The Fulbright Association is pleased to announce the 2019 Lifetime Achievement awardee, Mr. James S. Polshek, in recognition of his accomplishments in architecture. The Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Award honors Fulbright alumni whose distinguished careers and civic and cultural contributions have sought to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy, and perception. Recipients of the Award show exemplary commitments to creative leadership and liberal education. The Association started the Lifetime Achievements Awards program in 2000.

After completing his Fulbright/Hayes grant to Denmark, James Stewart Polshek founded James Stewart Polshek Architect in 1963 and led the firm, later known as the Polshek Partnership, until 2005. A former dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, he is currently a member of the Public Design Commission of the City of New York. Polshek earned a Master of Architecture degree from Yale. Since he began his career, he and his firm have earned over 200 design awards, the 1992 AIA Architecture Firm Award, and 15 National Honor Awards for Architecture. Most recently he received the 2018 AIA Gold Medal Award.

James Stewart Polshek has witnessed changing architectural tastes, worked with numerous high-profile personalities, and designed many of America’s most prominent buildings. His notable and recognizable projects include the William J. Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the renovation and expansion of Carnegie Hall in New York City. He is also the architect of the Rose Center at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Philadelphia’s National Museum of American Jewish History and the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

Committed to principles of community, history, and environment, Polshek has devoted his fifty-plus-year career to serving the common good.