A roundup of ideas and projects from around the Institute
Lillian Benson, BFA Art Education ’70, received Black Public Media’s 2025 Trailblazer Award for her work editing films including American Masters – Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, Beyond the Steps: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and Dancing: New World, New Forms.
Sam Vernon, assistant professor of fine arts, and Jessica Caldwell, visiting assistant professor of interior design, have been selected for the third Pratt/KinoSaito Artist-In-Residence Fellowship program. KinoSaito is an art center in Verplanck, New York, “committed to nurturing experimentation in every form and medium.”
Isabel Colón, MFA Writing ’26, Andrew Riad, MFA Writing ’25, and Adjunct Professor – CCE of Writing Anna Moschovakis represented the Writing Department at AWP in Los Angeles.
Weiqi (Momo) Huang, MPS Design Management ’19, co-founder of Asian Creative Foundation, hosted the Social Impact Hackathon, co-sponsored by Pratt Creative Enterprise Leadership at Pratt Manhattan Campus. Asian Creative Foundation aims to build a community to support the next generation of Asian creatives in their journey to achieve and sustain their dreams.
The Pratt Center for Community Development’s Made in NYC Week 2025 marked the seventh annual celebration of New York City’s manufacturing and maker community. This year’s nine-day event, running from May 1 to 9, showcased local talent through interactive experiences, curated shopping, and behind-the-scenes factory tours.
Associate Professor of Film/Video Eliza Hittman will serve on the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival jury for the The Best New Narrative Director Competition.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Interior Design Ridima Jain was featured in a Dwell article about emerging designers at the 2025 International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF). “Indian industrial designers Ridima Jain and Manav Singla bring a shared vision to Ridezign—to make the ephemeral feel eternal. The sculptural Tesser lighting collection is inspired by fleeting glimpses of illuminated lives through New York City’s skyscrapers.”
Doechii wore a top by Visiting Assistant Professor of Fashion Design Giovanna Flores in Cosmopolitan.
The Pratt Center for Community Development report Better Buses for Flatbush Avenue: Participatory Action Research with Riders Alliance was cited in an article in Amsterdam News on the need for faster buses in Flatbush. “In each neighborhood that Flatbush Avenue passes through, it’s a commercial corridor [and] a center of neighborhoods,” Sylvia Morse, senior program manager for research and policy at the Pratt Center, told Amsterdam News. “It’s not just like an artery that passes through. It doesn’t function like a highway. It’s a really complicated street.”
Isabel (Izzy) Lane, MS Urban and Community Planning ’26, is the 2025 Pratt School of Architecture William ‘Bill’ Menking Travel Award recipient. “In this moment of excitement and traction for urban agriculture at scale, I hope that my travels allow me to share with the Pratt community a critical analysis of the opportunities and risks of planning for urban agriculture through the frameworks of social, racial, and environmental justice,” Lane wrote in her application for the prize.
From Pratt Institute News
From Pratt Institute News
