September 2014: Lab members gathered for a Fall overnight retreat at Mildred’s Lane. Two outcomes developed from retreat sessions were: the creation of 2 Graduate Fellowship positions to reenvision CDRL’s website and publicly articulate the mission of the Lab; the idea for a Curatorial Slam event in Spring 2015 that would highlight various curatorial practices across The New School. Retreat agenda available here.
Mission
The mission of the Curatorial Design Research Lab at Parsons is to create new opportunities for The New School community to engage in research towards designing innovative curatorial platforms that generate trans-disciplinary learning opportunities, provoke critical and cross-cultural public dialogues about the function of visual and material culture in contemporary daily life, and ultimately inspire “hands-on” participatory design projects that aim to effect change within local and global communities.
About the Lab
The Curatorial Design Research Lab is formed by individual members whose affiliations include the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Kellen Design Archives, The New School Archives & Special Collections, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, the New School Art Collection, the Skybridge Curatorial Project, select Parsons’ graduate programs, and Eugene Lang College’s Visual Studies Program. All Lab members work in tandem with Parsons and New School faculty, students from multidisciplinary academic programs, as well as a range of significant cultural venues and diverse communities throughout the world. Dedicated to deepening our collective understanding of visual and material culture’s capacity to transform global socio-political conditions, Lab collaborators generate and exchange scholarly research, institutional resources and multidisciplinary expertise to design coordinated curatorial platforms.
