The New School News

From Politics to Civic Life: 20 Years of the Vera List Center for Art & Politics

Image by Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (July 28,1830), 1830. Collection of the Louvre-Lens

While the last twenty years have been marked by a general interest in the convergence of art and politics, the current moment is being characterized by the construction of new systems and networks for imagining, discussing, and ultimately creating new cultural and political realities. In the wake of upheaval and creativity, generated by the Arab Spring and Occupy movements, this phenomenon has been referred to as the return of the civic. This contemporary shift directly affects how artists consider their practice today, for whom they make their work, and how they relate to society at large

On Friday, May 17, on the occasion of its twentieth anniversary, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics assesses the unique role art plays at the intersection of politics and civic life. This free daylong conference from 10:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. in Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, is organized as a series of roundtable call-and-responses from some of the most astute and insightful individuals analyzing these issues today

Speakers include:

David Van Zandt, President, The New School; and Carin Kuoni, director/curator, Vera List Center; Reena Katz, artist; Kwame Anthony Appiah, Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University; Firelei Baez, artist, New York; Kobena Mercer, professor, Art History, Yale University, 1999 Vera List Center Fellow; Helen Molesworth, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, ICA Boston; Jens Hoffmann, deputy director and Head of Exhibitions and Public Programs, The Jewish Museum, New York; Wendy T. Ewald, photographer, 2000 Vera List Center Fellow, New York; Andrea Geyer, artist, 2006-07 Vera List Center Fellow, New York; Robert Sember, artist, 2009-11 Vera List Center Fellow, New York; David Scobey, executive dean, The New School for Public Engagement, New York; Nato Thompson, chief curator, Creative Time, New York;  Simon Critchley, professor of Philosophy, The New School; Julie Mehretu, artist, New York; Joao Ribas, curator, MIT List Center; Martha Rosler, artist, Vera List Center Advisory Committee member, New York; David Joselit, professor, Art History, Yale University.

For more information Vera List Center’s website.