When Sabina Paellmann began her BFA in Design History and Practice (DHP) at Parsons, she was already experienced in working at the intersection of history, community, and storytelling. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she spent days filming street life and conducting archival research, with the aim of uncovering and bringing awareness to the little-known Black history of her Greenwich Village neighborhood. Paellmann sought to reimagine, in her words, her “white-elder-and-yuppie-dominated neighborhood as something more inclusive—something that might reflect those who built and inhabited the area before it became the upper-class white area we know today.”

A backdrop to Paellman’s research in the BFA DHP program is her mother’s role, in the early 1990s, helping to uncover NYC’s African Burial Ground. The burial grounds, now a national monument, are situated near Wall Street where thousands of enslaved and free Africans from the 17th and 18th centuries were laid to rest. This transformative discovery, and the creative research surrounding it, helped shape Paellmann’s artistic and academic path. She also sought a way to incorporate into a research project her lifelong passion for the studio arts, including photography, painting, and printmaking.

As she began her thesis capstone, Paellmann grew frustrated by the lack of historical documentation of the lives of Black people who lived near the African Burial Ground. “Having been born and raised in New York City and visited museums and galleries my whole life, I found it surprising that information about Black artists was so hard to find,” she says. “It made me question the role of art institutions in deciding which movements become popularized.”

Turning her focus closer to home, she began researching her own neighborhood, Greenwich Village. “Exploring the Village’s history was a challenge that resonated with me as an artist and a student here in the neighborhood.” This research became the foundation for her Parsons thesis, Greetings from Little Africa, which reimagined the Village in a more historically accurate way. Her aim was to broaden public understanding of the visual culture of the area. Her final project combined a short film documenting her findings with a hand-painted map depicting the neighborhood’s layered history and a series of 100 postcards featuring images of Greenwich Village’s Black past, emblazoned with nostalgic greetings like “Welcome to Little Africa.” 

The project reflected the BFA DHP program’s structure, which brings together research and studio making practices. “I sourced archival imagery and combined it with my own typographical designs to create the postcards,” she explains. “I referenced the design and layout of historical downtown NYC postcards. This technique was based on a typography course and a class I’d taken on building a visual archive.”

Through her research, Paellmann also uncovered the lives of overlooked Black cultural figures—some connected to The New School, including W.E.B. Du Bois, who taught one of the nation’s first African American history courses on campus—and translated those discoveries into her thesis project.

Paellmann credits several Parsons faculty members with shaping her approach as both artist and researcher. “I took a great class with fashion scholar Kimberly Jenkins called Fashion and Race, which introduced me to the importance of studying marginalized histories in the arts,” she says. “Jonathan Square, who has taught the course since Jenkins’ departure, gave an excellent guest lecture on the slave trade history of Brooks Brothers that also stuck with me. Both professors inspired me to dig deeper and ask more questions in my research. I also had a great experience 

with Mev Luna during our senior capstone development. They encouraged us to take our projects seriously, even securing an exhibition space at Beverly’s, a professional gallery in downtown NYC.”

Building on the solid foundation she had developed at Parsons, Paellmann continued researching Black cultural history through graduate studies in visual arts administration. In that program, she transformed her Parsons thesis into an interactive website highlighting the work of artists in downtown New York who were part of the Black Arts Movement—an activist and cultural movement of the 1960s and 1970s that arose in parallel with the Black Power Movement. Expanding on her undergraduate work reinforced her commitment to uncovering overlooked narratives while equipping her with practical skills in curatorial and arts administration. “I ultimately want the project—and my work—to contribute to greater recognition for these downtown Black artists and spaces,” she says.

Paellmann graduated from the inaugural class of the BFA DHP program with departmental honors. “My cohort’s work set a precedent for what a successful student career in the program would look like,” she says. 

Before pursuing her MA, Paellmann worked as a gallery assistant at Black Wall Street Gallery, a Black-owned Chelsea art space dedicated to supporting underrepresented artists. She later joined Swann Auction Galleries—one of the country’s leading auction houses—first as an intern and soon after as administrator of African American Art and Contemporary Art. In this role, she engages with works by both historical and contemporary Black artists, curating auctions that bring pieces to wider audiences and extending the visibility-focused storytelling that began with her Parsons thesis.

“My career still reflects the multidisciplinary approach to problem solving that I developed at Parsons,” she says. “My visual arts background helps me approach arts administration with a deeper understanding of how artists think and work, which allows me to engage more meaningfully with both the artworks I handle and the artists I meet. I’ve also learned to trust my instincts and follow my interests. In the Design History and Practice program, I shaped my own course of study through its flexible pathways—combining studio and research-based classes to fit my specific goals rather than following a prescribed track. That early independence, which culminated in a successful capstone project, continues to guide me today as I pursue niche opportunities that align with and expand my personal research.”