades in this work, traffickers have powerful networks. The networks are in my country, they are here in the USA, they are everywhere around the world,” Igoye said. “The only way we can fight them is to have networks of our own. Networks among girlfriends, networks among NGOs, among law enforcement, social workers, survivors, but above all to empower women.”
Emily Greener, winner of the People’s Voice Award, has also taken up the mission of empowerment through her movement I AM THAT GIRL. In 2008, Greener and a friend started what is now a thriving peer-to-peer community dedicated to “creating a new normal” where girls enable and support each other to be their authentic selves. “What it means to be human is honesty, it’s truth. It’s being who we are instead of who we think we’re supposed to be,” Greener passionately said.
For the final award of the evening, von Furstenberg took the stage one last time to give a powerful introduction of the winner of the Lifetime Leadership Award. “Impossible does not exist for Dr. Martine Rothblatt. But I am possible is Martine Rothblatt,” von Furstenberg said. Rothblatt’s career has spanned an almost unimaginably vast range of interests, from the law of outer space to her role founding Sirius XM. But it’s her work for transgender rights around the world that has really distinguished her as a champion of women.
“I don’t really know if I can possibly put into words what it feels like for a transgendered woman to be recognized by this room full of extraordinarily accomplished women as a woman for being an inspiration and a help to other women,” Rothblatt said.
In her emotional acceptance speech, Rothblatt also praised the work von Furstenberg’s daughter, Tatiana, has done for the transgendered community. Rothblatt ended with a powerful message for the room packed with inspirational figures and activists, about the importance of cultivating the next generation of world changers. “What a wonderful testament to this icon, for me and for, I know, all of you here today, Diane, when a parent is able to have a daughter such as Tatiana that carries on this mission of justice into the next generation,” Rothblatt said. “I don’t think there’s any greater achievement.”
High Fashion Meets High Impact at the 6th Annual DVF Awards
April 24th, 2015BY JORDAN LARSON for The New York Times – Presented by the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation in conjunction with the Women in the World Summit, the annual DVF Awards in New York City on Thursday celebrated the strength and dedication of women around the world. The Foundation honored six philanthropists with five $50,000 awards to help further their work of empowering women around the world, from developing sustainable economic practices in Samoa to providing job training in impoverished communities. Among those honored were Ambassador Melanne Verveer, the United States’ first Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues at the State Department, and Gabrielle Giffords, who has dedicated her life to fighting gun violence after being shot in 2011 while serving as a U.S. Representative from Arizona.
Hosted in a suite at the United Nations headquarters overlooking the East River, the celebration brought together powerful women from all walks of life; award presenters included actresses Dakota Fanning and Maggie Gyllenhaal, model Naomi Campbell, and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Following an opening performance by French pop group Christine and the Queens, Tina Brown began the evening of recognition with a tribute to the fashion mogul (and her longtime friend) Diane von Furstenberg. “True beauty… is strength,” she recalled her friend telling her. “I’ve never met a woman who wasn’t strong.”
Von Furstenberg then took the stage, emphasizing in her speech that the fight for women’s equality around the world is far from over. “The situation for women in the world is not what it should be. And we are regressing,” she said, citing violence against women and human trafficking as pressing concerns. “Let us remember, if we have a voice, it is our obligation and privilege to use that voice for those who have none.”
Hillary Clinton presented the first award of the evening—the Lifetime Leadership Award—to Ambassador Melanne Verveer, with whom she worked as both First Lady and Secretary of State. “Everywhere women need a champion, she shows up,” said Clinton. “She is the advocate that women and girls need in their corner.”
Verveer was appointed the country’s first Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues at the State Department by Obama in 2009, and also served as the U.S. Representative to the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Between working in Clinton’s State Department and as the First Lady’s chief of staff, Verveer has spent a lot of time traveling and working with Clinton. “I have become a certified member of the sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits,” she noted, to laughter from the audience. Now, Verveer directs Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace, and Security, which promotes the role of women as peacemakers through scholarship and research. “If we just look at women as victims, no matter what they endure, we will never see them for the leaders that they are,” said Verveer.
Naomi Campbell then presented Adi Tafuna’i with a Vital Voice Award for her work building sustainable economies in Samoa and other Pacific island nations, where families are often split apart when adults leave to find work elsewhere. “We are so isolated from markets,” she said, so she has helped Samoa develop small markets of its own by educating women and helping keep them in their communities.
Through Tafuna’i’s work, Samoan coconut oil is now an export in high demand, and a key ingredient in more than 30 products distributed by The Body Shop. Maggie Gyllenhaal then presented the second Vital Voice Award to filmmaker and activist Samar Minallah Khan, who has spent her life documenting cultural forms of violence against women in Pakistani communities, from honor killings to the use of dowries in marriages. The tradition of giving female family members as compensation in disputes, known as swara, was outlawed in 2004 after Khan launched a campaign against the practice. “It is time to strengthen alliances and build partnerships with men to challenge such inhuman customs and traditions,” she said. “Let us have all those men as partners in this journey who are brave enough to respect women as human beings. These are the ideas that this award will help in realizing.”
Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg Give Gift to Create Park Arts Pier
November 21st, 2014BY LINCOLN ANDERSON for The Villager – In the single largest gift to a public park in New York history — and the second largest in U.S. history — Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg have pledged $113 million to build a signature “island” off of W. 13th St. in what is being billed as a future “world-class public park and performance space.”
The new 2.7-acre Hudson River Park pier — to be called Pier55 — will feature three “peaks,” one of which will rise 71 feet, and three performance spaces, including a 750-seat amphitheater overlooking the river.
The design also calls for grass lawns and large trees, with hardscape and paths mixed in between the greenery.
Under a lease, a nonprofit, Pier55, Inc., or P55, to be chaired by Diller, will fund the new pier’s programming, operations and day-to-day maintenance for 20 years, with an option to extend this another 10 years, bringing Diller and von Furstenberg’s total commitment to hundreds of millions of dollars. They’ve also promised to pay for any project cost overages that may occur.
The funds will come from their Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation.
The new pier’s performances will be coordinated by an equally high-powered team, including Scott Rudin, producer of “The Social Network,” who will co-chair the nonprofit; George Wolfe, producer of the Public Theater; director Stephen Daldry; and Kate Horton, a top executive at the National Theatre of London and before that at the Royal Court.
While the majority — 51 percent — of the pier’s performances will be free or low cost, the rest will be a higher ticket — how expensive wasn’t immediately clear. All the money generated from the performances will go back into the pier for its maintenance and programming, including commissioning the artists.
The pier’s hours will be the same as the rest of the park — 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. The nonprofit, according to a press release, “is committed to providing maximum public access, including during most performances.”
Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo have given their blessings to the big-pocket project, for which the city will contribute $13 million. The state, meanwhile, is earmarking $18 million to widen the park esplanade from Gansevoort Peninsula to 14th St. to improve access around the pier.
Both top pols effusively praised the plan, as well as Diller and von Furstenberg for their generosity.
“New York City’s waterfront provides tremendous opportunities for everything from tourism to outdoor recreation,” Cuomo said. “Pier55 is the perfect example of how we can tap into that resource.”
Said de Blasio, “Hudson River Park has become a destination for millions of New Yorkers from across all five boroughs. The revitalization and transformation of this pier into a vibrant arts and community space will bring new energy and new visitors to our waterfront.”
Von Furstenberg said the unique project’s moment has arrived.
“New York has always reminded me of Venice, so I am happy the time has come to properly honor its waterways,” she said. “What better than a park on the city’s western bank to rest, watch a sunset or a performance?”
Diller said the process of conceiving and working on the design and programming with a team has been “exciting.”
“From the early stages of the project, I asked Scott Rudin to join me in conceptualizing all aspects of the project,” Diller said. “We decided early on that the programming for the park — and the design of the park itself —should be ambitious in every way. We felt we should primarily commission work from artists of every variety — from world-renowned to local New York City talent.”
It’s projected that work on the esplanade widening could start as soon as next spring, while pier construction could commence by 2016, with the pier opening by 2018 or ’19.
The project — since it’s in the water — will first need approvals, however, from the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the federal Army Corps of Engineers.
In addition, as part of a 60-day public review and comment period, required under the Hudson River Park Act, a public hearing on the pier plan will be held on Wed., Dec. 17, from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., at the Eisner and Lubin Auditorium, in New York University’s Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square South, fourth floor. Photo ID is required to enter the building.
In accordance with the park act, the legally required documents are posted on the Trust’s Web site, www.hudsonriverpark.org — including an environmental impact statement (E.I.S.) and the Pier55 lease terms.
During this two-month period, written comments from the public will also be accepted through Jan. 16, 2015. Comments can be sent by regular mail to William Heinzen, Esq., Hudson River Park Trust, Pier 40, second floor, 353 West St., New York, N.Y. 10014 or by e-mail to Pier54comments@hrpt.ny.gov .
The project will also be presented next month at a public meeting at Community Board 2.
“Whenever we add new parkland where none previously existed, it’s a permanent boon for our community,” said David Gruber, C.B. 2 chairperson. “This is now going to go through a public review process so that the community can fully see the whole plan and have input into the project.”
For Diller, a business and media mogul, and von Furstenberg, a famed fashion designer, the pier arts park would be yet another signature Lower West Side project that they are driving. They are already the largest donors to the High Line — one of the city’s top tourist attractions. The sail-like headquarters building for Diller’s IAC Internet company, designed by Frank Gehry, at W. 18th St. and 11th Ave., was completed in 2007.
In a well-coordinated rollout, the unique pier plan was first announced in major print and TV media on Monday.
The new Hudson River hot spot will be situated 186 feet out in the river, accessible from the mainland by a pair of pathways, 27 feet and 28 feet wide, that will gradually rise up about 9 feet to connect to the structure.
The site will be sandwiched between the current location of Pier 54 to the south and the pile-field remnant of the former Pier 56 to the north — hence, Pier55. Pier 54’s crumbling concrete deck will be removed, leaving another pile field.
The historic Pier 54 was where the Carpathia brought the Titanic’s survivors in 1912.
The pier fields, both of which will remain, not only provide an aesthetically pleasing sight but a habitat where fish and other aquatic wildlife feed.
As opposed to Pier 54, which was originally supported by nearly 3,500 piles, the new Pier55 will be held up by less than 400 piles, which will sport shoulder-like “pods” at their tops to spread the load.
The new pier will be a square, 320 feet by 320 feet. Though, in a twist — literally — the design calls for the square to be rotated to align with the Village’s bordering street grid.
Adding another dimension — literally — the pier’s surface won’t be flat, but have varying heights. The elevation of the Hudson River Park’s mainland portion is 6½ feet above sea level. In the post-Sandy era, it was critical to construct the new Pier55 above the floodplain.
The design calls for the new pier’s elevation to start at 15 feet at its entry points, including the northeast corner. The height will then slope up to 38 feet at the pier’s southeast corner, 41 feet at the northwest corner and a top elevation of 71 feet at its southwest corner.
The pier’s southwest side will thus be lifted up, which, according to the plan, will decrease shading on the water below by 30 percent compared to a regular-style pier of equal size. More sunlight reaching the river is better for the marine ecosystem, including migrating sturgeon and sea turtles, according to the E.I.S.
In 2012, legislation was passed in Albany allowing the Pier 54 footprint to be widened from its current long and narrow shape in order to make it easier and safer for crowds to enter and exit the deck. (This change was part of the same package of legislation that allowed the Hudson River Park Trust to sell the park’s unused development rights up to one block inland from the park.)
Pier 54 previously was a major event space for the park. But several years ago, 100 feet at the aging 875-foot-long pier’s western end suddenly collapsed, and more parts of the pier have since been closed off for safety. As a result, rock concerts, summer movies and the Gay Pride Pier Dance, among others, have been shifted to other piers in the park. The Trust says it does not have the money to repair Pier 54 by itself.
Hudson River Park is supposed to be financially self-sustaining. But with government funding drying up, and 30 percent of the park still uncompleted, the park’s financial picture had grown bleak in recent years, according to the Trust. Now, with the development-rights legislation and the Diller-von Furstenberg pier project, though, the picture is getting rosier, at least financially speaking.
The Trust is hoping that more “public-private partnerships” like this one will help it complete the park.
While Diller and von Furstenberg’s foundation will fund the maintenance of the Pier55 park, the Trust will pay for the maintenance of the new pier’s superstructure.
By giving such a large gift, the couple clearly had naming rights for the pier, but waived them — only axing the space between “Pier” and “55,” to create Pier55.
Madelyn Wils, the president of the Trust, the 4-mile-long waterfront park’s governing body, and Horton presented the Pier55 plan to The Villager on Monday morning.
“I think we really felt the pier had to be widened if we wanted to have nice events,” she explained.
As for the new pier’s height, she noted, to put things in perspective, by comparison, the shed of nearby Pier 57, at W. 17th St., is 50 feet tall, and another large structure, the new Whitney Museum, is being completed a couple of blocks to the south on Gansevoort St.
Regarding the planned uses for Pier55, Wils noted that under the Hudson River Park Act of 1998, the park’s founding legislation, part of the park’s mission is cultural and educational, as well as recreational.
The process leading up to the plan’s unveiling started two and a half years ago, when Diana Taylor, the Trust’s board chairperson, reportedly approached Diller about upgrading Pier 54.
As Wils explained it, at first, Diller and von Furstenberg thought they could build Pier55 for $35 million, but the price tag ballooned.
It was determined that a simple square pier would work the best for flexible open space. An earlier idea for an “amoeba”-like shape was scrapped, Wils said.
A competition between four firms resulted in England’s award-winning Thomas Heatherwick, of Beijing Olympics cauldron fame, being selected for the design. Along with Heatherwick, the Trust, Diller and von Furstenberg continued to work on the design as “a collective,” Wils noted.
The pier “undulates,” she explained of its height changes, noting, “Barry wanted it to be very sweeping.”
Comparing the new plan to the current Pier 54, Wils said, “I think we have taken a very ordinary design that would not have been used very well, and we are creating a beautiful public park that will be used by a lot of people.” Plus, she added, “If we were to rebuild the pier as it is, it would be below the floodplain.”
Asked if the new pier, with its quirky-looking “pod” piles and its rolling hills and ramps — a bit reminiscent of an album cover by Roger Dean for the ’70s prog-rock band Yes — will mesh with the more traditionally rectilinear park, Wils said, “If it did not fit into the gestalt or the mission of the park, we wouldn’t do it.”
The pier’s northern entrance will give onto a large public plaza that could at times have tables and chairs or a farmers market and accommodate performances, she noted.
Events on the new pier won’t be as large as the ones formerly on Pier 54 — which could hold crowds of up to 8,000 — since the usable space will be a bit smaller, Wils said. About 1,000 people will be able to fit on Pier55’s hardscape plaza, while roughly 2,500 will be able to sit on the lawns, and 750 in the amphitheater.
Wils added that the Trust received a federal grant that will allow creation of a new crosswalk across the West Side Highway at W. 13th St., which will improve access to the new pier.
Asked if she anticipated any negative critiques of rotating the pier to align with the street grid, Wils simply called it “a better urban design.”
As for the fairly large-looking trees in the design, she noted that Pier 64, at W. 24th St., also is “heavily treed.” However, she stressed, “This is just a concept plan so far.”
The intent is for the pier to have “four season” plantings resembling those in the park’s Tribeca section, which notably includes tall grasses.
Mathews Nielsen is the plan’s landscape architect.
Since Lower Manhattan has no hills to speak of, it begs the question: Will kids go sledding on the pier’s slopes in the winter? No, Wils said, there will definitely be too many trees to allow sledding or skiing.
Regarding the approval process, Wils said that Monday, in fact, marked the start of the 60-day “public process” that is legally required for any “significant action” affecting the park.
They have already met with local politicians and community board leaders, she noted, calling the reaction they got “very positive.”
“I believe most of the elected officials thought it was a great plan,” she said.
In late January, the Trust’s board of directors will vote on whether to grant a 20-year lease to the Pier55 nonprofit to operate the performances and run the pier.
Asked if the Trust board will vote on the Pier55 design plan itself, however, Wils said it won’t, since the Trust inherently has the right to build the park pier.
“The ‘significant action’ is on the lease, the funding,” Wils explained. “There’s no vote on building a public park.”
As for the performances, Wils and Horton noted that the rest of the pier will be able to be used recreationally while shows are going on in the amphitheater. This wasn’t the case on the long and narrow Pier 54.
“We’re very keen to work with local artists and to work with local talent,” Horton said.
That 51 percent of the performances must be free or low cost is an agreement Diller and von Furstenberg made with the Trust.
The Trust may also do some of its own programming on the pier, Wils noted.
The amphitheater will be used year-round, Horton said, noting it could, for example, host ice-carving art in the winter.
“It should be very beautiful, very inspiring,” Horton said. “The views back to the city will be spectacular.”
Some, including Assemblymember Deborah Glick, however, said — while not wanting to look a gift horse of this magnitude in the mouth — there has been very little transparency about the plan so far.
“We did see some presentation a couple of months ago at the Borough President’s office,” she noted.
But, Glick said, while the Trust got legislation passed last year to change the current pier’s shape — and this does seem to make sense in terms of improving access to the pier — it was never expressly stated back then that this was being sought in connection with the large donation.
That said, Glick added, “The good thing is the park hasn’t had this kind of donor. It’s a very difficult thing not to be happy about. It’s generous. But that doesn’t wipe away clear and full disclosure to the public. While we are glad for the contribution, we want it to be public space. The devils are in the details.”
She noted, though, that “it’s not uncommon” when there is a large donation of this sort — such as to a college or institution — that the donor controls the design process.
“If someone is building a hospital wing, and they say they want gray marble versus white marble, the hospital is happy to do that,” she said. “But this is public space, and that’s different. This was a public pier. They were not particularly open about why they needed to change the pier’s shape. They did not mention the height.
“A large group of people in the Village will say it’s great,” Glick acknowledged of the Pier55 plan. “Others will say it blocks views. When people are making major donations, they don’t want to deal with the messy public process.”
Councilmember Corey Johnson, whose district, like Glick’s, contains the pier site, said, “I think that the Pier55 announcement is incredibly exciting.” But he added, “I’m concerned about there not having been a public process and this has not been presented at community board meetings or other meetings where the public could comment on it. I hope that will happen. I think Pier55 will be incredibly popular and well-received — but process matters.”
However, according the Trust, there a significant differences between the process for Pier55 (the former Pier 54) and, say, Pier 40 and Pier 57. The former, under the Hudson River Park Act, is designated as a park pier while the two latter are designated to include commercial uses as revenue generators for the park. As a result, according to the park act, project plans for the commercial piers must go through the city’s seventh-month-long ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure), whereas designs for the park piers don’t have to. Also, in the past, when the Trust has sought developers’ proposals for Pier 40, there were competitions involving multiple plans submitted. In the case of Pier55, there was no competition, just one large donor.
Even though two previous such competitions for Pier 40 didn’t actually ever reach the ULURP stage, there was extensive public review of the proposals, by Community Board 2 and the Hudson River Park Advisory Council, among others, before the processes collapsed.
But, again, according to a Trust source, Pier55 is not the same as Pier 40 and those past efforts.
“The starting point here is different,” the source said.