Fall 2023 programs

This fall marks the second year of the Vera List Center’s two-year investigation into the political, social, and metaphorical implications of Correction*. We’re pleased to share a preview of upcoming exhibitions, public programs, publications, and more. 

For up-to-date listings, please visit here or register for our Monday newsletter here.

Correction* seminar VII
Bring into Order: School(ing) as a War of Correction
Monday, September 18, 2023, 6–7:30pm EDT
Online

Year two of the Correction* Seminar Series begins with a look at education and prison systems. This conversation with scholar Dylan Rodríguez not only pushes beyond “reform” as an objective of collective engagement with, and revolt against, regimes of correction (schooling and otherwise) but also recognizes how reform is already part of the correctional apparatus and its logic of carcerality and policing.

Parsons Visiting Artist Lecture Series
Beatriz Cortez: Voids, Portals, and Moving Land
Wednesday, September 20, 2023, 7–8pm EDT
The New School, Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall, 66 W 12th St, Room 404

2022–24 Borderlands Fellow Beatriz Cortez charts the different ways in which her monumental sculpture Ilopango, the Volcano that Left counters ideas about permanence, portals, and multiple temporalities. The volcano, currently on view at Storm King Art Center, is journeying up the Hudson River to EMPAC–Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from October 27 through 29.

Book launch
Breaking Protocol
Sunday, October 8, 2023, 3–4:30pm EDT
Artbook @ MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave (at 46th Ave), Long Island City, NY 11101

The launch of 2020–22 VLC Borderlands Fellow Maria Hupfield’s artist book Breaking Protocol (co-published by Inventory Press and the VLC) reunites Hupfield with poet Natalie Diaz in a joint performance that builds on their longstanding artistic exchange. They are joined in dialogue by Thomas (T.) Lax.

VLC Forum 2023: Correction*
October 12–14, 2023
Online and in person at The New School

With an exhibition, workshops, conversations, a keynote lecture, and a community dinner and party, the VLC Forum 2023 highlights artists and collectives working in community and advancing social justice across the world through collaborative practices. This year’s VLC Forum celebrates the urban Aboriginal artist collective proppaNOW, recipient of the Vera List Center’s 2022–2024 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice. The forum also showcases the Jane Lombard Fellows, finalists for the prize: the Pan-African Another Roadmap Africa Cluster (ARAC), Colectivo Cherani from Mexico, KUNCI Study Forum & Collective from Indonesia, and from Palestine Khalil Rabah. ARAC member Christian Nyampeta hosts the dinner party with a DJ set and karaoke to follow

farid rakun of the Jakarta-based collectives ruangrupa and Gudskul delivers the keynote lecture. Other special appearances include Fawz Kabra, Wanda Nanibush, Pablo José Ramírez, and Sarah Rifky.

Forum exhibition
proppaNOW: There Goes the Neighbourhood!
October 9–November 5, 2023
Open daily 12–6pm EDT, Thursdays late until 8pm
Parsons School of Design, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries
Opening reception & exhibition walkthrough: 5:30–6:30pm EDT, October 13, 2023

This exhibition features the work of proppaNOW members Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Richard Bell, Megan Cope, Jennifer Herd, and the late Laurie Nilsen, each evidence of the artists’ unwavering commitment to pushing for greater visibility for Aboriginal struggles and rights within Australia and beyond for the past two decades. A video screening program complements the exhibition, showcasing the collective’s range of artistic and activist approaches.

Exhibition
In Common: New Approaches With Romare Bearden
November 9, 2023–January 15, 2024
Open daily 12–6pm EDT, Thursdays late until 8pm
Parsons School of Design, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery
66 Fifth Avenue at 13th Street

This exhibition brings together works by artist, educator, scholar, songwriter, and social activist Romare Bearden alongside six contemporary artists—Black Quantum Futurism, Kahlil Robert Irving, Lorraine O’Grady, Hank Willis Thomas, Mickalene Thomas, and Charisse Pearlina Weston—in a multigenerational dialogue on the political agency of art. The exhibition is presented as part of the multitier initiative Romare Bearden and New Approaches to Art, Race & Economy, which includes a three-day symposium (November 30–December 2, 2023) organized by the The New School’s Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, the Romare Bearden Foundation, and The Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University.

Correction* Seminar 8
“Hader Halal” (With Regard to Presence)
Monday, November 13, 2023, 12–1:30pm EST
Online 

Co-presented with OSUN Center for Human Rights & the Arts at Bard, Fehras Publishing Practices’s Sami Rustom and Kenan Darwich share their research into the history and presence of publishing and its entanglement in the sociopolitical and cultural sphere in the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Arab diaspora.

AICA Lecture
AICA-USA Distinguished Critic Lecture: Valerie Cassel Oliver
Monday, December 11, 2023, 6:30–8pm EST
The New School, the Auditorium at 66 West 12th Street

Valerie Cassel Oliver delivers the 17th annual AICA-USA Distinguished Critic Lecture at The New School. Oliver is a writer and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Correction* seminar IX
Of Bodies and Sound
Monday, December 18, 2023, 12–1:30pm EST
Online

Amsterdam-based Kosovar artist Astrit Ismaili’s performance lecture centers on how bodies are constructed, modified, and interpreted through contemporary society, but also how they are heard, asking what it means to sonify a body politic. 

Accessibility
All programs and events of the Vera List Center are free for all to attend, physically and virtually. Most public programs are recorded and shared on our website, Vimeo, and The New School YouTube page. Our online events feature automated captions and ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation.

If you have specific access questions or needs for future programs, please contact us at least five days prior to the program at vlc [​at​] newschool.edu.

The fall 2023 programs of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics are generously supported by members of the Vera List Center Board, other individual donors, and the following institutional donors: the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Boris Lurie Art Foundation and the Schaina and Josephina Lurje Memorial Foundation; Bridge Philanthropic Consulting; The Dayton Foundation; The Ford Foundation; The Kettering Fund; Mellon Foundation; The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation; and Pryor Cashman LLP. We also acknowledge the support of The New School, our academic home.