Kennedy Principal Van Adams
By PHYLLIS TUCKWILER
The generosity of a distinguished artist who encouraged past generations of young artists will be extended into the future through a family grant designed to inspire artistic talent in youths.
Lucretia Van Horn's grandson, Van Adams, a junior high school principal, and his family have established a memorial art fund that will honor outstanding junior high school artists in the Cupertino Union School District as a way of continuing the artist's legacy of fostering talent.
Annual cash prizes of $250, $100 and $50 will be funded by a $10,000 donation to the Cupertino Educational Endowment Foundation, which will administer the awards program. Judges for the initial year's entries include representatives from the Triton Museum and the Euphrat Museum of Art at De Anza College and art teachers from the district's junior high schools. First, second and third place went this year to Kimberly Mar, Cindy Welik and Shuri Azenkot, respectively.
Lucretia Van Horn died in Palo Alto in 1970 at the age of 88. During her life she produced a substantial body of art for which she received local and national recognition from the early days of the century through the 1930s. At the age of 17, while studying in Paris, she was awarded the Concours Julien Smith, the first woman to receive this distinguished international prize. At the height of her career, during the 1930s, she worked and studied with a large circle of other prominent artists, including Diego Rivera, Ralph Stackpole, Pablo O'Higgins and David Parks , the noted Bay Area artist.
Phyllis Tuckwiler is a member of the board for the Cupertino Educational Endowment Foundation, a nonprofit group that raises money for local schools.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, April 2, 1997.
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