CDRL’s major project between 2015-19 will be to produce a book and mobile website that will explore, from multiple perspectives, the dozen site-specific commissioned works that form the nucleus of The New School Art Collection. The university has a longstanding tradition of supporting the creation of new art in public spaces, beginning in 1931 with the commissioning of works in the landmarked Joseph Urban building by Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco, American artist Thomas Hart Benton, and Ecuadorian artist Camilo Egas. Extending this tradition of incorporating site-specific works of art throughout the university’s campus, The New School Art Collection has since commissioned site-specific works by artists including Gonzalo Fonseca, Sol LeWitt, Dave Muller, Martin Puryear and Michael Van Valkenburgh, Brian Tolle, and Kara Walker. Recent commissions for The New School’s University Center, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), include site-specific installations by Alfredo Jaar, Glenn Ligon, Rita Mcbride, and Agnes Denes. 

Housed within and across the university, yet pointing far beyond it, these twelve monumental works span nearly 100 years, from 1930 to 2015. In their diversity and complexity, these projects may be seen as pulse-points from which to activate an interlocking set of issues in aesthetics, urbanism, design, and pedagogy. Engaging writers, theorists, and critics from a variety of disciplines to reflect on the art, the artists, and their contexts, our book intends to take the twelve works as crucibles for thinking about visual practices, institutional frames, the city, and their mutually constitutive histories.  

Our parallel website project intends to facilitate a virtual walking tour of the commissioned works, as well as providing a virtual space for archival materials relating to the commissions, and further reflections about their value and meaning written by students, faculty and the public. 

We are very grateful to Joshua Sapan and Ann Foley for their meaningful contribution and support of the CDRL/The New School Art Collection book publication project. Their generous donation will significantly help us further our goal. Additional thanks to Mark Gibbel, Chief Development Officer and The New School Development and Alumni Relations team, Provost Tim Marshall and Vice-Provost, Pat Baxter for their continued advocacy and support.

Parsons Students Help Launch project: http://cdrlab.parsons.edu/?p=400
Spotlight on Ligon’s “For Comrades and Lovers”: http://cdrlab.parsons.edu/?p=402
Editors Hired for Book and Website: http://cdrlab.parsons.edu/?p=394
Pablo Helguera Mentors CDRL through Pedagogical Workshop: http://cdrlab.parsons.edu/?p=391

CDRL wishes to thank The New School’s Provost Office for awarding us a 2015-16 Mutual Mentoring Grant, which supported this workshop.