On Sunday, October 15, 2023, we were honored to present legendary costume designer Ruth E. Carter with the Coolidge Award. This award recognizes a film artist whose work advances the spirit of original and challenging cinema.
[Ruth E. Carter's] creativity, vision, and passion for history and culture has inspired some of the most inventive and visually dazzling films of the past three decades. – Coolidge Corner Theatre Executive Director & CEO Katherine Tallman
ABOUT RUTH E. CARTER
Ruth E. Carter is a two-time Academy Award–winning American film costume designer. Best known for turning the Black Panther superhero into an African King, Carter made history as the first Black person to win the Costume Design category. For Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Carter made history again by becoming the first Black woman to win multiple Academy Awards in any category and the first costume designer to win for a film and its sequel.
For more than three decades in film, television, and theater, Carter has earned seventy credits and collaborated with esteemed directors including Spike Lee, Steven Spielberg, Ava DuVernay, and Ryan Coogler. Carter’s costumes provide an arc to the narratives of African Americans from Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, What’s Love Got to Do with It?, The Butler, Marshall, Selma, Dolemite Is My Name, Coming 2 America, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and more. Her devotion to retraining the eye to see beauty through costume design and telling stories that enrich the humanity of the Black experience cements her legacy as a preeminent voice and expert on period genres and Afro aesthetics.
