Rosanne Cash To Receive Edward MacDowell Medal

Rosanne Cash. Photo: ICM Partners

Rosanne Cash has been named the recipient of the 61st Edward MacDowell Medal, which honors an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to American culture. Among those who have previously received the honor are Georgia O’Keefee, Toni Morrison, Leonard Bernstein, John Updike, Joan Didion and more.

Cash will receive the honor on Aug. 8, 2021 during a free, public ceremony, which typically brings in more than 1,200 visitors from around the country to MacDowell’s 450-acre campus. The Edward MacDowell Medal has been presented since 1960.

The selection committee included music journalist, author and critic Greil Marcus, as well as music critic and arts administrator John Rockwell, alongside musicologist, author and professor Mary E. Davis and Yale University professor and cultural critic Daphne Brooks and MacDowell Board member and WQXR radio host Terrance McKnight.

“From the shockingly intimate timbre of Seven Year Ache in 1981 to the reflective darkness of She Remembers Everything 37 years later, as a composer, singer, and someone who can, in a sense, summon ambiance, Rosanne Cash has distinguished herself from her contemporaries as she has escaped the weight of her celebrated forebears,” Marcus said.

Cash, who will turn 65 later this month, is best known for albums including Seven Year Ache, King’s Record Shop, Rhythm & Romance, and The River and the Thread. She has earned four Grammy Awards and two Americana Honors & Awards, and notched 21 Top 40 hits, as well as 11 No. 1 singles. She’s authored four books, including Composed: A Memoir, Bodies of Water, Penelope Jane: A Fairy’s Tale, and Songs Without Rhyme: Prose By Celebrated Songwriters.

Cash was honored with the SAG/AFTRA Lifetime Achievement award for Sound Recordings in 2012 and received the 2014 Smithsonian Ingenuity Award for the Performing Arts.