The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is pleased to announce the winners of the 2014-2015 Vera List New School Art Collection Writing Awards, bestowed annually to honor the best New School student writing inspired by works in the university’s art collection. In a first, this year’s competition called for responses to a specific artwork: the new site-specific installation For Comrades and Lovers by Glenn Ligon. The monumental argon gas text piece installed in early May 2015 in the University Center’s Event Café explores Walt Whitman’s seminal 1855 poem collection Leaves of Grass.

After a successful expansion of the competition last year—especially the broadening of what it means to compose an “essay”—this year’s edition accepted non-text based, visual entries. Submissions were garnered from across The New School, among them Parsons, Lang and The New School for Public Engagement. All submissions actively addressed Ligon’s engagement with Whitman’s seminal text and found inspiration in the Vera List Center’s 2013-2015 focus theme, Alignment.

The 2014-2015 Vera List New School Art Collection Writing Awards were bestowed on the following students:

First Prize ($400)
Nelesi Rodriguez, Schools of Public Engagement, MA in Media Studies
for her computer program America for Comrades and Lovers

Second Prize ($200)
Taylor Wilson, Eugene Lang College, BA in Screen Studies
for her film and poem The Devil’s Spine

2014-2015 Jury

Luis Jaramillo, Director of the School of Writing, Assistant Professor of Writing, School of Writing, The New School for Public Engagement
Carin Kuoni, Director/Curator, Vera List Center for Art and Politics
Joshua Mack, Vera List Center Advisory Committee
Rosemary O’Neill, Associate Professor of Art History, School of Art and Design History and Theory, Parsons The New School for Design
Silvia Rocciolo, Curator, The New School Art Collection
Wendy S. Walters, Associate Professor of Literary Studies, Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts