The Daily Hub

Pratt Institute is listed among the 30 best film schools in America by Backstage. “Instead of having students choose one specialty, Pratt focuses on educating them as ‘total filmmakers’ by teaching every step of the process and promoting interdisciplinary collaboration.”

Seymour Nussenbaum, BA Illustration ’48, was one of three surviving veterans from the U.S. military’s “Ghost Army” to be awarded a Congressional Gold Medal for their heroic contributions during WWII. The Ghost Army used “inflatable tanks, phony uniforms, fake rumors and special effects to deceive German forces.” Several of the students in Pratt’s Industrial Camouflage Program—which researched and developed camouflage techniques to support the defense effort—would go on to join the Ghost Army.

Salman Toor, MFA Fine Arts (Painting) ’09, listed among Artsy’s “10 Contemporary Painters Reviving Impressionism.” Toor’s paintings “frame their scenes similarly to the Impressionist café paintings, where the scenes seem to spill beyond what’s immediately visible in the frame.”

New York City-based multimedia artist and educator Alex Strada will be Pratt’s 2024/25 Fine Arts Civic Engagement Fellow. In addition to teaching in the Fine Arts Department, the role involves developing programming and/or workshops connecting the fellow’s practice to internal and external communities.

Sylvia Chen, BID ’23, was honored at German design council’s “one&twenty” competition at Milan Design Week. Her team’s cargo scooter was among 21 winning designs of the competition, organized by the Foundation Council for Design. “One&twenty” supports young talents who are “shaping a more sustainable and inclusive world.”

The first solo show by Kosuke Kawahara, MFA Fine Arts (Painting and Drawing) ’20, is reviewed in Two Coats of Paint by Michael Brennan, adjunct professor-CCE of fine arts. The inaugural exhibition at RAINRAIN gallery’s new Chinatown location, Kawahara’s Exotic Star is “the most adventurous painting exhibition I have seen in some time,” writes Brennan.

Max Palmer, BFA Photography ’10, gives a tour of his studio space and discusses his art practice, commitment to using only salvaged materials, and life in Brooklyn in a video profile for Pocket Skate Mag. “I went to school for photography and did a couple of sculpture classes then started working for this artist Sarah VanDerBeek, helping her make her sculptures,” he said. “Eventually I was kind of like, ‘oh I want to do my own mold-making stuff.’”

Timothy Simonds, adjunct associate professor of humanities and media studies, is featured in The New York Times about Manhattan-based station Montez Press Radio. Simonds hosts a show called “Miss Othmar’s Meeting with Teachers,” which “collects the voices of different teachers and facilitators from a variety of fields and their approaches to leading the listener through exercises over radio.”

Creative Enterprise Leadership Chair Mary McBride and Assistant Chair and Professor Xue Bai presented their book and the department’s work at dmi:Design Management Conference in London. As they write in the book, “Human enterprise and human work has created the conditions that threaten to destabilize our climate and communities. It is time to re-imagine our enterprise and economic activity as life serving. Anything else is a waste of time, money, and human potential.”