This year, The New School commemorates its 90th anniversary. To mark the occasion, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics (VLC) is partnering with Parts & Labor Gallery (a nonprofit arts organization) in an exhibition examining the legacy of The New School’s founding principles in a contemporary context. The project is part of the VLC’s program cycle “Speculating on Change.”

Established by three New School alumni, Brooke Chroman, NSGS, BA program and Parsons, MFA, Fine Arts; Bryan Mesenbourg, Parsons, MFA, Fine Arts; and Meghan Roe, NSSR, MA, Liberal Studies, Parts & Labor Gallery is a mobile exhibition space housed in a renovated commercial box truck, rendered transparent by Plexiglas walls (see attached image files). From October 19 to 24, the gallery will be parked in the curb lane outside one of The New School’s buildings as a public installation, research and performance space. The installation—a reimagining of a New School university archive—will serve as a physical and symbolic framework for a series of lectures and discussions by The New School community, creating a forum for multidisciplinary debate about the university’s past in relation to its present and future incarnations.

In addition to the onsite programming, an exhibition catalog will be produced, and made available in the gallery in both print and electronic forms. This catalog will be composed of faculty, staff, and student statements (academic or creative, 500-word max) on the university’s legacy that reflect personal experiences at the institution, relevant scholarship, recent university events, etc. The hope is that many in the university community will contribute a statement to this publication. To help generate content, a questionnaire has been created. The New School community is welcome to answer all of these questions, use one as starting point for a short essay, or respond to them in any way you see fit.

If you have any questions about this project please contact the Vera List Center at 212.229.2436. All text responses (in Word-document form) and other supplementary material can be submitted by email.

The deadline for submissions is September 10, 2009