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Vera List Center

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is an artist-focused research center and public forum for art, culture, and politics.

Established in 1992 at The New School. Our 2025–2027 Focus Theme is Matter of Intelligence. Our Focus Theme lasts for two years and informs everything we do and creates opportunities for shared learning with artists, scholars, activists, public intellectuals, students, and political and cultural leaders. Focus Theme for 2020-22 is "As for Protocols"

Explicitly—or not—protocols determine much of what we do. Supplanting traditional notions of “good manners,” protocols are languages that regulate how people relate to each other, to their cultural, social, and political environments, and to the technologies that create them. They are evidence of governmental, organizational, social, or corporate power structures. Protocols speak to processes, rather than finite outcomes. While often overlooked or invisible, they set the tone and conditions for potential encounters. Investigating them as such will allow us to contribute to the creation of new protocols that are inclusive and equitable, ranging from computer interfaces, A.I., data aggregation, and algorithms to community agreements and culturally-specific engagement protocols to protocols undergirding scientific research. As “protocol” may also refer to documentation and minutes, the term signals a hybrid time frame of both the past and projection into the future. With the engagement of artists, scholars, activists, and students, the Vera List Center will consider protocols as the foundations for the performance of living, and begin thinking and working toward new spaces of political empowerment.

09/28/2026

The Black Feminist Study Group is a four-part program shaped by the poetics and practice of Rosana Paulino, recipient of Vera List Center for Art and Politics’s 2025–2027 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice.

Assembled within Paulino’s prize exhibition ¿𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵ó𝘳𝘪𝘢 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭?, the study group is anchored by seminal texts that touch on interconnected struggles for liberation and resistance throughout the African diaspora. The weekly series begins on Friday, October 9, marking the opening of Paulino’s exhibition and the first day of the VLC Forum 2026: Matter of Intelligence.

▪️Session I | October 9
Writer and editor Jessica Lynne (Jessica Lynne) leads the first session, with a reading from Beatriz Nascimento’s “The Dialectic Is in the Sea.”

▪️Session II | October 17
Writer and critic Zoë Hopkins (zoë) reads Dionne Brand’s “Nomenclature for the Time Being.”

▪️Session III | October 24
New School scholar Cresa Pugh reads Denise Ferreira da Silva’s “Unpayable Debt.”

▪️Session IV | October 31
Interdisciplinary artist and founder of The Free Black Women’s Library, OlaRonke Akinmowo (OlaRonke) reads Saidiya Hartman’s “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Q***r Radicals.”

The Black Feminist Study Group is co-convened by Re’al Christian as part of Rosana Paulino: ¿História Natural?, curated by Carin Kuoni and Eriola Pira. It is generously supported by Critical Minded.

Find the full study group and VLC Forum schedules and register in advance at the link in Vera List Center for Art and Politics’s bio.

Jessica Lynne zoë OlaRonke Critical Minded Re'al Christian Vera List Center for Art and Politics The New School

09/22/2026

(Re)introducing our 2025–2027 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice recipient and fellows!

The VLC Forum 2026 kicks off in two weeks, October 9 & 10. We’re excited to gather with artist Rosana Paulino (Rosana Paulino)—recipient of the VLC’s 2025–2027 Jane Lombard Prize—along with the Jane Lombard Fellows, the prize’s extraordinary finalists: ArTree Nepal (Artree Nepal-Artist Collective), Stephanie Dinkins (Stephanie Dinkins), Jason Edward Lewis (Abundant Intelligences), and Jenna Sutela (Jenna Sutela).

At the VLC Forum 2026—organized under our two-year focus theme, 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦—the artists share their prize-nominated projects:

▪️Rosana Paulino’s prize-winning artist book, ¿𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵ó𝘳𝘪𝘢 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭?, anchors her solo exhibition of the same name. Presented by the VLC October 9–November 1 at The New School, the exhibition traces Paulino’s critical examinations of the entanglements between science, race, knowledge, and power.

▪️ArTree Nepal’sTikā Chedna Angana highlights Indigenous tattooing practices and embodied knowledge in Nepal.
▪️Stephanie Dinkins’s Conversations with Bina48, an ongoing exchange with the social robot Bina48, explores technological future histories, Afro-now-ism, and more-than-human knowledge
▪️Jason Edward Lewis is co-founder of Abundant Intelligences, an Indigenous-led research program foregrounding anticolonial approaches to technology.
▪️Jenna Sutela’s nimiia cétiï brings together biological organisms and neural networks to imagine new forms of language and relation.

Meet the artists in person during the VLC Forum at The New School, or join us in the livestream. Visit the link in our bio for details and registration.

Rosana Paulino Artree Nepal-Artist Collective Stephanie Dinkins Abundant Intelligences Jenna Sutela

09/14/2026

Join us for the VLC Forum 2026: Matter of Intelligence! October 9 & 10, in-person at The New School and online! ✨

An international, annual convening of key participants in the field of art and politics, this year’s VLC Forum is organized within the framework of the center’s two-year focus theme, Matter of Intelligence.

The VLC Forum 2026 celebrates Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino (Rosana Paulino), recipient of the VLC’s 2025–2027 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice. The forum also highlights the work of the Jane Lombard Fellows, who are finalists for the prize: ArTree Nepal, Stephanie Dinkins, Jason Edward Lewis, and Jenna Sutela.

Over two days, the program convenes artists, curators, writers, scholars, technologists, and our communities to explore the many forms intelligence can take.

Find the full VLC Forum schedule and register at veralistcenter.org.

DAY ONE | FRI, OCT 9
✨Black Feminist Study Group I: Jessica Lynne on Beatriz Nascimento
✨Exhibition opening, Rosana Paulino: ¿História Natural?
✨Prize Presentation and Conversation: Rosana Paulino with Denise Ferreira da Silva and Diane Lima

✨VLC Community Dinner: Dream Futures, with a performance by Kite, Robbie Wing, and New School students; an artistic provocation by Stephanie Dinkins; and a DJ Set by Moniki

DAY TWO | SAT, OCT 10
✨ Keynote lecture by Chus Martínez
✨ Conversations with the Jane Lombard Fellows: Jenna Sutela with Elvia Wilk; Stephanie Dinkins with Neta Bomani; Jason Edward Lewis with Mashinka Hakopian; and ArTree Nepal with Prabal Gurung

The VLC Forum 2026 and 𝘙𝘰𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘗𝘢𝘶𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘰: ¿𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵ó𝘳𝘪𝘢 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭? are curated by Carin Kuoni and Eriola Pira. The VLC Forum is convened with the support of Tabor Banquer, Re’al Christian, and Adrienne Umeh.

Rosana Paulino Artree Nepal-Artist Collective Stephanie Dinkins Abundant Intelligences Jenna Sutela netazines Denise Ferreira da Silva Prabal Gurung Mashinka Firunts Hakopian dr kite (Takuyepi Kin Gluonihanwin) Diane Lima Jessica Lynne Chus Martinez Elvia Wilk Robbie Wing Carin Kuoni Eriola Pira Re'al Christian Polymode

09/08/2026

We are excited to participate in Printed Matter’s 2026 New York Art Book Fair! Visit us at booth S10 for a 30% discount on all VLC books, in addition to free catalogues, posters, prints, and more.

The NY Art Book Fair is the largest international gathering for the distribution of artists’ books, celebrating contemporary artists’ publishing and the medium’s rich history. Initiated in 2006, NYABF is an event where artists’ book publishers distribute their work, connect with broad audiences, and nurture new and longstanding relationships, with many artists responding directly to today’s challenging political and social landscape.

NYABF 2026 will feature over 310 exhibitors, including interdisciplinary artistic practices, collectives, small presses, self-publishing artists, rare book dealers, institutions, and distributors. NYABF also offers a discursive platform for engagement in the field of artists’ book publishing through book launches, lectures, exhibitions, discussions, performances, and workshops.

Printed Matter Art Book Fairs

09/02/2026

We are excited to announce our fall 2026 line up of programming, kick off year two of our 2025–2027 Focus Theme, 𝙈𝙖𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙤𝙛 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚!

Join us for the VLC Forum and exciting seminars, an exhibition, publications, lectures, and fellow presentations. Probing topics ranging from collective knowledge and study to uncertainty and belief, we situate intelligence within natural, supernatural, human, and more-than-human realms.

As always, all programs are free to attend! Read the full preview and register for programs at the link in our bio.

▪️VLC Forum 2026: Matter of Intelligence
Oct 9 & 10
The New School & livestreamed
Rosana Paulino Artree Nepal-Artist Collective Stephanie Dinkins Abundant Intelligences Jenna Sutela netazines Mashinka Firunts Hakopian Prabal Gurung Elvia Wilk Chus Martinez
Diane Lima Denise Ferreira da Silva Jessica Lynne Robbie Wing dr kite (Takuyepi Kin Gluonihanwin)

▪️Rosana Paulino: ¿História Natural?
Jane Lombard Prize Exhibition
Oct 9–Nov 1, 2026
Open daily 12–6 pm EDT, Thurs until 8 pm
Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries
The New School
Rosana Paulino

▪️Black Feminist Study Group
Oct 9, 17, 24 & 31, 2026
Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries
The New School
Jessica Lynne zoë OlaRonke Critical Minded

▪️Matter of Intelligence Seminar 7
Intelligence, Uncertain
Mon, Oct 19, 2026, 2–3:30 pm EDT
Online
Nora Al-Badri manuel arturo abreu Haus der Kulturen der Welt

▪️Joyce Joumaa: Provisional Recovery
Parsons Visiting Artist Lecture
Oct 23, 2026, 7–8:30 pm EDT
The New School
Joyce Parsons Fine Arts

▪️Eyal Weizman: Ungrounding
Lecture & Book Launch
Thurs, Oct 29, 2026, 6:30–8 pm EDT
The New School
Eyal Weizman

▪️Saidiya Hartman: AICA-USA Kippy Stroud Distinguished Critic Lecture
Mon, Nov 30, 2026, 6:30–8 pm EST
The New School & livestreamed
AICA-USA

▪️Post/doc Fall 2026: Belief
Gi (Ginny) Huo 허지은 preciousreneetucker

▪️New York Art Book Fair
Sep 24–27, 2026
MoMA PS1
Printed Matter Art Book Fairs

Image credit:
Indigenous Protocol AI Workshop in Hawaiʻi, 2019. Watercolour and ink. Courtesy of Abundant Intelligences.

The New School

08/28/2026

For today’s VLC Fellow Friday: second sight, sound, and environmental justice.

▪️Tomorrow, Saturday, August 29, current VLC Fellow Mashinka Hakopian’s (Mashinka Firunts Hakopian) Բաժակ Նայող/Bajak Nayogh/The One Who Looks at the Cup (2024) is one of the works featured in Galas LGBTQ+ Armenian Society’s film night Akbar in Los Angeles.
▪️Current VLC Fellow Joyce Joumaa (Joyce) is featured in the group exhibition “Video Killed the Radio Star: The 80s and their Cultural Echoes” Mudam Luxembourg in Luxembourg. Her installation, Periodic Sights, which was shown in Art Basel last year, responds to Lebanon’s ongoing electricity crisis and the rhythms of interruption it imposes on everyday life.
▪️A solo exhibition by 2020–2022 VLC Borderlands Fellow Carolina Caycedo (Carolina Caycedo), “Growing Deep Roots” opens September 9 WashU Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis, with new and recent works addressing water, land stewardship, and just energy transition.
▪️In a recent interview for Scholarly Editing vol. 43, 2020–2022 VLC Fellow Rasheedah Phillips (Rasheedah Phillips) discusses community, archiving, AI, Afrofuturism, law, time, memory, and collective consciousness.
▪️And from September 23–26, 2015–2017 VLC Fellow Lawrence Abu Hamdan (Lawrence Abu Hamdan) takes over London’s Barbican Centre with “Repercussions,” an installation, performances, screenings, panel discussions and live music to examine the impact of sound, from the harmful damage of noise pollution to the subversive power of silence.

Image credits:
1. Mashinka Hakopian, Բաժակ Նայող/Bajak Nayogh/The One Who Looks at the Cup, 2024 (still). Courtesy the artist.
2–3. Joyce Joumaa, Periodic Sights, 2025. Photos by Mareike Tocha © Mudam Luxembourg, and Art Basel.
4. Carolina Caycedo, Complex, Nutty, and Slightly Sweet: I Am Kernza, 2026. Photo by Chris Young.
5. Julian C. Chambliss, “An Archive for the People: An Interview with Rasheedah Phillips,” Scholarly Editing.
6. Lawrence Abu Hamdan speaking about sonic justice. Video courtesy Barbican Centre.

08/27/2026

For the final installment of this year’s VLC Summer Reads 📖 our director of finance and operations/local sci-fi expert Adrienne Umeh reflects:

“When we began discussing Matter of Intelligence as the VLC Focus Theme, the very first thing that came to mind was Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time series (courtesy of my sci-fi book club). These books are fundamentally anchored in exploring various types of sentient intelligence.

Beginning with Children of Time, we are dropped into a universe where humans have left their mark scattered across the stars. On one terraformed planet, an uplifted virus accelerates the evolution of non-human species. As expected, technology and evolution collide—but in completely surprising ways. The series—which is followed by Children of Ruin, Children of Memory, and the recent Children of Strife—excels at presenting different modes of intelligence.

Tchaikovsky forces the reader to inhabit how ‘understanding’ works for entirely different minds.

Along the way, you also get:
🐜 Ant power
💥 Planetary apocalypse
👽 First contact
🛸 Fascinating space-faring vehicles

Ultimately, these books are just as interested in the exploration of identity as they are in space, which is a really compelling pairing.

My recommendation is to read them in order since they build directly upon the previous one. Book 2 (Children of Ruin) is even better than the first–which is a high bar to surpass–and Book 4 (Children of Strife) is also excellent.”

What have you been reading this summer? 📖

08/17/2026

For today’s VLC Summer Reads, director of strategy and advancement Tabor Banquer (Tabor Banquer) reflects on spies, statecraft, and the business of secrets. 🔎🔧

“I’ve always been fascinated by espionage stories (original, I know). And so I was particularly excited about the VLC’s recent Seminar: Artists, Scholars, and Spies with historian Gregory Afinogenov, artist Nina Hartmann, and writer and New School faculty member John Reed.

Inspired by the seminar, which explores the entangled histories of scholarship, research, and academia with statecraft, empire, and the infrastructures and practices of intelligence and espionage, here are five of my favorite stories where intelligence is—literally—power.

1.
The Americans (American television drama series, 2013–18).
Has a Soviet sleeper agent ever had more fun than Philip Jennings line dancing at his local honky-tonk?

2.
Demonlover (French neo-noir thriller film written and directed by Olivier Assayas, 2002).
Corporate espionage in the internet age—stylish, unsettling, and increasingly difficult to look away from (you’ll definitely want to, by the end).

3.
The Expats (Novel by Chris Pavone, 2012).
What if the stay-at-home mom next door was 007?

4.
Casino Royale (spy thriller film relaunching the iconic James Bond franchise, 2006).
What a thrill to watch Daniel Craig’s 007 play this glamorous but deadly game of poker.

5.
And last but not least, my all-time favorite comfort movie.
Clue (American comedy-crime film, inspired by the classic Parker Brothers board game, 1985)
“My business is secrets. And I’m going to sell my secrets—your secrets—to the highest bidder.” — Miss Scarlett, with the gun, in the hallway

“I’ve always been fascinated by espionage stories (original, I know). And so I was particularly excited about the VLC’s recent Seminar: Artists, Scholars, and Spies with historian Gregory Afinogenov, artist Nina Hartmann, and writer and New School faculty member John Reed.

Inspired by the seminar, which explores the entangled histories of scholarship, research, and academia with statecraft, empire, and the infrastructures and practices of intelligence and espionage, here are five of my favorite stories

06/22/2026

Save the date! We are pleased to announce the 𝗩𝗲𝗿𝗮 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝘂𝗺 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲, presented on October 9 & 10 at The New School ✨

The VLC Forum is an annual international convening of key participants in the field of art and politics. This year’s forum, organized within the framework of our two-year focus theme, 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦, convenes artists, curators, writers, scholars, and designers, inviting us to explore the many forms intelligence can take.

The VLC Forum 2026 honors Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino (Rosana Paulino), recipient of the Vera List Center’s 2025–2027 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice, with the solo exhibition ¿História Natural?, celebrating Paulino’s groundbreaking work and tracing the artist’s ongoing critical examinations of the entanglements between science, race, knowledge, and power.

The VLC Forum also assembles the finalists for the prize, named the Jane Lombard Fellows: Nepalese artist collective ArTree Nepal (Artree Nepal-Artist Collective); New York-based artist Stephanie Dinkins (Stephanie Dinkins); Hawaiian and Samoan digital media theorist and poet Jason Edward Lewis (Abundant Intelligences); and Finnish artist Jenna Sutela ().

In conversation with their nominators and invited guests—organizer and educator Neta Bomani (netazines); writer, artist, and 2025–2027 VLC Fellow Mashinka Hakopian (Mashinka Firunts Hakopian); fashion designer Prabal Gurung (Prabal Gurung); and writer Elvia Wilk (Elvia Wilk)—the fellows discuss their nominated projects. Along with other featured speakers, Chus Martínez (), curator and prize chair, delivers the keynote lecture.

Join us online and in person for presentations, conversations, performances, live broadcasts, publications and readings, and the annual VLC Community Dinner, Dream Futures.

Programming is free and open to the public! We are grateful to our funding partners who enable us to host these programs for free. Consider sustaining our work by becoming a member of Vera’s List.

Learn more about this year’s VLC

06/03/2026

For the spring edition of the VLC’s publishing series 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘵/𝘥𝘰𝘤, Tulsa and New York-based artist Le’Andra LeSeur’s “how empty is this space? (After Stone, After Ruins)” marks the final chapter in a three-part series exploring the body’s response to landscapes shaped by historical Black violence, taking Tulsa and the southern coast of Georgia as familiar points of departure.

Combining a 16mm film, an undulating score, historiographical notes, and annotative gestures, the project documents and archives sound within these landscapes to uncover traces left behind—from the site of the 1864 Ebenezer Creek Massacre outside of Savannah, Georgia, where the film was shot, to the Tulsa Massacre of 1921.

In this process of attunement and embodied wayfinding, LeSeur questions how the land remembers.

The spring 2026 edition of 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘵/𝘥𝘰𝘤: Fugitive Ecologies explores forms of relational knowledge grounded in landscapes shaped by historical violence. Read / watch / listen to LeSeur’s project alongside Ryan C. Clarke’s () “Unmastered Notes on Creole Neotectonics” at the links in our bio.

𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘵/𝘥𝘰𝘤 is edited by the VLC’s Re’al Christian ().

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Telephone

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