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Acclaimed photographer, MacArthur Genius Grant awardee and Pulitzer Prize recipient Lynsey Addario will be the keynote speaker for the 48th annual commencement exercises of the School of Visual Arts, to be held at Radio City Music Hall at 1:00pm on Sunday, May 21, 2023. SVA President David Rhodes will recognize some 1,250 degree candidates from the College’s 31 BFA, MA, MAT, MFA and MPS degree programs. 

Last fall, Addario was the recipient of SVA’s Masters Series Award and Exhibition, a comprehensive look at her fearless documentation of humanitarian issues around the globe that brought more than 2,700 visitors to the SVA Chelsea Gallery between September and December of 2022.

Addario is an American photojournalist who has been covering conflict, humanitarian crises and women’s issues around the Middle East and Africa on assignment for The New York Times and National Geographic for more than two decades. Since September 11, 2001, Addario has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Darfur, South Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen and Syria, and the ongoing war in Ukraine. In 2015, American Photo Magazine named Lynsey as one of five most influential photographers of the past 25 years, saying she changed the way we saw the world’s conflicts.

“It was an honor to share my work with so many people who came to the Masters Series exhibition last fall to bring awareness to issues I’ve been covering for decades, like humanitarian crises, refugees and violence against women. I am looking forward to returning to SVA, this time to address a generation of young artists who will embark on their post-college careers,” Addario says.

Addario is the recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur fellowship, an Overseas Press Club’s Olivier Rebbot Award, two Emmy nominations and her recent Polk award for her coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In 2009, she was part of The New York Times team that won a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. She holds three honorary doctorate degrees for her professional accomplishments from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Bates College in Maine and the University of York in England.

Addario is the author of The New York Times best-selling memoir, It’s What I Do (Penguin Random House), which chronicles her personal and professional life as a photojournalist coming of age in the post-9/11 world. A limited series based on the book is currently being written and produced by Paramount and Studio 101. In 2018, her first solo collection of photography, Of Love and War, was published by Penguin Press.

As the keynote speaker for SVA’s commencement exercises, Addario will join a distinguished group of leaders in the arts, humanities and public service, including cultural icon and filmmaker John Waters, musician and poet Patti Smith, activist and author Gloria Steinem, U.S. Congressman and civil-rights hero John Lewis, cultural critic Greil Marcus, artists Laurie Anderson and Carrie Mae Weems, playwrights Edward Albee and Tony Kushner, and historian Robert A. Caro.

Streaming of the ceremony will be made available on sva.edu/commencement, and 

on Facebook Live: facebook.com/SchoolOfVisualArts and be archived thereafter in both locations.