Armstrong has built his career around a love of art nurtured as a student at Lake Forest College.  As he explained in the Fall 2008 issue of Spectrum magazine, his introductory art history course with Franz Schulze, Professor of Art, Emeritus, was instrumental in his decision to major in art history. “Franz was engaging, well informed, an interesting speaker, and a good writer,” Armstrong said. “[Art] became sort of a quest for me after that.”

The Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan is one of the world’s leading art museums and an architectural masterpiece designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.  In addition to this flagship, the Guggenheim Foundation operates art museums in Bilbao, Berlin, and Venice, and is developing a fifth museum in Abu Dhabi.  Before becoming director the Guggenheim in 2008, Armstrong was director of the Carnegie Museum of Art, where he had also served as Chief Curator and Curator of Contemporary Art.  During the 1980s he served as curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and before then as a curator at La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art.

A native of Kansas City, Armstrong graduated from the College in 1971 with a B.A. in Art History.  He also studied at the Université de Paris, Sorbonne, and the Université de Dijon.  On May 7 he will receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts.

In addition to Richard Armstrong, two extraordinary women in quite different fields of accomplishment will receive honorary doctorates from Lake Forest College:  Mary J. C. Hendrix and Regina Taylor.

Mary J.C. Hendrix is the President, Scientific Director, and Medical Research Institute Council Professor at Children’s Memorial Research Center in Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.  She has been president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.  She continues to serve on the National Cancer Institute Board of Scientific Advisors, the Board of Directors for the Annenberg Center for Health Sciences, the Board of Directors for Research!America, and the Board of Directors for the Chicago Council on Science and Technology.  Dr. Hendrix’s laboratory works to identify genes that contribute to cancer metastasis and related diseases exhibiting similar biological activities.  She received her B.S. degree in Biology from Shepherd College (now Shepherd University) in 1973, her Ph.D. in anatomy from George Washington University in 1977, and an honorary doctorate in science in 1996 from Shepherd College.  On May 7 she will receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Science.

Playwright and actor Regina Taylor is a member and Artistic Associate of the Goodman Theatre.  Her most ambitious work to date, the critically-acclaimed The Trinity River Plays, just finished a successful run on the main stage of the Goodman.  This trilogy comprises three distinct segments – Jar Fly, Rain, and Ghoststory – that follow the fortunes of Iris Spears and her matriarchal Texas family.  Taylor’s other credits as playwright include Oo-Bla-Dee, for which she won the American Critics’ Association New Play Award; Drowning Crow, an adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull, produced on Broadway with Alfre Woodard; The Dreams of Sarah Breedlove; A Night in Tunisia;  Escape from Paradise;  Watermelon Rinds;  and Inside the Belly of the Beast.  Ms. Taylor is also a celebrated actor, well known to television audiences for her Golden Globe Award-winning role as Lilly Harper in the series I’ll Fly Away.  She also starred in the CBS hit drama The Unit and in several films including The Negotiator, Courage Under Fire, A Family Thing, The Keeper, Clockers, Losing Isaiah, Jersey Girl and Lean on Me.   Taylor was raised in Dallas, Texas.  On May 7 she will receive the degree of Doctor of Fine Arts.