THE VERA LIST Call for Entries 2013–2014 NEW SCHOOL ART COLLECTION In celebration of the opening of The New School’s new 2013–2014 JURY MEMBERS University Center, we are soliciting essays in response As of August 2013 to artist Glenn Ligon’s, site-specific commission in the VERA LIST CENTER Event Café. The first large-scale permanent installation Carin Kuoni, Director/Curator, Vera List Center FOR ART AND POLITICS WRITING in New York City by the artist, the work will be for Art and Politics installed in winter 2014. The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is an idea Joshua Mack, Vera List Center Advisory Committee incubator and a public forum for art, culture, and politics. Glenn Ligon is a conceptual artist known for his It was established at The New School in 1992—a time AWARDS text-based, multimedia work. The commissioned Rosemary O’Neill, Associate Professor of Art History, of rousing debates about freedom of speech, identity work reflects the artist’s investigation of the writings School of Art and Design History and Theory, Parsons politics, and society’s investment in the arts. A pioneer 2013-2014 of one of New York City’s most iconic and influential The New School for Design in the field, the center serves a critical mission: to foster poets, Walt Whitman. Streams of neon text chosen a vibrant and diverse community of artists, scholars, from Leaves of Grass travel around the perimeter walls Luis Jaramillo, Interim Director of the School and policy makers who take creative, intellectual, of the University Center’s first-floor Event Café. Ligon of Writing, Assistant Professor of Writing, School and political risks to bring about positive change. re-frames Whitman’s meditations on the city, the body, of Writing, The New School for Public Engagement temporality, and the nature of the creative endeavor. We champion the arts as expressions of the political Silvia Rocciolo, Curator, The New School Art Collection In his continued explorations on the mutability of moments from which they emerge, and consider the language, text, and representation, Ligon’s treatment intersection between art and politics the space where Wendy S. Walters, Assistant Professor, Literary Studies, of a canonical literary work invites the viewer to engage new forms of civic engagement must be developed. Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts in a critical cultural dialogue. We are the only university-based institution committed exclusively to leading public research on this intersection. Contributions © 2013 the authors Critical or creative essays, prose, poetic, or visual Through public programs and classes, prizes and entries may be submitted, including non-text based fellowships, publications and exhibitions that probe Published August 2013 by the Vera List Center media such as film, photography, visuals, music and some of the pressing issues of our time, we curate for Art and Politics sound, architecture, or the Web. and support new roles for the arts and artists Graphic design: LeAnne Wagner, MFA Design & in advancing social justice. Be critical as well as imaginative. Begin, for instance, Technology, Parsons The New School for Design with a close examination of the details that might have influenced the creation of the work and informed Illustration: Beth Zimmermann, BFA student THE NEW SCHOOL ART its interpretation. When you construct your response, in Illustration, Parsons The New School for Design COLLECTION choose a medium and style that communicate your ideas about the artwork’s themes, presentation, and Production supervision: Miina Hujala The New School Art Collection, established in 1960 context. Deadline for essay submission is April 14, 2014. with a grant from the Albert A. List Foundation, For additional information please visit: is installed throughout the university campus, trans- The Vera List New School Art Collection Writing www.veralistcenter.org forming the public spaces into lively forums for Awards are bestowed annually to students at The New examining contemporary art. Vera and Albert School for the best essays inspired by works in the List endowed the university with a commitment university’s art collection. The awards were established GUIDELINES FOR ENTRIES to art, both as a means of intellectual and aesthetic in 1996 by the late Vera List, a life trustee of The New Any student currently enrolled in a New School experimentation as well as an agent in addressing School, and are directed by the Vera List Center for Art division is eligible. the salient social and political issues of our time. and Politics. The competition is open to students across The collection, now grown to approximately academic disciplines and in all New School divisions, Text entries should not exceed 2,500 words. 1,900 postwar and contemporary works of art , and encourages submissions in a variety of media. offers students and faculty a rare opportunity to Time-based or audio submissions should be approximately engage with art on a daily basis, making it a distinctive three to five minutes in length. component of their educational experience. AWARDS & CELEBRATION For two-dimensional and three-dimensional The university has a longstanding tradition of supporting A rotating panel of judges selects the winning submissions, parameters are flexible. Please e-mail the creation of public art beginning in 1931 with the entries—two $400 first-place awards and two $200 [email protected] regarding details. commissioning of murals by José Clemente Orozco, second-place awards. Winners are announced in The Thomas Hart Benton, and Camilo Egas for the Joseph New School News and various New School blogs All submissions must be submitted via the Vera List th Urban landmark building at 66 West 12 street. Recent and social media platforms. Winning entries will be Center Website. Go to the web page veralistcenter.org commissions include site-specific works by Sol edited by a professional editor and published in next and select Writing Awards. LeWitt, Dave Muller, Martin Puryear and Michael Van year’s edition of this award poster as well as online at Valkenburgh, Brian Tolle, and Kara Walker. Glenn veralistcenter.org. A celebratory reception and public Please note that all submissions must list your name, Ligon’s new site-specific commission for the reading follows in September 2014, with toasts to the mailing and email addresses, phone number, university University Center expands on this tradition, students and Glenn Ligon, and the launch of next year’s program in which you are enrolled, and your New reinforcing the university’s commitment award poster. School student ID number. to art in public spaces. Entries must be received by April 14, 2014. First Prize Critical Response First Prize Creative Response Second Prize Creative Response

Helmsboro Country Network. Helms never waivered from that position many years. Helms continued to verbally question and The print had opened my eyes to a variety of strategies Mississippi Paradise Lost & Other Berenice Abbott’s Fulton Fish Market in The New and Me during the long course of his career. In 1987, he won assault the arts agency’s processes, and he continued used by Philip Morris to add luster to its image and Raven Jackson Scenes of Modern School Art Collection inspired the selection of a provision, which was inserted into a Senate Trade targeting organizations that received funds from NEA. profits to its enterprise. The company was a title photographs I submitted for this visual essay. Abbott’s Thomas J. Ashley Bill, that effectively relieved any US farmer who sponsor of the Whitney Museum’s midtown branch, American Lostness Changing New York series documented the everyday After learning all this about Helms and the NEA, I was exported tobacco from federal loan repayment. In 1994, located at Philip Morris headquarters and named the Flames red as pepper skins Andrew Williams dislocations caused by New York City’s industrialization he opposed Food and Drug Administration regulation curious to find out more about the artist Hans Haacke. Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris. during the 1930s. In describing the current state Hans Haacke’s Helmsboro Country (diptych) is poweful licked our porch. Popping windows of tobacco stating: “The Clinton Administration Haacke was born in Cologne, Germany, in 1936, but That kind of publicity was advertising worth millions. of American society, David Foster Wallace coined in visual terms, in subject matter, and directly in has declared war on the people of North Carolina came to the US in 1961, where he has lived ever since. I knew from my own career in advertising the rewards I long for the road. Travel and, more specifically, the phrase “modern American lostness.” For me, relation to my own life experience. It takes an iconic— like pecans in Mama’s hands. and the tobacco industry.” He is a professor emeritus at Cooper Union, having of “product placement.” Then I read that in 1994, modes of travel are important to my work. I travel by bus this contemporary experience of “lostness,” this indeed, an historic—image and brand and manipulates The shells tiny bones rolling taught there from 1967 to 2002. For over forty years, the tobacco company had sponsored the blockbuster when I can because it takes time. Time to take in the disconnection from nature, and ambivalent relationship them to signify the base and deplorable values that I actually do not recall any of those specific moments the focus of his art has been the relationship between exhibition, Origins of Impressionism, showcased at the changing landscape. Time to interact with the other with technology echoes the alienation captured lurk inside American corporations, our economy, for the Arts’s grant program “an issue of soaking the on the floor. And when beams in Helms’s career. But what I do remember—what seeing museums and corporate sponsors. His goal is to make Metropolitan Museum of Art. After donating a grant passengers. Time to stop at stations and rest stops. by Abbott in her photographs. our political system, and our culture. The Marlboro taxpayer to fund the homosexual pornography of fell from the roof like giants, Helmsboro suddenly brought back to me in a flood of the relationship transparent to viewers. This does not of one million dollars to the exhibition, Philip Morris Time to really look. cigarette package—red, white, and black—and its logo Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS while spend- memories—was that in less than a year of his first term, often win him friends in high places and it has even was allowed to hand out cigarettes to guests and political of two crowned lions holding the Philip Morris seal ing the last years of his life promoting homosexuality.” I almost heard her voice, sweet it was Senator Helms who introduced a constitutional compromised his ability to exhibit his work. In 1970, figures at the opening reception. is an aesthetically striking packaging of what was and The Mapplethorpe exhibition controversy I was aware as pomegranate seeds laid down amendment that would prohibit abortion in all his submission to a group exhibition at the Museum remains a deadly product. With its clean, crisp lettering of; I did not know about Jesse Helms’s leading role in it. circumstances effecting what he called “due process of Modern Art in New York consisted of ballots The list of arts organizations that received funding design and font style, and simple three-color palette— in soil. Their roots opening for the fetus.” to be cast by visitors to the museum. He installed two from Philip Morris (now re-named Altria) is vast and this packaging is still an appealing, modernist work of In 1989, an exhibition of Mapplethorpe’s photographs, like hands. Letting something go. clear Plexiglas boxes in which the ballots would be impressive. Their grants cover almost every artistic visual design advertising. The Haacke print based on this Helms, throughout his five consecutive terms in the The Perfect Moment, which included the artist’s homoerotic deposited. Visitors were asked one question upon form and type of arts organization in this country. iconic brand, hanging in a corridor on the fourth floor Senate (1973-2003), spewed forth words of hatred and works, was organized at the Museum of Contemporary entry (the question, posted on the wall above the And art support has garnered for the company an th Art in Chicago and the Institute of Contemporary of 66 West 12 Street, caught my eye immediately the disdain for disenfranchised citizens seeking a voice image as enlightened supporter of American culture. Art in Philadelphia. It was scheduled to travel to the ballot boxes, was unknown to the museum until the first time I saw it—it stopped me dead in my tracks. in the democratic process: black people, gay people, What Haacke’s alteration of that image captures succinctly Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC Helms night before the opening). Haacke asked, “Would the That Marlboro box continues to hold me in its thrall. women, anti-apartheid supporters, anti-war supporters, is how arts sponsorship can be a shrewd disguise for learned that the NEA had given the Philadelphia fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced It is a beautiful and arresting image. and human rights advocates. That much I do remember low-minded self-interest. Naming of a museum museum $30,000 for the Mapplethorpe show. The President Nixon’s Indochina policy be a reason for from those years. He was the senator who opposed the branch after a cigarette company brand is, frankly, Years ago, that box conjured wider associations for senator had already been part of an anti-NEA backlash your not voting for him in November?” By a two- Food Stamp Program, introduced a bill to deny the big-budget advertising at its best. Sponsorship of me. Marlboro Country captured the idea of an idealized when, in North Carolina, the arts agency had funded to-one margin, the “yes” votes outnumbered the “no” Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over school prayer, a museum exhibition by a company, which enables American space. It stood for the open plains, cowboys, an exhibition of works by Andres Serrano, which included votes. Governor Rockefeller was, at the time, on the was a founding member of the Moral Majority. Helms it to have its logo emblazoned on the Metropolitan horses, hard work, strength, bravery, masculinity, and the photograph, Piss Christ, a crucifix submerged in the Board of the museum. tried to push through legislation that would prohibit Museum of Art’s entrance banners hanging on Fifth self-confidence—the decent values of an earlier age. travel based on HIV status, called the University of artist’s urine. Now, as the Mapplethorpe show was Then I learned, too, that just a year after that, when Avenue, not to mention distribution of its product to the It was a time when we had just elected John F. Kennedy North Carolina (UNC) “the University of Negroes heading for the Corcoran, Helms distributed images Haacke was scheduled for a solo exhibition at the high-end movers and shakers of New York City… President, and it seemed likely that those of my age and and Communists,” called homosexuals “weak and of these homoerotic works to Congress and he organized Guggenheim Museum in New York, he took on well, that kind of advertising is worth a lot more than education were capable of changing the country, even morally sick wretches.” Helms supported apartheid one-hundred members of this body to write a letter as his focus the activities of one of the city’s biggest the dollar number contributed by the company to changing the world by summoning those lauded values. in South Africa, Salvadoran death squad chief Robert to the arts agency in protest of the exhibition. In slumlords, Harry Shapolsky, in a work of art entitled the museum. With huge understatement, Altria Vice D’Aubuisson and dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile, early June, the Corcoran Gallery announced its intent I was nineteen and I had just begun smoking. Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Chair George Weissman, has said, “We are in an and one day, after Carol Moseley Braun had joined to cancel the Mapplethorpe show, claiming that the Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971. This show was unpopular industry…our support of the arts is not the Senate—the first Black woman ever to enter institution did not want to “adversely affect the NEA’s Throughout the 1960s and into the present, Marlboro, cancelled for reasons of “impropriety” by the museum’s directed toward that problem, but it has given us that august body—he notoriously rode the Senate congressional appropriations,” which were coming the world’s largest-selling cigarette, has been ranked director just six weeks before it was to open, and the a better image in the financial and general elevator with her while whistling Dixie. Helms once up for a vote in the House of Representatives. consistently in the top ten of all brands value (in 2012, curator of the show was fired. community than had we not done this.” ranked as #7 by BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global filibustered for sixteen straight days to stop approval The debate over the NEA appropriation erupted Brands). After 1962, when Philip Morris hired advertising of naming a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther I hadn’t realized that museum board members were Helmsboro Country made me look at things differently. and quickly grew bitter and far-reaching. Ultimately, agency genius Leo Burnett to reposition the brand and King, Jr. When the Clinton Administration urged “above criticism,” nor how stifling their presence I hadn’t known very much about corporate giving it became a debate over the agency’s very existence, its audience, Marlboro sales skyrocketed. that gay men and women be allowed to serve in the on museum boards could be in relation to freedom programs and their objectives, and I knew nothing about with bills emanating from members of Congress that military, Helms publicly warned the President “he’d of expression in the visual and performing arts in Jesse Helms’s role in weakening our government’s support December 1970 marked the end of cigarette advertising proposed elimination of the agency’s entire budget. better have a bodyguard” when visiting North Caroli- America. And I hadn’t realized that Philip Morris, one of the arts, in fact, of his having nearly destroyed federal on US television. That year, I was ABC Television’s sales na. Jesse Helms’s beliefs are generally regarded as among The House finally voted to approve the funding of the largest financial supporters and dispenser of arts funding in America. Seeing the print also made representative in Chicago, assigned to Marlboro. I was the most backward, inhuman, and thoughtless in the recommended through committee endorsement, funds to the arts, was—and had always been—an ardent me think about my own relationship to the arts and a smoker; I was spending my money on cigarettes. progressive world. minus $45,000, which was the amount of the Serrano supporter of Jesse Helms. Finding out about Hans my own relationship to cigarettes. I was making money from cigarettes; I was promoting grant and the Mapplethorpe grant combined. The bill Haacke, I learned that… and more. them. In that last year of televised cigarette advertising, This was what I knew about Jesse Helms as I stood then passed and moved onto the Senate. I quit smoking many years ago. I had always been in the corridor looking at Helmsboro. What I had not Philip Morris ramped up Marlboro’s presence, increasing Philip Morris was a substantial and regular contributor aware of the dangers of smoking, but for thirteen known was anything about Helms’s impact on the Immediately Jesse Helms introduced a floor amendment the cigarette’s visibility by as much as four-hundred to all of Senator Helms’s re-election campaigns. years, I smoked. I struggled to end my own addiction. percent. I made a lot of money as a result. I sold the com- arts in America. that would prohibit NEA (or any federal) grants being Additionally, in 1990, the company gave $200,000 to I stopped smoking but that one-pack-a-day habit will mercial for the last Marlboro ad ever shown on television. used to fund sexually explicit artworks that “Promote, the Jesse Helms Citizenship Center in Monroe, North probably cost me a year of my life. I was twenty-eight years old, and I was a big fan. I was In Helmsboro, Hans Haacke replicates the Marlboro disseminate or produce obscene or indecent materials, Carolina. That same year, Philip Morris contributed a link in the tobacco industry’s financial chain. In just flip-top box, its colors, text, font, and overall look including but not limited to depictions of sadomas- In 1970, the last year for cigarette advertising nearly $15 million to arts organizations in the US. a few years, I would begin to be aware of the politics of the box; but replaces the PM seal with a portrait of ochism, homoeroticism, the exploitation of children, on television, I sold commercial time to Marlboro That was also the same year when Senator Helms attacked involved in Marlboro Country. Helms. On the side panel of the box Haacke includes or individuals engaged in sex acts; or material which Cigarettes for millions of dollars. That was over and worked to eviscerate government support of the arts a quote from George Weissman, Chairman of Philip denigrates the objects or beliefs of the adherents forty years ago. Had those advertising dollars captured in America. When asked to explain this dichotomy in Jesse Helms was elected to the United States Senate Morris’s Executive Committee: “Let’s be clear about of a particular religion or non-religion.” some new, young smokers? Probably. Have people’s from North Carolina that same year. He requested one thing. Our fundamental interest in the arts is the corporation’s activities, Philip Morris Vice President lives been shortened as the result of those Marlboro assignment to the Senate Committee on Agriculture self-interest. There are immediate and pragmatic The Senate passed the amendment with only five for Public Affairs, George Knox, asserted, “Helms advertisements? Certainly. (he was later to become Chair) of this powerful benefits to be derived as business entities.” On the members present. In October, a compromise was is a senator from a state in which we have a large congressional group. He had already been a fervent panel of the other side of the box, Haacke has printed, reached on the appropriations bill and the Helms number of facilities and many employees… It would These were some of the things I started to think supporter of the tobacco industry, having written daily under the heading, “Senator Helms’s Warning,” the amendment ultimately failed, but restrictions were added be ill-advised for a company like ours, which lives about and am still thinking about after viewing editorials on local television and the Tobacco Radio Senator’s own words calling the National Endowment that were to limit the NEA’s grant-giving procedures for in a political arena, to turn our backs on him.” Helmsboro Country.