On November 5, 2007, FAWC's Fifth Awards Benefit was held in Cambridge at the Hotel Marlowe. The Gilbert Franklin Medal for Distinguished Service in the Arts was presented to Michael Mazur, Norman Mailer and Dr. Theodore C. Landsmark, president of the Boston Architectural College. The bronze medal was specially commissioned, designed and named for the late Gilbert Franklin, sculptor and teacher, and former Co-Chair of FAWC's Board of Trustees. The medal is presented to artists, writers, patrons and individuals of national distinction who have provided exceptional guidance and inspiration to emerging artists and writers.

Joyce Kulhawik, Arts & Entertainment Anchor for WBZ-TV Boston, was the mistress of ceremonies. The medals were presented by Robert Jay Lifton, writer and psychiatrist, to Norman Mailer, and accepted on his behalf by Dr. Lifton; by Malcolm Rogers, the Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), to Michael Mazur; and by Robert Campbell, architectural critic, to Ted Landsmark.

The net proceeds of almost $50,000 will be used to help match a grant of $205,000 from the newly-established Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund for the reconstruction of the historic Days Lumberyard Building in Provincetown, the final phase of FAWC's Building For The Future capital campaign.

Past Award recipients include Robert Pinsky, Nancy Spero and Leon Golub, Alix Ritchie and Marty Davis, Chuck Close, William Kennedy, Stephen D. and Susan W. Paine, Robert Blackburn, Grace Paley, Louise Bourgeois and Stanley Kunitz.