NYU ART+EDUCATION CERTIFICATION

Events

NYU Art+Ed Zine Library + Urban Zine Garden Event, 2023

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With help from current students and alumni, the Art+Education program hosted an inaugural Urban Zine Garden event on May 13th, 2023 to celebrate and introduce our new Zine Library! The Zine Library is sourced from zines made by NYU Art+Education students and alumni over the last 5 years and specifically through the pandemic as a way of recognizing the creative ingenuity of staying connected and doing activist work through art during this time. 

The library includes self-published print and digital Zines; some are personal Zines, while others share a special project or collaboration; current students created Zines for their student teaching experience; alumni artist educators created Zines with their students remotely and in art classrooms around the city. There are also examples of Zines inspired by recent social movements that define our particular moment and time in the world: the Covid 19 pandemic, political commentary, community organizing efforts, and the insistence that Black Lives Matter. These Zines reflect a very particular moment of seeking connection across social, cultural, physical, and political divides and doing visual activist work. 

The Zine library will continue to grow and archive the experiences, urgencies, and conversations of our time through the intersection of art, education, and activism. If you would like to submit a Zine to include in the library please contact us at artadvising@nyu.edu.

Betty Yu Artist Talk

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Multimedia artist and educator Betty Yu shared her incredible work with NYU Art+Education students on Nov. 17th, including her personal work and collective efforts as a co-founder of Chinatown Art Brigade. After beginning with a land acknowledgement, Yu talked about her own family history and relationship to New York City. As an artist, Yu focuses on the use of digital and collective storytelling practices as a way to amplify the voices of those most impacted by housing injustice and gentrification, starting in Sunset Park, Brooklyn where she was raised. Her project, (Dis)Placed in Sunset Park is an interactive multimedia project that allows visitors to take a virtual tour of Sunset Park and experience the stories of Latinx and Chinese (im)migrants, workers and residents through short videos presented through an augmented reality technology (AR) app.

In addition to her own work, Yu is a member and co-founder of Chinatown Art Brigade (a collective of Asian American social justice artists) that centers art and culture as a way to support community-led campaigns around issues of gentrification and displacement. In her talk, Yu described CAB’s collaborations with CAAV and the Chinatown Tenants Union, which included collecting oral histories, story circles, resident-led walks, photography, audio recordings, community counter mapping, and video documentation as well as large scale public projections, augmented reality, 3-D storytelling, geo-located audio walks, and interactive mapping. In all her projects, Yu describes her commitment to engaging community members in ‘placekeeping’ (rather than place making) and the power of technologies that support collective participation and amplification of voices impacted by the predatory practices of corporate investment and mass displacement in New York City.

Click here for a list of New Media Resources that include online resources, tools, and software to use in your practice. 

Howardena Pindell exhibition at The Shed, 2020

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Folks from the Art+Education shared an impromptu visit to the Howardena Pindell exhibition, Rope/Fire/Water at The Shed. 
The works included in the show provide an unsparing look at the history and current realities of violence and oppression against Black bodies in the United States. At the same time, Pindell balances her uncompromising and insistent look at this brutality with other images that speak to Black joy, celebration and beauty. Connected to our investigation of Race, Education and the Politics of Visual Representation (link to Initial Cert class), this artist and exhibition gave us not only the opportunity to see an artist wrestling with the most pressing issues of our time through video, paint, text, and collage… but a chance to connect with each other in the real world – through our masks and 6 feet of distance! 

Installation with a mural and found objectscollage artwork Made of photos and textStudent looking at Paper and textile collage artworkStudent looking at Paper and textile collage artwork

Paper and textile collage artwork

Assembly with Shaun Leonardo and peer leaders from The Brooklyn Justice Initiative

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On April 19, 2018 artist and Assembly lead educator Shaun Leonardo, along with members of the program’s peer leadership group led a participatory presentation informed by the Assembly curriculum and co-curated by our collaborators.  Assembly is at once a public storefront gallery and an artist-led diversion program for court-involved youth in partnership with Brooklyn Justice Initiatives. Assembly seeks to dismantle the dominant narratives of the “criminal” through a series of workshops designed by artists Melanie Crean, Sable Smith and Shaun Leonardo, in collaboration with individuals who are court-involved, formerly incarcerated, or otherwise affected by the criminal justice system. Through a curriculum based on visual storytelling, participants translate personal narratives into performance in order to replace a culturally embedded conception of criminality with new language so that the mind and body may think, feel, and move in a way not defined by their previous experience with arrest and incarceration. For more information, see the Assembly website: Recess – Assembly

AssemblyArtEdColloquium2018Flyer

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Art+Education Remote Graduation – June 2020

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The 2019-20 academic year was unprecedented. The global pandemic disrupted our spring semester and plans to acknowledge a year of hard work, creativity, community, and collaboration as a group over shared food and drink. What is usually an important time to celebrate with friends and family, was reoriented to a remote party with adjunct tributes, student presentations of work, and a virtual yearbook! Our host, program collaborator Vivianne Njoku DJ’d, MC’d, and held space for all. 

Congratulations to the Art+Education class of 2020!

Screen shot of virtual celebrations and reflections of the class of 2020

Screen shoot of virtual graduation ceremony presentation

"Classes" slide from the virtual Graduation presentation

Screen shot of virtual graduation participants

Screen shoot of the end of the virtual graduation ceremony. Congratulations class of 2020!

Research in Art + Education Guest: Tomie Arai

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Zoom class with Tomie Arai

Our Spring 2020 Research in Art + Education class welcomed artist and activist Tomie Arai. Tomie shared her experiences using oral history and interviewing for her series, Portraits from Chinatown, and as a co-founder of Chinatown Art Brigade with artists Betty Yu and ManSee Kong. In our discussion, Tomie shared examples of working within communities, the importance of sharing stories in native voice and language, and collecting stories that connect the personal and the political such as experiences of gentrification in New York’s Chinatown and the history of immigration in San Francisco. These topics are helpful to consider as students developing strategies to connect with communities for the final capstone project. Given the realities of social distancing as a result of the coronavirus we have had to dramatically alter the way we think about working in and with communities and connecting with people through the research process. One student appreciated how open and honest she was with us as a class, “I enjoyed how transparent Tomie was in regards to navigating the challenges of working with communities. It was really generous of her to share her time, insight, and even images of her upcoming project.” 

Fieldwork: Student Artwork from PS 267

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Barney office wall with student artwork on display.

Our office walls at the Barney Building have been updated with beautiful student artwork! Art + Education Initial Certification graduate student Yuanyuan Xu completed her elementary student teaching this fall at PS 267 and hung artwork created by fifth-grade students. 

Closeup of student artwork.

Closeup of student artwork.

By looking at and discussing the artworks of Shantell Martin, Keith Haring and Wassily Kandinsky, fifth-grade students from PS 267 gained an understanding of pop art and graffiti, and had an exploratory conversation examining the relationship between artistic practices and immediate surroundings, as well as transforming acoustic and invisible sounds into an abstract representation. Special thanks to the students of PS 267 for letting us enjoy their artwork and to Yuanyuan for her great work student teaching at PS 267!

Barney office wall with student artwork on display.

Closeup of student artwork.

Barney office wall with student artwork on display.

Guggenheim Symposium: Teaching Modern and Contemporary Asian Art

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Students and teachers presenting on a stage during a symposium.
Image courtesy of the Guggenheim.

On January 11th, 2020, the Guggenheim hosted a symposium titled Teaching Modern and Contemporary Asian Art. The symposium launched a digital teaching resource that features 27 artists from the Guggenheim’s collection of modern and contemporary Asian art, and provides discussion questions, activity prompts, and historical context for educators in the classroom.

In 2019, Art + Education alum Nick Kozak was invited to be part of the Guggenheim’s Teacher Advisory Council (along with 10 other educators in the city), and helped the museum tailor their resources to better suit the needs of classroom teachers. During the 2020 symposium, Nick was invited to share a unit of study that he crafted using the Guggenheim’s teaching resources. 

During the symposium,  Nick had three students— Nate, Natalia, and Eric— join him on stage to talk about the work they created in response to learning about some of those resources. Nick shared how important it was that his students were involved in the symposium,”I think it is imperative that students get invited to education events like this, since they’re the ones who will be encountering all of this content in the classroom.” 

The Guggenheim’s digital teaching resource includes 27 artists, images and videos of artists and artworks, discussion questions, activity prompts, key terms, and maps. Subjects and themes include community, history, identity, materials and process, narrative, nature, place, and symbols. 

Watch Nick, Nate, Natalia, and Eric’s full symposium presentation here.

Screenshot from the Guggenheim's website, displaying a sample of the featured artists.

Map of Asia, courtesy of the Guggenheim

Hans Haacke Exhibition tour at New Museum, 2019

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A tour group gathers in the lobby of the New Museum.

NYU Art + Education alumni Peter Tresnan led a tour of the Hans Haacke: All Connected exhibition at the New Museum for Art + Ed alumni and current students. 

“For six decades, Haacke has been a pioneer in kinetic art, environmental art, Conceptual art, and institutional critique. This retrospective brings together more than thirty works from across the artist’s career, focusing in particular on the way he expanded the parameters of his practice to encompass the social, political, and economic structures in which art is produced, circulated, and displayed.”

Exhibition title for Hans Haacke: All Connected exhibition.

This fun and community-centered event was an opportunity for alumni and current students to meet, look at art together, and engage in conversation. 

Alumni Peter Tresnan leading a tour group at the New Museum. Alumni Peter Tresnan leading a tour group at the New Museum. Tour group looking at a Hans Haacke installation at the New Museum.  Three alumni looking at a Hans Haacke installation at the New Museum.

Activist Estates: A Radical History of Property in Loisaida

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Exhibition postcard for Activist Estates.

During one of their first classes of the semester, students from Critical Pedagogy, Artists, and the Public Sphere took a class took to the Loisaida Center to see the exhibition Activist Estates: a Radical History of Property in Loisaida.

Two students looking at a map of the Lower East Side.

“Activist Estates: A Radical History of Property in Loisaida is an exploration of buildings and properties in the Lower East Side that are celebrated sites of resistance. This exhibition curated and designed by the Architect Nandini Bagchee in partnership with Loisaida Center visualizes the narratives of a historic space-based activism via drawings, maps, models, photographs, manuals and posters.”

“An examination of participatory practices in New York City reveals the critical relationship between real estate, architecture and activism. In cities across the country, in the 1970’s, the devaluation of property created a vacuum of ownership. Vacant lots, storefronts, schoolhouses, factories and abandoned tenements in New York City became havens for experimental, communal practices. Amid current debates about urban justice and access to the city, Activist Estates critically re-evaluates the place of counter-institutional practices that shape the landscape of New York City.” –loisaida.org

An ongoing video series featuring activists of color, ‘Living Archive of Activism in the LES,’ produced by Dipti Desai and Priyanka Dasgupta,  is included in the exhibition.

Priyanka Dasgupta at the Loisaida exhibition.

Image of artist with his mural Lower East Side: Portal to America, located in the main lobby of El Bohio, 1981. Map of downtown alternative art spaces. Image of Loisaida in 1979.   Exhibition at Loisaida.

Student reading label text at the exhibition.  

Students reading label text at the exhibition.