WASHINGTON, DC.- Americans for the Arts, the leading organization for advancing the arts in America, announces recipients of the 2009 National Arts Awards. The annual awards recognize those artists and arts leaders who exhibit exemplary national leadership and whose work demonstrates extraordinary artistic achievement. They are organizations and individuals—artists, business leaders, and patrons—who understand that the arts enrich people and communities alike.

This year, the following will be honored:

Robert Redford, Lifetime Achievement Award
Salman Rushdie, Kitty Carlisle Hart Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts
Ed Ruscha, Artistic Excellence Award
Sidney Harman, Frederick R. Weisman Award for Philanthropy in the Arts
Rosario Dawson, Young Artist Award for Artistic Excellence
Anne Finucane, Bank of America, Corporate Citizenship in the Arts Award

Robert Redford, Lifetime Achievement Award
Robert Redford is an Academy Award-winning director, actor, producer, environmentalist, and activist. A longtime advocate for the arts, Redford founded the Sundance Film Festival and is the co-chair of the Americans for the Arts National Arts Policy Roundtable. Redford is a member of the Americans for the Arts Artists Committee and delivered the 2003 Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy. He is also an ardent conservationist and environmentalist, a man who stands for social responsibility and political involvement and an artist and businessman who is a staunch supporter of uncompromised creative expression. Redford has nurtured more than a generation of innovative voices in independent film through his nonprofit Sundance Institute and Film Festival. The Harvard Business Review observed, “Sundance has become to Hollywood what Silicon Valley has been to the high-tech industry.”

Ed Ruscha, Artistic Excellence Award
Born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska, Edward Ruscha moved to Oklahoma City in 1941 and to Los Angeles in 1956 to attend the Chouinard Art Institute. He had his first solo exhibition in 1963 at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. He currently shows with the Gagosian Gallery in New York, Beverly Hills, and London. Ruscha has consistently combined the cityscape of Los Angeles with vernacular language to communicate a particular urban experience. Encompassing photography, drawing, painting, and artist books, Ruscha’s work holds the mirror up to the banality of urban life and give order to the barrage of mass media-fed images and information that confront us daily. In 2004, The Whitney Museum of American Art organized two simultaneous exhibitions: Cotton Puffs, Q-tips®, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha, which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and then to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and Ed Ruscha and Photography. Ruscha was the United States representative at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005.

Sidney Harman, Frederick R. Weisman Award for Philanthropy in the Arts
Sidney Harman is Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Harman International, a leading manufacturer and worldwide supplier of high-quality audio and video products as well as digital navigation and information systems for the automotive, consumer, and professional markets. Harman served as the Deputy Secretary of Commerce of the United States from 1977-78. One of the pioneers who began the high-fidelity industry, he also founded the Program on Technology, Public Policy and Human Development at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is the author of Mind Your Own Business (2003) as well as co-author, with Daniel Yankelovich, of Starting With The People (1988). He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; President of the Harman Family Foundation; Vice Chairman of the Corporate Fund Board of The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of The Shakespeare Theatre Company.

Rosario Dawson, Young Artist Award for Artistic Excellence
As a critically-acclaimed actress, producer, and co-founder of the nonprofit organization Voto Latino, Rosario Dawson is making both meaningful art and a lasting difference. Discovered as a teenager and cast in the controversial hit Kids, Ms. Dawson has emerged as one of Hollywood’s most sought after leading ladies, yet remains a dedicated advocate for young people. She recently starred in Eagle Eye, Grindhouse, Rent, Seven Pounds, and Sin City. In 2004, she co-founded Voto Latino, a nonprofit, non-partisan organization dedicated to increase American Latino youth civic participation by both increasing voter turnout and political involvement among this group.

Anne Finucane, Bank of America, Corporate Citizenship in the Arts Award
Anne Finucane is Bank of America Chief Marketing Officer and a member of the company’s executive management team. Finucane leads marketing, communications, advertising, and research for the enterprise and all lines of business. She is also responsible for the company’s corporate social responsibility initiatives which include: the company’s 10-year, $1.5 trillion community development and investment commitment and 10-yea, $2 billion philanthropic giving goal through the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, one of the largest corporate philanthropic organizations in the world; volunteerism; arts and culture investment and programs; and the company’s 10-year, $20 billion environmental initiative, as creator and chair of Bank of America’s Environmental Council.

Salman Rushdie, Kitty Carlisle Hart Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts
Born in Bombay, India, Salman Rushdie is the acclaimed author of 10 novels, including Grimus, Midnight’s Children (Booker Prize, 1981), Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and The Enchantress of Florence. His stage adaptation of Midnight’s Children was performed in London and New York by the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 2004, an opera based upon Haroun and the Sea of Stories premiered at New York City Opera. As a Fellow of the British Royal Society of Literature and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Rushdie has received numerous awards. He holds the rank of Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France’s highest artistic honor. From 2004 - 2006 he served as President of PEN American Center, and continues to work as president of the PEN World Voices International Literary Festival, which he helped create. In June 2007, he was knighted for services to literature. His books have been translated into more than 40 languages.

Americans for the Arts is the leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts in America. With offices in Washington, DC, and New York City, it has a record of 49 years of service. Americans for the Arts is dedicated to representing and serving local communities and creating opportunities for every American to participate in and appreciate all forms of the arts.