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Parsons Announces appointment of
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NEW YORK, July 10, 2008—Parsons The New School for Design has announced the appointment of Coco Fusco, the acclaimed performance and multi-media artist, writer, and curator as Chair of Fine Arts.
"Coco is at once an extraordinary artist, an astute cultural critic and writer, and a committed educator," said Parsons Dean Tim Marshall. "She will greatly contribute to the ambitious academic changes underway at Parsons, as we move toward becoming a more interdisciplinary and progressive institution in the fields of art and design."
"I am excited to join the academic and creative community at Parsons and to work with the exceptional faculty in Fine Arts and across Parsons and The New School," said Fusco regarding her appointment. "I am especially looking forward to working with the faculty to capitalize on and extend our Fine Arts programs’ strengths and to situate Fine Arts strongly in the context of the new academic planning at Parsons."
Fusco succeeds Don Porcaro, who served as Chair since 2003 and as a member of the faculty since 1984.
About Coco Fusco
Coco Fusco has an international reputation for her creative work, which has been shown in some of the most highly regarded arts events and venues worldwide, including the Whitney Biennial, London’s Institute of Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Smithsonian Institution. From electronic media to staged multi-media performances incorporating large scale projections and closed circuit television to live performances streamed to the internet that invite audience interaction, Fusco has explored and challenged paradigms in culture, race, gender, social behaviors, war, and politics. Most recently, she developed a series of performances and videos about the role of female interrogators in the War on Terror. She is represented by The Project Gallery in New York.
Fusco has also addressed these issues as a curator and writer, including the 2003-05 exhibition Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self, co-curated by Brian Wallis, which examined the history of race representation in American photography, and was presented at the International Center for Photography in New York, the San Diego Museum of Art and Museum of Photographic Arts, and the Seattle Art Museum. In conjunction with the exhibition, she co-edited (also with Brian Wallis) a book of the same name (Abrams, 2003). Coco also authored: A Field Guide for Female Interrogators (Seven Stories Press, 2008); English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas (The New Press, 1995. The Bodies That Were Not Ours and Other Writings (Routledge/INIVA, 2001).
Coco has been a member of the faculty at Columbia University since 2001, most recently as an Associate Professor in the Visual Arts Division. Previously, she was an Associate Professor at Tyler School of Art. She has also taught at Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Colorado-Boulder, and Grinnell College. At Columbia, in addition to being a member of the Visual Arts faculty, she worked with the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, the Institute for the Study of Women and Gender, and the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, as well as the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Center for Comparative Literature and Society. Fusco holds a Ph.D in Art and Visual Culture from Middlesex University, and an M.A. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University. She earned her B.A. in Literature and Society/Semiotics from Brown University.
About Parsons The New School for Design
Located in the heart of New York City, Parsons The New School for Design is one of the most prestigious and comprehensive degree-granting colleges of art and design in the nation. Parsons has been a forerunner in the field of art and design since its founding in 1896 as the Chase School, named after American Impressionist painter William Merrit Chase. Over the decades, Parsons has educated some of the nation’s most acclaimed photographers and artists from Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein to Sue de Beer, Steve DiBenedetto, Ryan McGinley, and Brian Tolle. Today, Parsons offers both an MFA and BFA in Fine Arts as well as in Photography. For more information, please visit www.newschool.edu/parsons.
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