Remy Charlip, Art 1949, was an artist, dancer and theater director. He was a member of Merce Cunningham’s company for eleven years. He was a founder of the Paper Bag Players, a theater for children, and designed costumes, sets, posters, textiles and book-jackets. Charlip’s interests in art, dance, theater and wordplay, were all used as inspiration for his creative books for children of all ages.
Charlip chaired the Children’s Theatre and Literature Department at Sarah Lawrence College from 1967 to 1971. He was on the advisory panel of the Connecticut Commission on the Arts’ Project Create, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum’s Muse and the Judson Poets’ Theatre and Dance Theatre. He received the Ingram Merrill award in 1961 and 1963, the 1966 Obie Award for the direction of A Beautiful Day, and the 1968-1969 Yale Joseph E. Levine Grant. His book Thirteen, co-authored with Jerry Joyner, won the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award in 1976 for its outstanding illustration. He painted a large mural in the Remy Charlip Library of the Greenville Elementary School, in Delaware, which houses a collection of his paintings, drawings, manuscripts, and photographs.
Remy Charlip received the 1975 President’s Citation and the 1984 Augustus Saint Gaudens Award. He was inducted into The Cooper Union Hall of Fame in 2009.