Conference
International Conference on Black Studies in Art and Design Education
March 26–March 27
Parsons The New School For Design, 79 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10003
On March 26 and 27, 2011, Parsons The New School for Design will host the first international conference to consider the reasons for this gap: “Black Studies in Art and Design Education: Past Gains, Present Resistance, Future Challenges.” Organized by Parsons professors Coco Fusco and Yvonne Watson, the conference will feature artists Pepón Osorio, Damon Rich and Parsons professors Bill Gaskins and Leslie Hewitt; industrial designers Stephen Burks, Noel Mayo and Parsons professor Tony Whitfield; and scholars Mabel Wilson, Craig Wilkins, Leslie King-Hammond, Jennifer Gonzalez, and Susan Cahan. The featured artists and designers are at the cutting edge of contemporary culture but Black communities and their cultural histories continue to be a marginal presence in art and design schools.
“The artists, designers and scholars we have brought together for this conference share a commitment to finding ways of making Black Studies part of every student's education,” said Fusco. “Parsons is uniquely poised to address these matters, due to its location in a university with a longstanding commitment to social justice and in a city with one of the largest urban Black populations in the country.”
The conference will take place at the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons, 66 Fifth Avenue, and is free and open to the public. For more information please visit the conference website.
More info: finearts.parsons.edu
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This sounds fascinating. I am an anthropologist who studies the intersection of race and space (urban renewal, planning. etc.) and was looking for conferences on using abandoned containers as possible housing units (among other things)-and came across this! Wow. My cultural expertise is the African Diaspora and 'boy is this a needed conference!" I wish I could be there and would love to get more information on how it was organized, who will speak, etc.
Awesome possibilities here! Hopefully, conversations will emerge regarding the exclusionary practices that eliminate or marginalize the insights from the Black artistic community. Move the dialogue on social justice past the hand-wringing and debate on whether there are any "qualified" Black cultural representatives (art & design educators), and work on the politics of inclusion. Get the art and design students out of the classroom and into the Black community. If professors are not concerned that they lack the multicultural skills to direct the students in the context of both classroom and community, do not give them a pass; otherwise, they will not respond healthily to the needs of the community and their students. Put together an action and implementation plan, and execute it asap. Congratulations on this bold step.
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