The Youth Friends Award is a biennial award presented by The School Art League to a professional artist at it’s awards ceremony at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The 2021 Youth Friends Award was given to artist Edel Rodriguez for outstanding service to art education and inspiring young artists to recognize their creative potential. This award acknowledges the Honoree's talent, imagination, integrity, and the generosity of time given to New York City art students.

Edel Rodriguez is a Cuban American artist who has exhibited internationally with shows in New York, Los Angeles, Havana, Berlin, La Paz, Cape Town, Prague, and London. A regular contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Time magazine, he has created over two hundred magazine and book covers and illustrated several children’s books, including Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx, and is the author of Sergio Jumps and Sergio Saves the Game. Rodriguez’s artwork is collected by various institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution, and has received numerous awards from the Art Directors Club and the Society of Illustrators. Worm is his first graphic novel. To learn more about his work, go to: https://edelr.com/?section=galleries

Past Recipients of the Youth Friends Award