NOTE TO CORRESPONDENTS UNITED NATIONS INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL TO RECEIVE THREE BRONZE BUSTS
Press Release
NOTE TO CORRESPONDENTS UNITED NATIONS INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL TO RECEIVE THREE BRONZE BUSTS
19971121 BY AMERICAN SCULPTOR ROBERT BERKS, ON 25 NOVEMBERBusts of Staunch Supporters Kofi Annan, Robert Howard, Sylvia Howard Fuhrman, To Be Presented in Ceremony at School
As part of its fiftieth anniversary celebration, the United Nations International School (UNIS) will honour three of its staunchest supporters in a ceremony at the School on Tuesday, 25 November, at noon. On this occasion, Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Sylvia Howard Fuhrman, his Special Representative for the United Nations International School, and Robert Howard, the School's most generous private benefactor, will witness the presentation to UNIS of bronze busts bearing their likenesses created by American sculptor Robert Berks.
These three individuals will be honoured not only for the devotion and dedication that they have shown to UNIS, but also for the possibilities that they have opened to it and the strength they have given it. Kofi Annan served on the School's Board of Trustees for 10 years, eight of them as Chairman, guiding the School through a period of great change and growth. Sylvia Howard Fuhrman was first appointed as the Secretary-General's Special Representative for UNIS by U Thant in 1967, and has worked uninterruptedly and unstintingly for 30 years to ensure the best conditions and strongest possible support for the School, its students and its faculty. Robert Howard's generosity has provided UNIS with its first computer system, its Performing Arts Centre, its Courtyard Garden, its entry sculpture and many other gifts that have greatly enhanced the experience of all those who have studied and worked there.
Robert Berks, the sculptor of the three bronze busts depicting them, adds these to a long and illustrious list of major works in this medium. It is his bronze bust of President Kennedy that dominates Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and his rendering of famed cellist Pablo Casals that stands in the lobby of the United Nations General Assembly Hall. In the same medium, Mr. Berks has also depicted Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, Leonard Bernstein, Harry Truman and more than 300 others, many of them from life. While at work on the three bronzes for UNIS, he was commissioned by the state of Kentucky to create a monumental likeness of Abraham Lincoln for the new Lincoln Library.
- 2 - Note No. 5485 21 November 1997
Mr. Berks' bronze of the Secretary-General, which will be presented by Mr. Howard, will stand in the entry of the School. Mrs. Fuhrman's likeness, which will be presented by UNIS Director Joseph Blaney, will be placed in front of the Performing Arts Centre which bears her name. The bust of Mr. Howard, which will be presented by Satya Nandan, Secretary-General of the International Seabed Authority and current Chairman of the UNIS Board of Trustees, will be situated in the Courtyard Garden. The ceremony marking their presentation will constitute one of the major events of the School's fiftieth year.
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