Bryn Mawr College honors rocker, Patti Smith, with Katharine Hepburn Award

Punk-rock artiste and writer Patti Smith was in town to receive Bryn Mawr College's Katharine Hepburn Medal Feb. 7 from the college's Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center.

More than 300 guests attended the event at the college, including Lisa Nutter, Kimmel Center president and CEO Anne Ewers, Gary P. Steuer, Philadelphia's Chief Cultural Officer, and WXPN Morning Show host Michaela Majoun.

Smith performed My Blakean Year, from her 2004 album Trampin' and read excerpts from her memoir Just Kids, which won the 2010 National Book Award for Non-Fiction. Smith, whose Top 20 hit song "Because the Night" was released in 1978, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

The center was founded in 2006 to honor movie star Katharine Hepburn and her mother, Katharine Houghton Hepburn, both of whom were alumnae of the college.