The Daily Hub

Interim Chair of Graduate Architecture and Urban Design, Adjunct Associate Professor-CCE, and founder of the Brooklyn-based studio BAAO Alexandra Barker is featured in a New York Times article about her renovation of an Upper West Side home. From major architectural changes like moving staircases to design details like bold wallpaper, “the renovation infused the home with a new sense of style,” reports the Times. 

Hyperallergic featured Swoon (Caledonia Curry, BFA Fine Arts ’02) as a highlight in their coverage of Dumbo Open Studios, organized by Art in Dumbo. “Dozens of artists and project spaces opened their doors across six stories of the multi-use building, inviting the public into a whirlwind of contemporary creative output through both polished presentations and behind-the-scenes views.”

Based on data from the 2022 SNAAP (Strategic National Arts Alumni Project) Survey on arts and design graduates and their careers, a recent SNAAP special report focusing on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic notes that 81% of arts and design graduates in the creative workforce who responded to the survey maintained the same kind of work in fall 2022 as they were doing before the onset of the pandemic. Pratt Institute participated as an institutional sponsor of the 2022 SNAAP Survey.

Director of the Pratt Sustainability Center Carolyn Shafer has been named a 2024 Notable Leader in Sustainability by Crain’s New York Business, with the publication stating that “the 56 honorees on Crain’s Notable Leaders in Sustainability list are redefining corporate commitment by overseeing decarbonization policy, designing environmentally-conscious housing, heading sustainable investing and more.”

Interim Executive Director of Bronx River Alliance Elena Conte, MS City and Regional Planning ’14, was interviewed by Gothamist about the cleanup efforts following Con Edison’s recent oil spill in the Bronx River. “‘The information to the public was not as quick or as clear as we would have liked,’ Conte said, adding the public wasn’t notified about the spill until her organization shared the news days afterwards.”

Parker Ewen, BFA Fine Arts ’24, was selected for the Byrdcliffe Artist Residency in Upstate New York this summer. Ewen’s large-scale oil paintings deal with “themes of isolation and abandonment in relationships, often focusing on self-portraits and dogs as symbols of interpersonal and domestic dynamics.”

Jo Livingstone, visiting assistant professor of graduate communications design, speaks with Merve Emre on The Critic and Her Publics, a limited series from the New York Review of Books and Literary Hub, about Old English, anachronism, and writing criticism. “It’s very monastic,” she says. “It’s all about being alone but still reaching out to find the other people through the cave.”

Mickalene Thomas, BFA Fine Arts ’00, was honored at The New Museum’s 2024 Spring Gala, and will receive the Vanguard Award at the upcoming Los Angeles LGBT Center Gala. “My art has always been about more than pretty pictures,” she said. “Seeing the deep dark complexities of Blackness, of the Black body and its loveliness, is what pushes me forward to making what I make. It’s about creating a language that resonates and that challenges societal norms.”

Visiting Assistant Professor of Fine Arts and Pratt>Forward Coordinator Yasmeen Abdallah, MFA Fine Arts ’15, was interviewed in Shoutout LA. “I am interested in ephemera, aftermaths, and the stories told and secrets kept by imprints and objects that speak to our contemporary culture,” she said.

Matías Piñeiro, associate professor of film/video, received a Special Mention in the International Award category at the 46th Cinéma du réel International Documentary Film Festival for his film You Burn Me.