Portraits and Peace Tie for Medal of the Year

For the first time since its inception, the American Medal of the Year award was a tie. For 2025, the American Medallic Sculpture Association (aka AMSA) bestowed the honor on both Greer Steyn and Eva-Maria Wohn for their respective medals, Van Pallandt and Xi Jumping. 

Van Pallandt

Steyn’s medal honors Charlotte Dorothée van Pallandt, a Dutch painter and sculptor. “The portrait medal is based on my admiration for her work and my personal meetings with her,” says Greer. Pallandt’s stylized portrait gazes down on the obverse, and the reverse is modeled after her 1968 monument of Queen Wilhelmina. Steyn omitted the feet of the monument, and the four corners of the reverse include Pallandt’s name and the years of her birth and death. He describes the design as “sculptural, created directly in clay by hand and colored by shoe polish. It is the organization of volumes that gives meaning and finally evokes the resemblance with the subject. The right volume on the right spot.”

Xi Jumping

Wohn’s winning medal is a continuation of the political series she started after Russia invaded Ukraine. “The Ukraine medal led me to explore a series of medals where I could use satire or mockery on the obverse and show the resulting consequences and suffering on the reverse,” says Wohn. The obverse depicts Xi Jinping, the president of the People’s Republic of China, stepping from Hong Kong to Taiwan. The island of Hong Kong features faces behind bars, and four scared faces appear on Taiwan. On the reverse, a hand strangles a dove, representing the tenuous nature of peace in a  fragile world, and the inscription PREYING ON PEACE appears above. “There is, unfortunately, an inexhaustible supply of injustices in the world, but art is one of the most powerful tools of protest,” says Wohn. “And if you doubt the power of art, consider the very rich, unbroken history of authoritarian governments muzzling artists.”

The Van Pallandt medal is available in terracotta and bronze, while collectors can acquire a bronze example of the Xi Jumping medal. Contact Greer or Wohn to order. More examples of each artist’s work are available on their websites and social media pages.