On occasion of the exhibition The Storyteller at Parsons, The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics are pleased to present the National Theater of the United States of America (NTUSA). The company performs an excerpt from their new play, THE GOLDEN VEIL, followed by a discussion about their practice.

Written by company member Normandy Sherwood and created collaboratively by the ensemble, THE GOLDEN VEIL is what NTUSA refers to as “cautionary entertainment.” A distillation of the company’s design aesthetic and their re-writing of the history of American entertainment, it is a three-person play performed on an entirely hand-crafted, collapsible set. The play explores the picaresque narrative in the tradition of Nathaniel West’s A Cool Million and Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon and the Adventures of Baron Munchausen. At the same time, it illuminates how teller and circumstances of telling shape the stories and myths we share as Americans.

Recently awarded the 2007 Spalding Gray Award honoring innovative theatrical vision, NTUSA is an ensemble theater company that democratically creates new works for traditional and non-traditional spaces. In the past seven years, their focus on theatrical environment has been matched by a devotion to the exploration of American history and the history of American entertainment. NTUSA’s theatrical creations are intensely visual and densely layered spectacles which are laced with the questions and arguments they bring to the exploration of each subject. This multiplicity of image and argument invites a complicit audience to engage with each piece as an active participant.

On occasion of the exhibition The Storyteller at Parsons, The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics are pleased to present a talk by Aleksandra Wagner. Grounded in her memory of a purchase of A Thousand and One Nights in the Serbian translation by Stanislav Vinaver, Wagner chooses the shortest month of a year, February, to tell stories about the acts of storytelling in education and in psychoanalysis. One story a night, one page each, shared on the night of March 3.

Aleksandra Wagner is an Assistant Professor of Sociology, Bachelor’s Program, The New School for General Studies, and a Member of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis. Wagner is the editor of our recent publication Considering Forgiveness.

On occasion of the exhibition The Storyteller at Parsons, The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics are pleased to present a talk by Pablo Helguera. Providing an “unauthorized biography” of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Helguera digs out little-known stories around the remarkable curators and other colorful figures of its past, while at the same time reflecting on the social role of individuals in museums and the way in which they influence the reading of objects and the larger narratives of collections.

Pablo Helguera is a New York-based artist working with installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, and performance. His work focuses in a variety of topics ranging from history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory and the absurd, in formats that are widely varied including the lecture, museum display strategies, musical performances, and written fiction.

On occasion of the exhibition The Storyteller at Parsons, the Vera List Center is pleased to announce a colloquium exploring artists’ participation in–and reconstruction of–documentary processes to illuminate new perspectives on historical events. The colloquium, organized by iCI (Independent Curators International), will be held Saturday, January 30 and includes artists Steve Mumford and Liisa Roberts as well as curators Claire Gilman and Margaret Sundell with moderator Kate Fowle, Executive Director of ICI.

Please note: this event is free and open to the public, though seating is limited. Please RSVP to Chelsea Haines, Public Programs Manager at 212-254-8200.

The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics will also present a number of public programs, including discussions with Pablo Helguera and Aleksandra Wagner on the role of storytelling in their practice, and a series of screenings of featured works. The events are sponsored by the Vera List Center and the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons The New School for Design in collaboration with ICI, the organizer of the exhibition.