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Tribute to the Ohio Arts Community

The following pays special tribute to individuals who were posthumously nominated for a 2007 Governor's Award for the Arts in Ohio. As nominees with outstanding dedication to the arts in their community and their state, their contributions should be recognized and celebrated. Their untimely deaths are a tremendous loss for all Ohioans.

Ray Hanley
From the time he was hired as president of the Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC) in 1985 until his untimely death in 2006 Ray Hanley was the driving force behind cultural development in Columbus. Hanley believed not that Columbus might become a great cultural capital, but that Columbus is a great cultural capital. He pushed artists, cultural organizations, arts educators, arts audiences and the city itself to embrace the diversity and quality of the Columbus cultural community. To his staff, he was a tough, brilliant, fun-loving and fearless leader. To his board he was a tireless advocate, constantly pushing GCAC to be a national leader in its field. To the artists of Columbus he was a major cultural figure who regularly visited galleries to see new work by established and emerging artists. To the arts organizations he was a dogged advocate for better facilities, more funding and expanded audiences. Because of his work, Columbus is enriched with a cultural community that other cities envy; a cultural community that draws and impresses visitors; a cultural community our residents are proud to claim as their own.

Masumi Hayashi
Masumi Hayashi served the Ohio arts community and beyond for three decades bringing a genius and generosity to all aspects of her art and teaching. Masumi's projects, fellowships and publications took her around the world, where she proudly represented herself as a cornerstone of the Ohio arts community. A brief sampling of projects includes exhibits at the International Center for Photography, New York, the Tokyo Museum of Photography, the Los Angeles County Art Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Ludwig Art Museum, Germany. In 1999 she traveled to India with a fellowship from the OAC and returned there in 2003 on a Fulbright research fellowship. Hayashi received the Cleveland Arts Prize for Visual arts, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Civil Liberties Educational Fund research fellowship and three OAC Individual Artist Fellowships and project grants. Equally impressive is Hayashi's legacy as a teacher, colleague, friend and mother. She generously shared her quiet strength and openness, her broad smile, and a deft ability to reveal what is often hidden, through both pictures and words.