NEWS RELEASE

The New School Public Programs: Art & Design

Spring 2009

Project Row Houses from Into the Open: Positioning Practice

NEW YORK, January 16, 2009 – This spring, The New School, including Parsons The New School for Design and The Vera List Center for Art and Politics, presents a range of events in the fields of art and design. Highlights include Into the Open: Positioning Practice (March 4—April 30), a multimedia exhibition exploring architecture and civic engagement that was the official U.S. representation at the 11th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia; The Crits (Jan. 27), a critique of the presidential inauguration moderated by Parsons dean Tim Marshall; and Emerging Exchanges: New Architectures of India (Feb 6-7), a conference exploring the changing landscape of Indian architecture featuring architect, critic, and historian Kenneth Frampton, among others.

As part of its Fine Arts Lecture Series, curated by Fine Arts chair Coco Fusco, Parsons will present talks by noted artists and scholars, including Shazia Sikander (Feb. 4), Sanford Biggers (Feb. 18), Paul Pfeiffer (Feb. 25), Wangechi Mutu (April 1), Rebecca Quaytman (April 8).

In the weekly lecture series Global Issues in Design, Parsons faculty member Susan Yelavich will explore issues in global design, featuring Lucille Tenazas (Feb. 10), graphic designer and Henry Wolf Professor of Communication Design at Parsons; Hazel Clark (Feb. 24), fashion scholar and dean of the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons; and Fereshteh Daftari (April 7), curator and art historian, among others.

The Arnold and Sheila Aronson Gallery at Parsons will present a series of exhibitions highlighting collaborative student projects. These include Bangkok: The Architecture of Three Ecologies Exhibition (January 19-Feb 1), an exhibition of student-produced video diaries documenting an urban development project in Thailand, with a lecture and reception on January 30; and Oyster Gardens of NYC (April 15-24), a multimedia exhibition detailing a yearlong project to design and construct a functional oyster garden in New York City waterways.

The New School and the Aperture Foundation continue their signature lecture series, Confounding Expectations, with The Obsolescence of the Photographic Object (Feb. 25), a panel discussion featuring Moyra Davey, Tacita Dean and Janet Malcolm. The Vera List Center and SculptureCenter present the third season of their lecture series, Subjective Histories of Sculpture, which explores how contemporary artists think about sculpture, with appearances by Paul Sietsema (Feb. 23), Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (March 16), and Simon Starling (April 13).

Parsons The New School for Design is one of the most prestigious and comprehensive institutions of art and design in the world. Located in New York City, Parsons prepares students to creatively and critically address the complex conditions of contemporary global society. Combining rigorous craft with cutting-edge theory and research methods, Parsons encourages collaborative and individual approaches that cut across a wide array of disciplines. For more information, please visit www.parsons.newschool.edu.

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is dedicated to serving as a catalyst for discourse on the role of the arts in society and their relationship to the socio-political climate in which they are created. It seeks to achieve this through public programs, fellowships, and forums that respond to the pressing social and political issues of our time, as articulated by visual and performing artists. For more information, visit www.vlc.newschool.edu.