Mira’s Lifetime Achievement Award

On August 8, Governor Tom Wolf presented Mira Nakashima a Lifetime Achievement in the Arts at the Scranton Cultural Center. Mira was honored for her renowned furniture designs, her unparalleled knowledge and mastery of wood, and for serving as the director and custodian of both the George Nakashima Woodworkers Studio and the Nakashima grounds.

Mira was just three years old when her father opened the studio as a means to find work and fulfillment after the family was forcibly relocated to an internment camp in Minidoka, Idaho alongside 120,000 other Japanese-Americans. She would go on to follow her father’s path by studying architecture at Harvard University and receiving a Master’s in Architecture from Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. Mira worked with her father for two decades until his death in 1990, when she became Creative Director of the Studio. After her mother’s passing 2004, Mira went on to become president of the Nakashima Foundation for Peace.

With this award in the arts, Mira became the first “generational recipient”, as her father received the same award in its first iteration as the Theodore L. Hazlett Memorial Award for Excellence in the Arts, presented to him by Governor Richard Thornburgh in 1981.