Legends are made, not born, shaped by daring moves, and the courage to inspire, to evolve, to change themselves and to change the world. Legends transform the way we think, the way we dress, the way we see ourselves and the world we live in. True legends are always vanguards, of history, of style, of culture, of the future. We celebrate them and their world-changing ways in this inaugural edition of The T&C Vanguards.
Chapter 3
The T&C Vanguards of Art & Culture
Sometimes it’s about being the first, and having the courage to dare in that moment of beginning. Sometimes it’s about a strong and singular vision, and the strength of belief that devotion requires. Sometimes it’s about a bold, surprising pivot, and the bravery necessary to make change. But vanguards are always defined by the expectations they defy—and exceed.
Our list of the T&C Vanguards of Art & Culture includes originals across multiple realms—dance, fashion, photography, painting, sculpture, cinema, television—but they all embody the drive to consistently excel, inspire, and evolve.
She made history as the first black dancer to perform the role of Dewdrop in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker at New York City Ballet. The New York Times described the performance as “triumphant.” India Bradley has danced in, and originated, feature roles for the company, which she joined in 2018 after training at Dance Theater of Harlem and the School of American Ballet. In the 2021-2022 season, she received the Janice Levin Award, presented to the most promising member of NYCB’s Corps de Ballet. And she has fulfilled that promise. But as with all vanguards she continues to search for new challenges and continued triumphs. “This is the same feeling you have when you’re 18 and you’re like, Well, I signed up for this shit,” she recently told Marie Claire. “And most of us hate quitting, so we don’t, and just go back and do it again and you get stronger, and that’s just the life that it is.” New York City Ballet’s fall season opens at Lincoln Center on September 17. Go and watch India Bradley soar.
Have a conversation about game changing television and A Different World will certainly come up. And have a conversation about A Different World, and the name Susan Fales-Hill will also come up. She was the lead writer and producer of this award-winning spin-off of The Cosby Show. Now she continues to wield influence over the culture as series writer and consulting producer of And Just Like That, the sequel to Sex and the City, and as an author and tireless advocate for the arts. She serves on the boards of the Studio Museum of Harlem and American Ballet Theatre, where she was recently elected vice chair. She does all this while looking impeccable and supporting dancers (she was the first ABT sponsor to groundbreaking ballerina Misty Copeland and co-authored the dancer’s memoir) and raising a next-generation vanguard daughter.
First film, first Oscar nomination? It happens if you are the subtle genius that is Celine Song. After years working in theater, the playwright wrote and directed the Academy Award-nominated Past Lives. Her next movie will be a rom-com starring Pedro Pascal and Dakota Johnson. The details are being kept quiet, but producer Christine Vachon has said of it that “it feels like she makes a different movie every time, that she’s going to be the kind of filmmaker who doesn’t make the same movie twice.” The constantly evolving signature of a true vanguard. Another? Originality and integrity. Of her work, Song once said: “You can’t write so that you can make somebody else love it. You can only write something in a way that you yourself can love it.”
Her pieces are bold in scale and ambition, awe-inspiring in their complexity and their materials and thought-provoking in their radical reimagining of the concept of landscape. Teresita Fernández is best known for her extraordinary public sculptures, but her work also contributes to the public good. The MacArthur Genius Grant and Guggenheim Fellowship recipient partnered with the Ford Foundation to create the U.S. Latinx Arts Futures Symposium and was also on President Barack Obama’s U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. She is the first Latina to serve on the 100-year-old federal panel. This summer, her vision and art will be in dialogue with the work of Robert Smithson an exhibit—”Teresita Fernández/Robert Smithson”—at Site Santa Fe (through October 28).
Naomi Campbell has called her a “sounding board, an oracle, a second mother.” Bethann Hardison is a former model who walked the historic Battle of Versailles show, an eternal advocate, a conscious entrepreneur, and an inspiring and constant force in fashion. Hardison has received many awards for her championing of diversity and her support of models and of designers, and of the industry at large, including the 2014 Eleanor Lambert Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America. In 2020, she was appointed as Gucci’s Executive Advisor for Global Equity and Cultural Engagement and was also named to the CFDA’s Board of Directors. She also serves on the advisory board for Fashion Trust U.S., LAFW/N4XT, and Eco-Age. A documentary about her life and influence, titled Invisible Beauty, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last year. Next up? An autobiography, of which we will read every single page.
Musician, filmmaker, author, actress. Vanguards are never easily defined. Miranda July has always challenged convention and has amassed a cult-like following in the process. Her influence over her fans is so intense that the New York Times wrote an entire story on how her new book, All Fours, was causing women to completely reexamine their lives. That is what we mean when we talk about the power of art.
She once described her work as “an intermingling of joy and pain, the quest of one’s introspection, and the discovery of nature and oneself.” Zhou Li’s large-scale abstract paintings are meditations on the power of nature, created in the middle of a bustling city. She is a force in the modern global art world, but also practices the ancient art of calligraphy, and though paint and canvas are her traditional mediums, her vision is strong enough to make its mark anywhere. In 2023, she was chosen to create a unique bag for Bulgari’s Serpenti In Art project.
When she played a marathon of Rachmaninoff at Carnegie Hall last year, people lined up around the block. They knew what makes a Yuja Wang performance always worth the wait—the finesse of technique, the fierceness of passion, and a completely singular approach to a most traditional art. Her signature fashion-forward look might raise eyebrows in the uber-conservative world of classical music, but Wang is just so good that no one says a word. Instead what is discussed is her flair, certainly, but her exceptional artistry mostly. Her mastery of Rachmaninoff’s wild chords is legendary. We can all witness it in person as her international tour continues around the world, and closer to home, at Tanglewood on July 17.
“What does ‘from life’ even mean in this day and age?” the artist and musician Issy Wood once said about her work. Her genre-defying art is included in collections around the world, including the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami, and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in Providence. Her music is equally globally recognizable: one video was directed by Lena Dunham and starred Hari Nef. She makes strong choices in everything she does, and perhaps even more importantly, what she chooses not to do.
Stay tuned for Chapter 4: The T&C Vanguards of the Future, coming soon.
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