Congratulations to Yuko Nii

Artist and Philanthropist Yuko Nii (Left Center)
with
Pratt Institute President Tom Schutte (Right Center)
and
Artist and Curator Terrance Lindall (Left)

Ms. Yuko Nii, who has a Master's in Fine Arts (1968) from the Pratt Institute, was recently awarded a 2013 Pratt Institute Alumni Achievement Award for Community Commitment due to her work at the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center (WAH Center), as the Pratt website explains:

In late 1996 Nii purchased the Kings County Savings Bank building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (a New York City landmark) as the home for a not-for-profit Williamsburg Art and Historical Center (WAH Center). The WAH Center serves as a multicultural art center that aims to bridge local, national, and international artists, emerging as well as established artists of all disciplines to create a more peaceful and integrated world.

The WAH Center has produced over 200 fine art exhibitions with more than 3,000 artist participants, and over 150 performance programs with more than 1000 performers.

I learned of Ms. Nii's honor from Terrance Lindall a couple of days ago and obtained clearance to blog about the award and show Terrance's photographs. Here, for instance, is a photo from the University Club in Manhattan, where the award was presented:

Terrance writes of the location and the event:

Today at a luncheon at the prestigious University Club in Manhattan, Yuko was presented with the Pratt Alumni Achievement Award along with five other outstanding individuals. Pratt is perhaps the country's foremost school of architecture and design. The club has hosted US presidents, and dignitaries from around the world. Honorees are those who, after graduation, have transformed or benefited the world in some significant way.

Terrance refers to the library above as "one of the great libraries of the world." Here's a photo of some of those assembled:

Of this photograph, Terrance notes:

Yes, looking at you on the left is our friend and master surrealist Bienvenido Bones Banez.

Good to see Bien there, looking handsome in his suit and tie. Terrance stands in the background, also well dressed. But if you look back up at Yuko, you'll see that her style outshines the two of them. Speaking of Terrance and Yuko, here they are -- or were -- outside:

We here take leave of the two, a nice-looking pair, each with excellent taste in clothes, as one might expect of artists, and an aesthetic sphere I've come to take more seriously over the past few years.

And lastly, full disclosure (as journalists say), Yuko Nii founded the WAH Center, which sponsors the Williamsburg Circle of International Arts and Letters, which published my novella, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer (preview here, purchase here).