Eric Zinterhofer and Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer.

Location: State Department Diplomatic Reception Rooms

WL EXCLUSIVE: Photos by Mary Hilliard

HIGH HONORS: More arts grandees than ever showed up for FAPE this year, and no wonder – with first-time host Hillary Rodham Clinton greeting guests and Supremo culture maven Justice Stephen Breyer receiving the first Leonore and Walter Annenberg Award for Diplomacy through the Arts, who could resist? ARTISTIC PRESENCE: Four of the most notable living American artists – Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, James Rosenquist, and Jamie Wyeth – added to the buzz along with the unveiling of Dorothea Rockburne’s mural in honor of Gen. Colin Powell for the U.S. Embassy in Kingston, Jamaica, and a print by Vija Celmins donated to FAPE’s Original Print Collection.

Andrew Wyeth’s hold on the American imagination made him the country’s most popular living artist

By Renée Harrison Drake

Renée Drake and her husband, Max Drake, stand beside "The Woodshed," painted by Andrew Wyeth in 1944.

I was lucky to have a mother who appreciated art and who introduced me to three generations of paintings by the Wyeth family. Although I grew up in Virginia, my mother was from Greenville, Del., which is not far from the artists’ home in Chadds Ford, Pa. On our regular trips there, she would always take us to the Brandywine River Museum to see the paintings of N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, and Jamie Wyeth. I never tired of looking at those wonderful canvases. They welcomed me like old friends whenever I visited the museum tucked beside the river.

While N.C.’s paintings inspired me to read the classic works of literature he illustrated and Jamie’s menagerie of animals were both intriguing and delightful, Andrew’s paintings made me appreciate the landscape of the Brandywine Valley.

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Nothing goes together like a horse and carriage.

By Vicky Moon

Riders atop antique coaches at the National Sporting Library's Coaching Weekend.

OFF AND RUNNING

The fall steeplechase circuit – kicked off by the running of the Blue Ridge races at Merry Carol and Herb Jonkers’ Woodley Farm in Berryville – is going full tilt. Diana Gillam, on Marino Feliz, won the Martha Robinson Byrd Cook Memorial open hurdle race for owner Gary Baker. Susie and Wayne Chatfield Taylor parked their purple-and-green camper in just the right spot to enjoy Chip Embury’s magnificent tailgating. The festivities were off and running, with Tom Hulfish’s Bad Dog Press capturing the timber race for rider Woods Winants.

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