Vera G. List

Vera G. List (1908–2002), born in Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1908, was a passionate supporter of The New School’s mission of lifelong education. Her involvement with The New School began when she moved to New York and started taking classes at the New School for Social Research. She joined the university’s volunteer leadership as a member of the Board of Trustees in 1956 and was named a life trustee in 1985. Starting in 1960, List served as the first chair of The New School Art Collection and was a leading force behind the New School Art Center. She was also the key player in moving the New Museum, of which she was a founding trustee, into the Graduate Center of the New School for Social Research in 1977.

The generosity of Vera List and her husband, Albert List, helped shape the intellectual, artistic, and physical landscape of the university. The New School Art Collection was founded with a major grant from the Albert A. List Foundation. Installed throughout the university campus and transforming public spaces into lively forums for examining contemporary art, the collection offers students a rare opportunity to engage with art on a daily basis, making it a distinctive component of their educational experience. The Lists also supported an award for student writing inspired by the many artworks throughout the campus. In addition, the Lists established the Albert and Vera List Academic Center, a major teaching and research facility. 

After Albert’s passing in 1987, Vera List financed the renovation of common spaces and endowed numerous scholarships. In 1992—a time of rousing debates about freedom of speech, identity politics, and society’s investment in the arts—she funded the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, an artist-focused research center and public forum. An influential force working at the intersection of art, culture, and politics, the center today catalyzes and supports politically engaged art, public scholarship, and research here at The New School and around the world. 

List received the National Medal of the Arts, the highest national award for artists and art patrons in the United States, in 1996. In 1973, speaking about the importance of art and why she funded it at The New School, she said, “The New School differs from, say, other colleges and so forth in that courses could easily be innovated. It seemed to me that at such a school, art was a medium of learning and that the visual arts were as important as the textbook and the lecture.”