By Any Name (PDF) celebrates The New School’s 90th anniversary at a time when the university contends with a highly publicized period of internal criticism and activism. The voices assembled in this publication examine the school’s legacy of progressive pedagogy and institutional policy, and ask that it remain a catalyst for social transformation in the future.

The related exhibition and series of workshops and lectures, took place at The New School, October 19-24, 2009.

Posted on November 18, 2009

As The New School considers its past, psychics Sherene Schostak and Kiki T consider its futures. Throughout the week, psychic services will be available to any member of the university community. In the space of free 15-minute consultations, short- and long-term predictions regarding grades, careers, change, etc. will be offered in the intimate, comfortable setting of Parts & Labor Gallery. Signup sheets available at all times; walk-ins welcome.

Presented as part of the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on October 7, 2009

In this re-visitation of John Cage’s 1961 sound work WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?, sounds of The New School, sampled from recordings collected across campus, are re-configured through processes involving various methods of chance and randomization. Cage was first asked to respond to the questions in the title when he addressed art students at the evening school of Pratt Institute. He has also described the resulting piece as emerging from conversations with friends about the mutually influential relationship between art, science and nature.

Echoing the structural elements of Cage’s original piece, this response to the questions “where are we going and what are we doing? ” draws on site recordings made during sound walks through The New School. These recordings are superimposed on each other using chance procedures and amplified as a two-channel composition onto the street around The New School’s main building.  The live ambient sounds function as the performer does in Cage’s work. While drawing attention to ongoing shifts in time they also encourage attention to and reflection on the conditions that produce those shifts–conditions that may themselves, be shifted.

When no events are taking place in the gallery and Parts & Labor lies inactive and mute, these recordings will emanate  from the vicinity of the truck, evocative of the institution and the activities around it.

Presented as part of the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on October 7, 2009

Join Bichlbaum’s class as it consults resident psychic Sherene Schostak about their own future and the future of their teacher.

Presented as part of the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on October 7, 2009

The New School hosts Peter M. Rutkoff, Professor of American Studies at Kenyon College, to deliver a lecture commemorating the 90th Anniversary of the founding of The New School. Professor Rutkoff wrote New School: A History of The New School for Social Research, the seminal history of The New School and the only publication to deal with the university’s storied history in depth. The co-author of the only published monograph on the history of The New School, Rutkoff considers the heritage of the university on its 90th anniversary. In light of current debates on the challenges posed by urban schooling, pedagogy, and philosophy he will reexamine the influence of The New School in progressive education. Can the teachings of John Dewey (on the 150th anniversary year of his birthday) continue to serve as a guide to the direction of progressive education? He will draw on examples of school and university alliances and the on-going importance of experiential pedagogy in contemporary education. He will, to cite Zorah Neale Hurston, urge American schools to leave the classroom.

Sponsored by The New School and held in conjunction with the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on October 7, 2009

Part of the Eugene Lang First Year Seminar Series focusing on the history of The New School. Seminar Fellow Tess Harrison leads a discussion about the nature of institutionalized education and the distinctions between pedagogical and experiential knowledge.

Presented as part of the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on October 7, 2009

Part of the Eugene Lang First Year Seminar Series focusing on the history of The New School. Seminar Fellow Ali Krasners leads a discussion about citizenship, leadership and community at The New School.

Presented as part of the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on October 7, 2009

An informal gathering among faculty, librarians and archivists of The New School who will address how notions of institutional memory and identity are created through libraries and archives. Examining the way bodies of knowledge are structured and organized, the participants will also explore possibilities for the future of information science, and consider how the social production of knowledge contributes to identity – on both the level of the individual, and in society at large.

Presented as part of the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on September 20, 2009

This class is a query on the nature of history, interrogating the relationship of the things we collect to how we construct our pasts. We explore archives broadly defined, from the contents of family photo albums to vast collections housed in libraries to the design of buildings that contain such collections. Ultimately, the city itself is examined as an archive in its own right-a vibrant collection of interrelated artifacts that records the selective presence of the past in built form. Students visit archival sites and undertake projects that consider the history, condition, scope, format, and design of archives in New York City.

Presented as part of the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on September 20, 2009

Since the 1930s, artist-instructors such as Berenice Abbott, Thomas Hart Benton, Stuart Davis, Lewis Mumford, Jose Clemente Orozco, and Ralph Pearson have brought a resolve of professionalism to The New School. Legendary art historian Meyer Schapiro’s lectures of 1936-1952 thrilled a generation with their sense of philosophical dialogue. Painter Robert Motherwell said, “It was in order to study with Meyer Schapiro that I came to New York.” Since then, The New School has hosted international art luminaries from Joseph Beuys to John Currin to Trisha Donnelly. Yet, the institution now finds itself at a crossroads of purpose and identity. How should it go forward in art education? What is “academic” and what is “professional”? What has the university been doing right? What has the university been doing wrong? Artist-instructor John Zinsser hosts an open discussion with current and former New School students, asking questions essential to the ongoing mission of the arts at The New School.

Presented as part of the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on September 20, 2009

Visitors are invited to explore how information is gathered, compiled, edited and ultimately, archived. In collaboration with two resident artists, participants are asked to describe an aspect of the installation which will-for the duration of the workshop-include a live model. Using color and drawing as their tools, the artists will then interpret the participants’ verbal communications through their own visual associations. In this way, the gallery will become an archive of itself, embodying the process of information collection, interpretation, and presentation.

Presented as part of the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on September 20, 2009

As The New School celebrates its 90th anniversary, this collaboration between Parts & Labor and the Vera List Center features a series of free events hosted in Parts & Labor’s mobile gallery, a truck parked outside Tishman auditorium. Discussions, lectures, and workshops presented inside the truck and in adjacent rooms in The New School’s “signature building” (designed by Joseph Urban in 1930) bring together a cast of contributors, members of the university community, and the public to examine the founding principles of The New School and to address the question of how these principles have fared over time. These participatory events investigate the institutional and pedagogical history of the university as they have grown alongside a community and its urban site. Through a variety of interactive strategies participants initiate reflections on recent calls for change at The New School by projecting them against the backdrop of the university’s unique history of critical engagement with the concepts of newness and change.

Parts & Labor’s stop at The New School is one in a series of encounters unfolding during a traveling exhibition that will subsequently tour the country and explore other site- and community-specific experiences of the transformation of the American landscape. In its New York manifestation, called “By Any Name,” the project takes the concept of a university archive and re-imagines it as a representational installation with the power to evoke–and possibly, to jog–institutional memory, serving as an aesthetic, systemic response to the diverse missions, traditions, and images now associated with The New School.

Composed of recycled texts and computer equipment, materials drawn from The New School library, and a new text penned by members of The New School community, this week-long on-campus environment involves a range of major and lesser-known events, figures, ideas, opinions, and reminiscences which inform the legacy of the university. “By Any Name” invites both The New School community and the general public to consider: How does The New School remember its past, and how can its approach to the past change its approach to the future? “By Any Name” insists that the university’s legacy be subject to further documentation.

These events are presented as part of the Vera List Center’s 2009/2010 program cycle “Speculating on Change.”

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Unless noted below, all events take place in Parts & Labor Gallery at The New School, parked outside of Tishman Auditorium at 66 West 12th Street, and are free and open to the public.

Consultation/Séance
The Future
Monday, October 19 through Friday, October 23, 2009
Open daily, 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Featuring psychics Sherene Schostak and Kiki T

Sound Installation
WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?
Monday, October 19 through Saturday, October 24, 2009, Open daily
A project by Vera List Center Fellows Lin + Lam and Robert Sember

Drawing Workshop
Thomas Bosket
Monday, October 19, 2009 – 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Discussion Group
Ali Krasners on the history of The New School
Monday, October 19, 2009 – 4:00 to 4:50 p.m.

Discussion Group
Tess Harrison on the history of The  New School
Monday, October 19, 2009 – 5:00 to 5:50 p.m.

Lecture
Peter M. Rutkoff
The New School at 90: What Would Dewey Do?
Monday, October 19, 2009 – 6:00 to 8:30 p.m.
Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street
Reception to follow in Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th Street, 5th Floor (enter at 66 West 12th Street)

Workshop
Andy Bichlbaum’s Class, sans Andy
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 – 3:00 to 5:40 p.m.
Featuring psychic Sherene Schostak

Open Discussion
John Zinsser
The New York Art World and The New School: History and Possibility
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 – 1:00 to 2:45 p.m.
Parsons The New School for Design, Kellen Auditorium
Sheila C. Johnson Design Center
66 Fifth Avenue at 13th Street

Roundtable
The Librarians’ Circle
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 – 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.
The New School, Orozco Room
66 West 12th Street, 7th floor

Class Session
Joseph Heathcott: The City as Archive
Thursday, October 22, 2009 – 12:00 to 1:40 p.m.

Conversation and Art Walk
Art in the Institution/Art as the Institution:
The New School Art Collection and its Institutional Life
Thursday, October 22, 2009 – 4:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Vera List Courtyard, 66 West 12th Street, ground floor

Posted on September 20, 2009