November 3, 2017

Recognized for her long-term project Seeds of Change, Maria Thereza Alves, Seeds of Change: New York—A Botany of Colonization, is Alves’ first presentation of the work in the Americas. This iterations focuses on flora local to New York. Alves’ Seeds of Change studies colonialism, slavery, and the global commerce of goods through the lens of displaced plants in ballast—the waste material historically used to balance ships in maritime trade. Dumped in ports at the end of passages, ballast often carried “dormant” seeds collected from its place of origin that remained in the soil for hundreds of years before germinating and growing. Alves identifies the seeds…

October 14, 2017

(under)REPRESENT(ed) is an exhibition that features Parsons School of Design alumni of color whose creative practices explore the lived experience of race and aim to dismantle systems of racism.  Initiated and organized by a collective of alumni of color, this exhibition features a range of disciplines which simultaneously address and resist the systemic exclusion that prevails in educational and professional institutions and practices. The Parsons alumni featured in the exhibition are: Salome Asega, MFA Design and Technology ’14 Rikki Byrd, MA Fashion Studies ’16 Raquel de Anda, MS Design and Urban Ecologies ’15 Nelson de Jesus Ubri, BFA Architectural Design…

September 29, 2017

A Working Model of the World explores the human impulse to model. It asks how we use models to contemplate, experiment, invent and teach. The exhibition emphasizes ‘model’ as a verb, showing that modelling is an activity that unifies all human beings – from children rolling dough to ecologists predicting rising sea-levels. The artists in the exhibition, from Australia, New Zealand and the United States, examine the practical and symbolic work that models perform and the small worlds that models create, inviting a conversation between different forms of material thinking. Featured artists are Brook Andrew, Corinne May Botz, Ian Burns, Maria…

September 14, 2017

Curators: Catherine Acosta, Yachen Han, Adrian Madlener, Jeffery McCullough, Annaleigh McDonald, Binglei Yan Academic Advisor: Glenn Adamson We live in uncommonly disputatious times. American political discourse is as polarized as it has ever been, to the extent that expressions of conflict – based on class, ideology, party, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, geography, and other forms of identity – are increasingly overwhelming other forms of public discourse. The sense of opposition is further exaggerated by new mass media and social technologies. Objects of Dispute considers this situation of mass disagreement through the focusing lens of objects. It is based on a course…

August 10, 2017

POST-TRUTH is an exhibition of thesis work from the Parsons MFA Photography program class of 2017. Works include photographs, computer-generated imaging, 3D imaging and printing, video, and installation pieces. The exhibition features thesis work by: Michael DiFeo, Arash Fewzee, Annaleena Keso, Charles Park, Christian Padron, Sebastian Perinotti, Rowena Rubio, Abhishek Sharma, Sarah Wang, Jinming Zhong, and Mengting Zhou. Under the direction of James Ramer, the studio-based Parsons MFA Photography program brings visionary students together with some of the artworld’s most influential photographers. Students are encouraged to develop their individual vision in a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment and to explore related technologies, focusing…

June 29, 2017

This exhibition of photographs and related works, largely from The New School Art Collection, focuses on race and social justice. Photographs make up 30% of the collection, with many of these works made in the late 1980s and early 90s, a period in which some artists used the documentary form of photography and related mediums to develop powerful portraits of themselves and their communities, while others highlighted the violence done to such communities. Photography itself has an important evidentiary role to play in capturing the complexities attendant to social change: it has long been used to document social injustice, and…

June 28, 2017

The Architectural League Prize is one of North America’s most prestigious awards for young architects and designers. The Prize, established in 1981, recognizes exemplary and provocative work by young practitioners and provides a public forum for the exchange of their ideas. Each year The Architectural League and the Young Architects + Designers Committee organize a portfolio competition. Six winners are then invited to present their work in a variety of public fora, including lectures, an exhibition, and on the League’s website. This year’s theme for the portfolio competition, Support identified a present situation in which precarious forms and precarious social…

June 2, 2017

The Art.Write.Now.2017 National Exhibition features the most creative visual and literary works by teens from across the country. These young artists received top honors in the prestigious Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, which were adjudicated this year by dozens of notable artists and writers including Mahogany Browne, Willie Cole, Leela Corman, Edwidge Danticat, Philip Lorca di Corcia, Thom Duffy, Ann Messner, Dread Scott, Sergio Troncoso, Hrag Vartanian, and John Corey Whaley. The exhibition spans two locations in New York City — Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons School of Design at The New School and Pratt Institute’s Pratt Manhattan Gallery —…

May 8, 2017

The Parsons Festival is an annual series of art and design events in which cutting-edge student work is presented to the Parsons community and the public. The festival takes place at the end of each academic year and includes thesis exhibitions and critiques, thought-provoking public programs, interactive installations, gallery openings, workshops, and special events leading up to Commencement. On campus will be the School of Art, Media, and Technology’s show in the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery and the School of Design Strategies’ Integrated Design Program capstone exhibition, “Intimate to Infinite,” curated by Paul D’Agostino, in the Arnold and Sheila…

April 8, 2017

I Will What I Want: Women, Design, and Empowerment explores the complex and sometimes-contradictory role that design has played from the mid-Twentieth Century, through second wave feminism, to present non-binary intersections in the pursuit of gender expression and equality for those who have uteruses, menstruate, and/or identify as women. The exhibition features objects, interfaces, and clothing that have sought to enable those who have uteruses, menstruate, or embrace womanhood as independent and creative subjects in a material world largely designed by and for men but consumed by those who identify as women. Design’s relationship with the individual and with societies…