A single evening, once a year, in New York.

The Convocation is held in the Great Hall and the Conservatory of the Carnegie Mansion, a house built in 1899 for one of the most consequential industrialists of the American century, and given to the public as the first design museum in the United States.

The room is deliberately small. Two hundred and twenty seats on a single floor. The laureates sit among the guests. No press riser. No stage cameras. One camera records, for the film, not for the night.

Doors open at five for a cocktail reception with iconic musical performances, artists to be announced. At six the room moves into the Conservatory for a seated dinner designed by Marcus Samuelsson, opened by a mini musical-theater program. The Latimer Prize ceremony begins at seven, eight honorees, ten minutes each, and closes at nine. The evening continues until eleven with an after party among the laureates, Fellows, and guests. The full itinerary, hour by hour, is public.

The heart of the Convocation is the reading of the Latimer Register, every laureate, every year, from the beginning of the Prize. Each citation is read in two voices: a past laureate, and a Latimer Fellow from the current cohort. It is read by candlelight. It takes as long as it takes.