Miles Morgan, La Médaille d’Or de La Renaissance Française

Miles Morgan is a musician and has been particularly active in every aspect of early music for four decades. He received a bachelor of Arts in History and Literature in 1950 from Harvard University and trained as a conductor in the United States and in Italy. He has conducted in many European countries.

For many years he was a director of the Associazione Musicale Romana, and for six years music director of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. In the 1960’s he was a director of Janus Films, and he has served on the boards of the Boston Early Music Festival, the Venice Music Festival, the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra and the American Friends of Blérancourt. He was, from 2000 to 2017, an artistic director for the Tropical Baroque Festival in Miami and from 1982 to 2005 a regular participant in the Bamboo Organ Festival (Las Piñas, Philippines).

Mr. Morgan was the leading supporter and presenter in the documentary video and eighteen city tour of the traveling exhibition American Women Rebuilding France, which is about his great aunt Anne Morgan, and her work with three hundred and fifty American women volunteers to rebuild Picardy following WWI. Thanks to Miles, in March of 2019 the film Anne Morgan’s War was shown in 951 PBS markets throughout the US. The Franco American Museum Chateau de Blérancourt is her gift to the French.

Miles served in the United States Army from 1951 to 1953, holds memberships in the American Federation of Musicians and the Directors Guild of America, and has been named an officer of the French Ordre des Arts et Lettres. He lives in New York.

Sherry Johnson, La Médaille d’Or de Solidarité et Valeur

Sherry Johnson co-founded and was instrumental in building the American Friends of Musée d’Orsay (“AFMO”). A former professional tennis executive, Sherry and her family

moved to London in 1990, where she became an active patron of several arts organizations via those organizations’ American Friends support groups. When she and her husband moved to Paris in 2008, she began looking for similar groups at French arts organizations and realized that the Musée d’Orsay did not have an American Friends group so Sherry and a friend decided to form one.

It turned out that working with a state-owned institution was not straightforward and involved protracted, complex negotiations and extensive legal work. Through her personal contacts, Sherry retained a lawyer to move the legal process forward and engaged the US Ambassador to France to help expedite IRS charitable status approval. She initiated AFMO’s marketing activities and spoke at numerous organizations to encourage American expats to join and support AFMO.

In 2009 the American Friends of Musée d’Orsay was founded, is now well-established, and raises in excess of $1 million every year for the museum and facilitates donations by Americans of works of art to the museum. AFMO’s annual gala weekend has become a major event in Paris, attracting many visitors from across America.

For ten years Sherry served on the AFMO Board as Vice-Chair - France. She identified and recruited the first full-time executive director, and as chair of the Nominating Committee she was instrumental in building, and strengthening, the AFMO Board and helped to secure key individuals from around the US to serve on the Board.

She has been a regular and significant financial supporter of AFMO. She is also an active patron of other Paris organizations that are committed to building French-American ties, including the American Library in Paris, the American Club of Paris, the American Cathedral in Paris, and the American Women’s Group in Paris.

Robert Selig, La Médaille d’Or des Valeurs Francophones

Robert A. Selig is a historical consultant who received his Ph.D. in history from the Universität Würzburg in Germany in 1988.

He is a specialist on the role of French forces under the comte de Rochambeau during the American War of Independence and serves as project historian to the National Park Service as well as state and private organizations for the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail Project.

For this project he researched and wrote surveys and resource inventories for the nine states through which American and French forces marched in 1781 and 1782. Among his publications connected with this project is Hussars in Lebanon! A Connecticut Town and Lauzun’s Legion during the American Revolution, 1780-1781 (Lebanon, 2004).

He has published more than 100 articles in scholarly and popular history magazines such as the William and Mary Quarterly, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Journal of Caribbean History, American Heritage, Naval History, Military History Quarterly, Colonial Williamsburg, and the Journal of the Johannes Schwalm Historical Association as well as chapters in various books and anthologies.

His most recent publications include "L'expéditions particulière and the American War of Independence, 1780-1783." In: Waging War in America 1775-1783. Operational Challenges of Five Armies Don N. Hagist,ed. "The Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail." Newport History. Journal of the Newport Historical Society 98 (Winter 2022/Spring 2023), pp.1-30. De Newport à Yorktown, à la Victoire et a la Gloire: la Route Washington-Rochambeau et la Victoire du 19 octobre 1781, Actes du Colloque international: Victoire de Yorktown et naissance de l'amitié franco-américaine Bulletin de la Société Archéologique Scientifique & Littéraire du Vendomois (2022), pp. 99-104. "En avant to Victory: The Allied March to Yorktown June-October 1781." In: The Ten Key Campaigns of the American Revolution Edward G. Lengel, ed. (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishinbg, 2020), pp. 199-215.

His honors and awards include the ordre des palmes académiques (August 2011) the Distinguished Patriot Award, National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution (September 2012) the médaille d'Honneur du Souvenir Français (2022) and the Ordre National du Mérite (2022).