The Vera List New School Art Collection Writing Awards are bestowed to New School students for the best essays inspired by works in the university’s art collection. The awards were established in 1996 by the late Vera G. List, a life trustee of The New School, to celebrate the creative and critical thinking of New School students, and the impact of contemporary art in The New School’s academic life. They are directed by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics.

The 2023 edition, written by Parsons Photography student Ashley Zhang, reflects on The New School Art Collection’s 2014 commission of Alfredo Jaar’s iconic Searching for Africa in LIFE, permanently installed in the seventh-floor reading room in the University Center’s Arnhold Forum Library. Zhang’s essay explores the power and potential of the photograph to preserve personal and collective legacies, while examining LIFE‘s exclusion of African subjects, as revealed through Jaar’s installation, as a form of cultural erasure.

2023 Writing Award Recipient
Ashley Zhang, MFA Photography, Parsons School of Design

2023 Writing Award Finalists
Kari Melendez Duran, Arts in Context, Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts
Yuqi Liu, BFA Illustration, Parsons School of Design