In name, the Municipal Arts Society of New York City sounds like it’s from another era. And it is. It was founded in 1893 to beautify New York with public art and, over the past century, has evolved into a juggernaut of advocacy for a more beautiful and livable city. MASNYC helped to create the Landmarks Commission and saved Radio City Hall, Lever House, and Grand Central Station from demolition.
It was the threat against Grand Central Station that led Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to telephone MAS’s director Kent Barwick in 1975 and ask how she could help. She became the face of the campaign, working in front of the cameras and as a shrewd strategist behind the scenes. She spent two decades as a passionate board member and in 1994, when she died, MASNYC renamed its highest honor, the President’s Medal, to the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (JKO) Medal, recognizing an outstanding citizen who has made an extraordinary contribution to New York.
The Occasion: On Oct. 6, MASNYC celebrated the 2025 JKO Medal Winners, architects Elizabeth Diller and Annabelle Selldorf. These women, who have made their mark in New York and around the world (hello Pritzker Prize!), join an esteemed group of winners including Agnes Gund (2004), Diane von Furstenberg (2011), Candice Bergen (2019), and Yoko Ono (2024).
Diller is a founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) and has made an outsize imprint on the city’s cultural landscape with projects like Lincoln Center, the Shed, and the High Line.
If the High Line is the spine of Chelsea’s reinvention, then the galleries designed by Selldorf Architects—Barbara Gladstone, David Zwirner, and Hauser & Wirth among them—are its ribcage. Selldorf is currently basking in the glow of the celebrated update of the Frick Collection, which reopened to great fanfare this spring.
The Scene: While the Pool and the Grill at the Seagram Building is a gala hotspot for New York’s glitterati, the location holds an extra special place for this year’s JKO Medal Dinner. The tower designed by Mies van der Rohe and the restaurant interiors by Phillip Johnson both gained landmark status in 1989. DS+R made the tower’s basement the coolest place to be seen a decade later, when they turned the Brasserie into a movie set, complete with video monitors surveilling guests, projections, and lots of structural glass. Then, when the landlord, Aby Rosen, needed to update the Four Seasons Restaurant in 2016, he called upon Selldorf Architects to oversee the meticulous renovation.
The Crowd: A who’s who of the architecture and design worlds. Guests included Bloomberg administration power brokers Dan Doctoroff and Amanda Burden; curators Roselee Goldberg and Paola Antonelli; Beatrice Galilee, founder of the World Around; Tina Vaz, newly appointed director of MTA Art and Design; and architects Charles Renfro, Vishaan Chakrabarti, and Hashim Sarkis.
Soundbites: “If I told you how long I have lived in New York, I’d have to kill you! This city matters, it’s my home… a kinship that was born from my first renovation projects for individuals to larger projects that connect all of us.” – Annabelle Selldorf
“Culture is in perpetual flux….change has never been faster, architecture has never felt slower to respond. The discipline itself needs a redesign and we are hoping to do that with my colleagues. The preservation of New York’s identity and its civic values is a shared responsibility amongst us all.” – Elizabeth Diller
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