The Vera List Center Forum is an international, annual convening of key participants in the field of art and politics. Taking place Thursday, October 20 through Saturday, October 22, 2022, in person and online, this year’s forum is organized within the framework of the VLC’s two-year Focus Theme, Correction*. We present the 2022–2024 Vera List Center Fellows, announce the 2022–2024 Jane Lombard Prize Recipient and the Jane Lombard Fellows (finalists for the Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice), and celebrate the Center’s history of art and politics.

The Forum launches on Thursday, October 20, with the opening of Labor of Love: Vera List Center for Art and Politics at 30. Reflecting on the Center’s history, this exhibition brings together materials from the VLC’s rich archive and an immersive video installation by Moroccan French artist and 2011–2013 VLC Fellow Bouchra Khalili, which touch on five themes that continue to shape the VLC’s work—democracy, knowledge, identity, ecology, and care. We conclude Day One with a panel conversation on new artistic environments, with speakers includingJane Hait, founder, Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), Shani Peters, co-founder, The Black School, and Reuben Roqueñi, Director of Transformative Change Programs, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF), Center for Native Arts and Cultures.

Day Two includes performative reenactments across the university campus of key moments from VLC’s history, followed by the announcement of the 2022–2024 Jane Lombard Prize Recipient and Jane Lombard Fellows, presented by curator and jury member Wanda Nanibush, and finally, a keynote lecture on 30 years of art and politics by Raqs Media Collective co-founder, artist, and curator Shuddhabrata Sengupta.

Day Three includes presentations by the five recently announced 2022–2024 Fellows: VLC Fellows Carmen Amengual (Los Angeles) and Anna Martine Whitehead (Chicago); Borderlands Fellows Beatriz Cortez (Los Angeles) and Fox Maxy (San Diego); and Boris Lurie Fellow Omar Mismar (Beirut). They are joined by 2022–2023 Sámi Fellow Matti Aikio and ArtsLink International Fellow Aleksei Borisionok. We close out the Forum with a celebratory dinner and concert featuring performances by jazz trio Sistazz of the Nitty Gritty, and an in-progress preview of Anna Martine Whitehead’s FORCE! an opera in three acts.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20

5–6:30 pm EDT
Opening Reception: Labor of Love: Vera List Center for Art and Politics at 30
On view October 17–November 27, 2022
Open daily 12–6 pm EDT, Thursdays late until 8 pm
Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries
Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons School of Design, The New School
66 Fifth Avenue, New York

The Vera List Center was founded in 1992 in direct response to the pressing debates of the day on freedom of speech, identity politics, and public support of the arts. In this exhibition, we carve out five themes that continue to shape everything we do—democracy, knowledge, identity, ecology, and care. In an expansive timeline, each area is illuminated through archival and documentary material, tracking whether and how these debates and topics have shifted and evolved. The exhibition features Moroccan French artist and 2011–2013 VLC Fellow Bouchra Khalili’s seminal project The Speeches Series for the first time in New York in its entirety. Consisting of three videos—Mother Tongue, Words on the Streets, and Living Labour—the installation examines the experiences of migrants in three cities, Paris, Genoa, and New York City, through the act of performing political speeches and texts. A VLC Fellow Library completes the exhibition, with nearly three decades of artists’ publications that speak to the intersections of art and politics.

6:30–8 pm EDT
Make Room!
Panel conversation
The Faculty Lounge
University Center, The New School
63 Fifth Avenue, 7th Floor, New York

As we celebrate our founder Vera G. List’s vision and chart new paths for the future of the Center, we look at art spaces emerging around us led by philanthropists and artists that take up the mantle of creating new environments for not only experimenting with and experiencing art, but also making room for new ways of doing so. Confirmed speakers include Jane Hait, founder, Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), Shani Peters, co-founder, The Black School, and Reuben Roqueñi, Director of Transformative Change Programs, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF), Center for Native Arts and Cultures.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21

2–6 pm EDT
An Argument in Time: 30 Years of Art and Politics at the Vera List Center, a Score
New School students, faculty and staff read and bring to life quotes from notable speakers at the VLC over the years, beginning with a “Do Women Dare?,” a 1969 speech by Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972). This speech traces the VLC’s beginnings back to its predecessor, Humans Relations Center at The New School, and the history of radical public discourse at the Center.

2:45 pm, Johnson Hall, 66 West 12th Street lobby
3:45 pm, Arnold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, lobby
4:45 pm, University Center, lobby
5:45 pm, 66 Fifth Avenue, Aaronson Gallery, hallway

6:30–7 pm EDT
2022–2024 Jane Lombard Prize Recipient and Jane Lombard Fellows Announcement
Kellen Auditorium
Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons School of Design, The New School
66 Fifth Avenue, New York

The New School’s Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice is awarded by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics to an artist or group of artists in recognition of a particular project’s long-term impact, boldness, and artistic excellence. International in scope, it constitutes a unique meeting of scholars and students, the general public, and globally significant artists. Jury member Wanda Nanibush announces this cycle’s Jane Lombard Prize Recipient and Jane Lombard Fellows, each of whom are finalists for the prize.

7–8 pm EDT
Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Raqs Media Collective. Emendations: 30 Years of Art and Politics
Kellen Auditorium
Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons School of Design, The New School
66 Fifth Avenue, New York

Founded the same year as the Vera List Center for Art and Politics but halfway across the globe, the Raqs Media Collective has sustained a practice in media, contemporary art, and curation since 1992. In this illustrated 30th Anniversary Keynote Lecture, Raqs co-founder Shuddhabrata Sengupta speaks to the ways in which the constancy of practice requires its own acts of mending, of correction, and of changing course.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22

4:30–6 pm EDT
A Time for Correction*, Introducing the 2022–2024 VLC Fellows
Kellen Auditorium
Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons School of Design, The New School
66 Fifth Avenue, New York

Looking towards the future of the Vera List Center, the third day of the Vera List Center Forum 2022 introduces the 2022–2024 VLC Fellows: Carmen Amengual (Los Angeles) and Anna Martine Whitehead (Chicago); Boris Lurie Fellow Omar Mismar (Beirut, Lebanon); and Borderlands Fellows Beatriz Cortez (Los Angeles) and Fox Maxy (San Diego). They are joined by 2022–2023 Sámi Fellow Matti Aikio and ArtsLink International Fellow Aleksei Borisionok. In this first encounter with Vera List Center audiences, the fellows present on their distinct practices as they embark on developing their fellowship projects. 

Appointed under the VLC’s 2022–2024 Focus Theme Correction*, each of the fellowship projects—in form and content—explores the perils and potentials of the political, social, and metaphorical implications of “correction.” The fellowship projects, which range from a feature film to an opera, are in different stages of research and production. Each project takes speculative, poetic, critical, and activist approaches to correction, reconsidering existing histories, systems, and practices of correction as well as our relationship with it. Through their projects, the fellows contribute to the intellectual foundation of the VLC, now in its 30th year, and to the public’s understanding and engagement with creative practices and pressing issues through the lens of correction.

6–8 pm EDT
Viva Vera! Celebratory 30th Anniversary Dinner for All
The Bernard and Irene Schwartz Commons Cafeteria
University Center, The New School
63 Fifth Avenue, 2nd Floor, New York

8–9 pm EDT
FORCE! an opera in three acts with Sistazz of the Nitty Gritty
Tishman Auditorium
University Center, The New School
63 Fifth Avenue, New York

We close out the Forum with a celebratory dinner for all, Viva Vera!, hosted by Mary Watson, Executive Dean, Schools of Public Engagement, and a concert. Bridging Vera List Center past and future, Angel Bat Dawid, who first presented at the VLC in 2020 as part of Training for the Not-Yet: Protocols in the Making and is a collaborator of 2022–2024 VLC Fellow Anna Martine Whitehead on their fellowship project, returns to The New School with Sistazz of the Nitty Gritty performing an in-progress preview of Whitehead’s FORCE! an opera in three acts.