NYU ART+EDUCATION CERTIFICATION

performance

The Pink Slip Project

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BIPOC students are disproportionately suspended in U.S. schools. During the pandemic, in-school suspensions have dipped while out of school suspensions have continued to steadily rise. Once school returns to in-person, students will continue to be unjustly punished in school. Ideally, school should be a place of learning and growth. Suspensions stand in the way of that goal, actively taking students away from their education and failing to provide them with the support they need to thrive.


A public performance in a park. People dressed in pink with a large bulletin board saying 'Suspended'

The Pink Slip Project: Avalon Kenny, Molly Rutledge, Mary Anderson, Zoe Stern

In an attempt to unveil the reality of this unjust system, The Pink Slip Project included a public performance/intervention using pink suspension slips and a QR code linking to online resources. This is  participatory “installation” had multiple methods of engaging the public and encouraging reflection and action to address the inequities surrounding public school suspensions and their implementation. Bright pink slips made people curious about the information we were sharing and interested in participating. Passersby could sit in a typical school desk to fill out their own pink slips sharing a personal experience of school suspension or to learn more. Participants also helped identify alternatives for suspensions by writing ideas on the suspension slips and  in chalk and used our desk installation to share their own stories.  Throughout the day, each of the Pink Slip Project collaborators were talking to people about their stories and engaging in dialogue and advocacy for more just suspension methods including discussing restorative justice methods and other alternatives to suspension.

Image of a bulletin board with many pink slips attached to it. The top of the board says "Suspended"A detail of a 'pink slip' suspension card from the bulletin board

There is also a more anonymous and student led side of this project. Pink Slip Project collaborators worked with New York City high school students to create the materials for the installation and conducted a series of interviews and focus groups to  archive their voices and experiences with suspension. These high school perspectives were integral to designing the public performance piece at Washington Square Park. 

Screenshot of the project taken from Instagram. A woman sits at a school desk in front of a board that says 'Suspended' A Gif file includes 4 images of women dressed in pink sitting at a school desk in front of a bulletin board that says 'Suspended'

Image of posters that are on the ground. They include statistics and pie charts describing suspension rates in New York City

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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Alumni Project: Nick Kozak, Citizens of Earth

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Citizens of Earth is a social sculpture developed by Art + Education alum Nick Kozak that focuses on dialogue about immigration and ancestry stories.

Group of Students from Citizens of Earth project.

Citizens of Earth is enacted by Student Ambassadors from Manhattan Hunter Science High School who initiate conversations with the public by sharing and asking questions about immigration stories. Participants are encouraged to talk about their family histories and personal stories and then invited to create a global passport for our planet, complete with a photo and official stamp.  The first iteration of Citizens of Earth was held at FIGMENT NYC on Governor’s Island in 2015 and 2017. Most recently, it was installed at the Queens Museum at the Mobile Studio in 2017.  

Also view: Citizens of Earth: Studio in the Park, Welcome to Earth, and Communicating en Masse

Outside of the Citizens of Earth documentation center Passport processing station Students running the passport processing documentation center Closeup of passport from Citizen of Earth project

Alumni Project: Tiffany Jones, Dear America

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The Dear America Artivism Fellowship is an internship for high school students designed by Artivist, City-As-School Art Educator, and NYU Art+Education alumna Tiffany Lenoi Jones and Artist Shaun Leonardo.

Tiffany Jones presenting on Dear American: A City As and New Museum Collaboration.

The fellowship is designed to provide space for a close examination of political art practices by socially engaged artists working today including Joseph Cuillier and the Black School, Miguel Luciano, Kamu Ware, and Sol Aramendi. Each Fellow gains an understanding of the various ways in which the boundaries between art and activism are blurred when artists engage audiences in political education, awareness, and motivation. Each week Fellows tackle and explore the root causes of social injustice issues that impact New York City through research, discussions, writing, and art making.

Fellows develop and propose their own localized projects and leave with actionable steps toward achieving their artivist goals, which include but are not limited to, transforming the impact of social injustice in their communities.

The final proposals are presented during a public conference hosted by the New Museum.

Student speaking about Dear America project Student working during a Dear America session. Students working during a Dear America session. Visiting facilitator speaking to students. Four students posing with their artwork. Students working during a Dear America session.

Mirror/Echo/Tilt Workshop

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Mirror/Echo/Tilt is a performance and pedagogical project created by artists Melanie Crean, Shaun Leonardo, and Sable Elyse Smith to examine the language and gestures used to describe experiences of arrest and incarceration. This collaborative project between artists, educators and individuals affected by the justice system uses magical realism as a framework. Performative vignettes are translated through the body and recorded in vacant former institutions such as empty prisons and courthouses to consider how individuals might assert agency in the reclamation of physical and psychic space. Taking the form of video, performance, text, archive and curriculum, the work envisions new language around the way we engage with mass incarceration and inserts counter narratives into the dominant media landscape, which commonly alienates and criminalizes black and brown bodies. 

In this workshop, artist Shaun Leonardo with members of the Brooklyn Justice Initiative at Recess Art introduced elements of the project to Art+Ed students as a way to imagine new interactions and ways of engaging the body as a site of historical memory, trauma and possibility.

Mirror/Echo/Tilt website

New Museum: Mirror/Echo/Tilt

Workshop hosted by Shaun Leonardo and peer leaders from The Brooklyn Justice Initiative.

Nick Kozak: Taken for Grant-ed

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Nick Kozak is an Artist Educator working at Manhattan Hunter Science High School. He attended the State University of New York at New Paltz, where he studied Art History and Art Education. Later, he completed a Masters in Art + Education at New York University, where he is currently part of the adjunct faculty. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife, cat, and growing collection of comic books. More than often he makes food for people. Nick also makes art.

Poster for "Taken for Grant-ed" video festival of student work about U.S. Grant.

ART HISTORY – Grant Project

As part of the Art History class Kozak teaches at Manhattan Hunter Science, focused on contemporary art exhibitions and time-specific work, this year, students worked with the National Parks Service (NPS), specifically looking at the General Grant National Memorial (aka, Grant’s Tomb) located at on Riverside Drive at 122nd street.

The culminating project for this exploration of a facet of US History took the form of making corrective and comedic videos celebrating our 18th president and the post-Civil War era. The student videos live on in the National Parks Service website.

Students at a tour of General Grant National Memorial (aka, Grant’s Tomb).

Attendance is rather lacking at this NPS site compared to Ellis Island, Federal Hall, and more recently, Hamilton Grange. Additionally, Grant’s legacy as a general and president is often overrun with misconceptions and misrepresentations. Together with park rangers, 40 students trekked through history to uncover fascinating truths about Ulysses S. Grant, finding that he had helped to introduce civil rights legislation half a century before the rest of the nation ready to have that discussion.

Students on a class tour.

Students started this project not really sure how our nation’s historic sites and memorials tie into actual history. Through this unit they gained a better understanding of the roles that presidential figures play in the present and how they’re remembered, as they become the past.Photo of the editing process of the U.S. Grant project. Past projects undertaken by this class have included collaborations with Concerned New Yorkers, Art 21, and Pioneer Works to motivate socially active projects.

Artist Talk: Pablo Helguera, 2016

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Pablo Helguera and his artistic practice.

Pablo Helguera, an interdisciplinary artist working with installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, socially engaged art and performance, gave an artist talk at the Art+Education Program this spring. Helguera’s work focuses on a variety of topics ranging from history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory and the absurd, in formats that are widely varied including the lecture, museum display strategies, musical and theatrical performances, and written fiction. His The School of Panamerican Unrest, a nomadic think-tank that physically crossed the continent by car from Anchorage, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, best exemplifies the intersection between his teaching and art practice. Covering almost 20,000 miles, it is considered one of the most extensive public art projects on record and a pioneering example of socially engaged art.

Pablo Helguera at his presentation.

Pablo Helguera presenting to a group of graduate students.

Parking Day, 2011

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PARK(ing) Day is an annual worldwide event where artists, designers and citizens transform metered parking spots into temporary public parks. Students in the Spring 2011 Media Literacy course created their own installation for Parking Day on the NYU campus, engaging the public in imagining the possibilities for reclaiming urban spaces.

Parking Day, 2011, NYU
Parking Day, 2011, NYU
Parking Day, 2011, NYU
Parking Day, 2011, NYU
Parking Day, 2011, NYU
Parking Day, 2011, NYU
Parking Day, 2011, NYU
Parking Day, 2011, NYU