MIDDLETOWN — The Monmouth County Arts Council (MCAC) announces the Arts Education Awards & Showcase will be held at Middletown Art Center, 7-9 p.m. on Thursday, May 28. An annual event, the awards and showcase is an evening for students, parents, teachers and community arts supporters to come together to acknowledge the power of art education. The Red Bankbased arts council established the Arts EducationAwards & Showcase to recognize and celebrate innovative leaders who are arts educators, administrators and arts education school programs in Monmouth County, to provide a showcase for top artists/performers from the Teen Arts Festival, and, lastly, to honor Community Champions who support the council's mission of "enriching the community by inspiring and fostering the arts."

Founder of the Performing Arts Program at Howell High School, Dan Green will receive an award as an innovative and creative supervisor of an Arts Education School Program.

Jean Johnson, lead teacher of the Art Department at Asbury Park High School, will receive the Art Educator Award for which she was nominated by APHS Principal Tyler Blackmore. An administrator who supports the arts, Principal Linda Eno, of Biotechnology High School, will receive an Administrator Award for "providing opportunities for young artists to thrive in a school that focuses on science." The venue for the awards, the Middletown Arts Center, will receive a Community Champion Award for its diverse art education programming and ongoing commitment to the arts.

A second recipient of a Community Champion Award, Community Foundation of Monmouth County will be recognized for its support of the Monmouth County Teen Arts Festival and its matching fund program with Donors Choose. The fundraising program, which supports all art teachers in Monmouth County, Donors Choose, will also be honored as a Community Champion.

Another recipient of a Community Champion Award is Brookdale Community College, which will be recognized for the many years of support for the Monmouth County Teen Arts Festival, when over 1,600 student artists converge on the campus in March for two days of workshops, presentations and judging.

Also, the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Center will be honored as a Community Champion for its commitment to arts education and the exhibit "A Journey to Life," now on display at the Monmouth Museum.

The Arts Education Award & Showcase reception will highlight talented students in many arts disciplines who were selected as worthy of recognition by professional artists at the 2009 Teen Arts Festival. Dramatic, musical and choral performances will be showcased in the Main Gallery and on the Main Stage. A visual arts exhibition of 60- plus pieces will be displayed in the Main Gallery, and video and spoken word selections will be presented in the MAC Café area. The Puzzle Project from the Teen Arts Festival, now a traveling exhibit, will be on view in the gallery.

For more information, contact Sandy Taylor at sbt@monmoutharts.org. To purchase tickets for the event, contact Lisa Marie at lm@monmoutharts.org or call 732- 212-1890 ext. 1. Adult tickets are $20, benefit Art Education programs at MCAC and include a six- month membership to the council. Student tickets are $5 or five nonperishable food items to be donated to the Food Bank of Monmouth and Ocean Counties. For more information, visit www.monmoutharts. org.