NEW YORK, Oct. 26, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation announces the appointment of noted architect Peter Pennoyer as president of its board of trustees. He succeeds Antonia M. Grumbach, a prominent non-profit lawyer and chair-elect of the Wildlife Conservation Society, who has led the Foundation since 2011. Under Grumbach's leadership, Whiting has expanded its efforts to infuse the humanities into public life and honored dozens of early-career writers of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama with its prestigious Whiting Awards.
The New York-based Whiting Foundation makes grants to support literature and the humanities, including the longstanding Whiting Awards for emerging writers of exceptional talent. Recipients of the annual $50,000 award have included Tracy K. Smith, Tony Kushner, Mary Karr, David Foster Wallace, Deborah Eisenberg, Michael Cunningham, Jonathan Franzen, Elif Batuman, Adam Johnson, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Terrance Hayes.
Peter Pennoyer has been a trustee of the Foundation since 2002 and previously served as a vice-president of the board. He is an architect and architectural historian whose first commissions included projects for the Warhol Factory and Keith Haring's Pop Shop on Lafayette Street. His firm, Peter Pennoyer Architects, is an international practice in traditional architecture recognized as a leader in classicism and historic preservation. In 2014, Pennoyer received the Olana Partnership's Frederic E. Church Award in recognition of his transformative work in architecture and design.
Pennoyer, who lectures widely on architecture, urban design, and architectural history, teaches a course on the evolution of New York City at New York University. He is the co-author, with Anne Walker, of four award-winning monographs on architects of the first half of the 20th century, and he has written for the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and the Journal of American History, among other publications. He is also a trustee of the Morgan Library & Museum, former chairman of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, former president of the board of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, and a former trustee of the Sir John Soane's Museum Foundation and the Municipal Art Society.
Antonia M. Grumbach has been a trustee of the Foundation since 2001. She is of counsel at Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler, where she has practiced law for more than forty years and served as managing partner from 1990-1996. A sought-after expert in non-profit law and advisor to charitable organizations, she has been a trustee of Teachers College at Columbia University (where she was co-chair of the board for five years), Milton Academy, the New Press, and the William T. Grant, Henfield, and Ponagansett Foundations, among many other institutions.
SOURCE Whiting Foundation
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