Al Hurwitz, a world renowned art educator, has won numerous awards in his lifetime, including a National Art Educator award and a Sir Herbert Read award from the International Society for Education Through Art.

Now, after turning 90 years old earlier this year, he will receive the National Art Education Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The association of more than 17,000 art teachers representing public and private schools from kindergarten through the university and art schools. The award is being presented to Dr. Hurwitz for his record as an author, administrator and a teacher on all levels from K-1 to Harvard Graduate School of Education.

When not winning major awards Dr. Hurwitz divides his time between Chilmark and Los Angeles. This past year saw him giving presentations around the Island of his most recent book, The Kong Variations, a retrospective of King Kong living a Zeliglike existence and showing up at the rarest of functions from top hat parties to art school.

Commenting on the inception of the book, Mr. Hurwitz said, “As a landscape painter, I posed the question: Suppose every painter on Martha’s Vineyard decided to concentrate on King Kong instead of Vineyard landscapes? Should that occur, Martha’s Vineyard might be a very different place.”

Mr. Hurwitz also helped out last summer at the combined West Tisbury Congregational and Grace Church summer camp giving a class on drawing dragons. When word spread that Mr. Hurwitz was teaching again, some of his former students, professors all of them now, came to the Island to document the class and created a book entitled, Drawing Dragons with Al Hurwitz.

Yet another award in a career still going strong.