Left to Right:
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT:(Left to right) Anthony Baratta, Carl Minchew, Benjamin Moore’s director of color technology who presented the award to Diamond Baratta Design; William Diamond.
BOKOR_VINAS_DRAKE: (Left to right) HUE Residential Interiors honorees past and present: Danielle Bokor ‘08; Ghislaine Viñas ‘10; Jamie Drake, ‘05.

HONORING ARCHITECTS & INTERIOR DESIGNERS

It was a colorful evening of entertainment as 300 of New York’s “decorati” joined Benjamin Moore for the presentation of its prestigious HUE Awards. The early May event honored a group of remarkable architects and interior designers whose work embodies a passion for color usage in inventive and exceptional ways. Each honoree received $5,000 checks and hand crafted glass HUEY sculptures.

The winners of the HUE Lifetime Achievement Award were William Diamond and Anthony Baratta, whose namesake New York City firm has made color usage a defining signature of its work. They touched the crowd by announcing that they were contributing their prize money to one of their favorite charities— New York Presbyterian Hospital’s Center for Special Studies, a donation matched by Benjamin Moore’s corporate giving program.

Benjamin Moore awarded the Special Achievement Award for Restoration Preservation to Cleveland, Ohio-based Eikona Studios after seeing the group’s HUE entry, filled with projects reflecting how worn and aging church interiors and murals can be miraculously resuscitated and reinvigorated with paint color. In addition to these two discretionary HUE Awards, the prizes were also dispensed to those who topped the competition in four categories. Ghislaine Viñas earned the HUE for Residential Interiors. In the Contract Interiors category, architect Ken Wilson accepted the prize for his D.C. firm, Envision Design. Amy Wax of Your Color Source Studios in Montclair, NJ is the first professional color consultant to have snagged a HUE Award in the Residential Exteriors category. A Scottsdale, Arizona firm, Allen+Philp, was named the HUE honoree in the Contract Exteriors category.

The Museum of Arts and Design proved to be the perfect setting for the HUEYs. The reception was held in the colorful ROBERT restaurant that crowns the Columbus Circle location and affords a spectacular green carpet view of Central Park. Throughout the evening, guests had access to the current exhibitions, plus were able to observe and have a dialogue with two artists plying their talents in the museum’s Open Studios. Exploration of the stairwells also was encouraged; that’s where art installations could be discovered courtesy of a partnership between MAD and Benjamin Moore that brings artwork to unexpected places within the museum.