A roundup of ideas and projects from around the Institute
Lillian Ismail, BFA Fine Arts (Jewelry) ’17, was featured on a list of “12 Saudi Jewellery Designers We’re Simply Obsessed With” from Harper’s Bazaar Arabia. “In 2013, at only 17 years-old, Jeddah-based Lillian Ismail launched her namesake jewellery brand. Lillian blends Islamic-inspired concepts and modern contemporary elements into her designs, while using her artwork as a medium for expression.”
Izzy Chavez, BFA Digital Arts (2-D Animation) ’24, had their work, Adam and Eve in the Kingdom of Animals, screened at the 2025 Annecy Festival.
Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Information Bill Levay, MS Library and Information Science ’15, spoke at the Creative Operations Summit in New York, sharing how the New York Philharmonic Archives—and the digitized historical assets in our DAMS—play a vital role in marketing, storytelling, and audience engagement at the Philharmonic.
Adjunct Associate Professor of Photography Matthew Leifheit was featured in The New York Times for his sound installation No Time at All, which played this summer at the New York City AIDS Memorial. The piece is composed of VHS tapes of gay men’s choruses made at the height of the AIDS crisis. “One of the most powerful ways to encounter an artwork is if you’re not expecting to have the experience of art,” said Leifheit of the installation in the West Village.
Assistant Professor of Foundation Oasa DuVerney’s exhibition of works on paper, Into the Shining Dark at Welancora Gallery, was reviewed in the Brooklyn Rail. “Bring[ing] together nine of DuVerney’s new and recent works on paper which together present her attentiveness to Black womanhood, lineage, community, and survival.”
Gabriela Mestriner, MID ’26, was on the winning team at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) 2025 Wanted Design Schools Workshop. Students were “tasked with imagining innovative, systems-based interventions that could reshape how New Yorkers grow, access, prepare, and share food,” writes Laura A Des Enfants in Core 77.
Photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode, MFA Fine Arts ’83, was featured in the “Overlooked” section of The New York Times. “Rotimi Fani-Kayode is, for me, part of a constituency of historically important figures who take the camera as a lens of liberation that they offer on the world,” Mark Sealy said. “They’re not necessarily about photography; they’re about that lens. They’re about a way of seeing.”
Jiahang Selina Li, BFA Fine Arts (Jewelry) ’27, was awarded a SNAG Educational Endowment Scholarship for Seeing Sound Hearing Time. The scholarship is designed to “further educational opportunities for students and professionals looking to broaden their education in the metalsmithing and jewelry field.”
Associate Professor in the School of Information Nancy Smith presented at the Data | Art Symposium at Harvard. Her presentation, “Environmental Data & Fiber Arts: Experiments in Stitching, Quilting, and Sculpture,” explored her recent work in data physicalization and slow technology.
Ron Shiffman, visiting professor in the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment (GCPE), and Eddie Bautista, MS City and Regional Planning ’02, both wrote op-eds examining the proposed Brooklyn Marine Terminal redevelopment plan. “Jobs, neighborhood stability, climate adaptation and economic resilience—these are the stakes in the redevelopment of the Brooklyn Marine Terminal, a 122-acre, publicly-owned stretch of working waterfront in Red Hook,” Shiffman wrote for Crain’s New York Business. “But you would not suspect the project’s far-ranging implications from the city’s heedless rush to push through an ill-considered plan for the site, in disregard of community voices and of locally mandated planning processes.” For the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Bautista wrote with NYC Councilmember Alexa Avilés that “we have the historic opportunity to create a public good that makes our community safer and healthier but it’s being passed up.”
From Pratt Institute News
From Pratt Institute News
