Meet This Year's Winners of the Portrait of a Nation Award, Including Steven Spielberg and Temple Grandin.
Portraits of the honorees, who have made “transformative contributions to the United States,” will be added to the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
Temple Grandin, animal scientist and autism advocate Kelly Buster / National Portrait Gallery
Two years after Grandin’s birth in 1947, doctors advised her parents to institutionalize their daughter, who had autism and didn’t speak until she was around 4.
Her parents rejected the advice and instead placed Grandin in private schools. She flourished intellectually and hasn’t stopped since. After earning a PhD in animal science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Grandin became an authority on humane livestock treatment, designing systems that reduce stress for animals in slaughterhouses.
Today, she’s also known for her autism advocacy. When she rose to prominence in the 1990s, autism was a taboo subject. But Grandin has always spoken openly about her experiences. In 2010, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
“She thinks that she and other autistic people, though they unquestionably have great problems in some areas, may have extraordinary, and socially valuable, powers in others—provided that they are allowed to be themselves, autistic,” Oliver Sacks wrote in the New Yorker in 1993.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-this-years-winners-of-the-portrait-of-a-nation-award-including-steven-spielberg-and-temple-grandin-180986502/?
= new reply since forum marked as read
