Vera List Center for Arts and Politics
The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is a research center and a public forum for art, culture, and politics. It was established at The New School in 1992—a time of rousing debates about freedom of speech, identity politics, and society’s investment in the arts. A pioneer in the field, the center is a nonprofit that serves a critical mission: to foster a vibrant and diverse community of artists, scholars, and policy makers who take creative, intellectual, and political risks to bring about positive change.
The Vera List Center (VLC) champions the arts as expressions of the political moments from which they emerge, and consider the intersection between art and politics the space where new forms of civic engagement must be developed. The VLC is the only university-based institution committed exclusively to leading public research on this intersection. Since its inception, the Vera List Center has organized over 435 public events gathering artists, scholars, historians, and other thinkers and makers to consider topics of broad popular relevance; developed numerous publications ranging from papers and books to interactive online artists projects; and hosted 14 fellows, working with them to develop work advancing the discourse on art and politics. Through public programs and classes, prizes and fellowships, and publications and exhibitions that probe some of the pressing issues of our time, the VLC curates and supports new roles for the arts and artists in advancing social justice.
Featured Profile: Carin Kuoni
Carin Kuoni is a curator, writer, and arts administrator whose work examines how contemporary artistic practices reflect and inform social, political, and cultural conditions. She is director/chief curator of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School and a lecturer at the university. From 1998 to 2003, she was director of exhibitions at Independent Curators International (ICI) and from 1992 to 1997 director of The Swiss Institute.
Featured Project: Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice
The Vera List Center’s Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice honors an artist or group of artists who has taken great risks to advance social justice in profound and visionary ways and was launched to recognize the center’s 20th anniversary. International in scope, the biennial prize is awarded for a particular project’s long-term impact, boldness, and artistic excellence.
The prize initiative unfolds across various platforms and over an extended period of time. It serves as a catalyst for activities that illuminate the important role of the arts in society, and strengthen teaching and learning at The New School in art and design, social science, philosophy, and civic engagement.
The winner for the 2018-2020 period is the pan-African art collective Chimurenga, which invests in deep research on history, representation, and culture through a methodology of collective remobilization of knowledge. The artistic process is a forward reimagining of the global polity, through a multiplicity of forms, eschewing the separation of various art forms from one another and from wider social and political practices.
Source: Vera List Center