Open Call

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School is pleased to invite applications for the 2022–2024 Vera List Center Fellowships. Five two-year, non-residential fellowships will be awarded to commission and support scholarly and creative work that critically engages with the Vera List Center’s 2022–2024 Focus Theme: Correction*. 

Application Deadline Sunday, March 13, 2022, 11:59 pm EST

Vera List Center Fellowships

Vera List Center Fellowships support the development and presentation of ambitious art and research projects by national and international emerging artists, writers, scholars, and activists. Since 1994, the VLC Fellowship program has supported outstanding individuals at key moments in early- and mid-career, especially those who are members of underrepresented communities in the art world and those who would otherwise struggle to find support because of the experimental, political, and/or research-intensive nature of their practice. The appointments provide the VLC Fellows with the opportunity to draw from the curatorial, academic, and professional resources of the Vera List Center and The New School. As commissions, the resulting fellowship projects will be presented to the public through the Vera List Center’s interdisciplinary public programs and institutional networks.

The Vera List Center is a public forum and university-based research center that focuses exclusively on advancing public scholarship on contemporary issues at the intersection of art and politics. Through their projects, the VLC Fellows contribute to the intellectual foundation of the Center and benefit from the engagement of New School faculty and students. For the 2022–2024 cycle, in our multidisciplinary curatorial programs, we look to “correction” as an opportunity to revise existing histories, systems, and modes, but also to challenge our position and relationship to correcting. We’re interested in projects that creatively and rigorously approach the 2022–2024 Focus Theme: Correction* in content and form, and make an intellectual and artistic contribution that advances the understanding of the act of correction. To learn more about Correction*, please see below for a full description or visit our website. 

The Vera List Center will appoint five VLC Fellows for the 2022–2024 cycle, including a Boris Lurie Fellow, reserved for an artist living outside the US with special consideration given to those who have faced political hardship, and two Borderlands Fellows. Learn more about Boris Lurie, his legacy, and this fellowship initiative here. Applications to the Borderlands Fellowship, a joint appointment with the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, are by invitation only. 

Fellowship Benefits

The Vera List Center Fellowship is part-time and non-residential and extends over two years. The fellowship carries a US$15,000 research stipend as well as extensive curatorial and professional development services to support the fellowship project from conception to production and presentation. Each fellowship is highly individualized, depending on the research, project feasibility, and its intended outcomes. A separate, limited travel, production, and presentation budget is made available in discussion with and at the discretion of the VLC. Past VLC Fellowships have manifested in public in various forms, ranging from discursive events, exhibitions, and publications to socially engaged work. Depending on a fellow’s experience, speaking in New School classes may be possible. Successful fellowship proposals demonstrate a rigorous and open-ended individual inquiry, engagement in collaborative research, and exchange with other VLC Fellows, VLC staff, and The New School community.  

Fellows are not required to spend two years in New York. Covid-permitting, non-New York City residents are provided with an additional travel allowance to undertake intermittent short-term residencies in New York, to engage with the VLC’s team and the VLC Fellowship cohort, to speak in New School classes, and to take full advantage of the fellowship benefits. Fellows are supported for two years by the VLC’s curatorial and operational team as well as a graduate student research assistant. They are also paired with a VLC Board companion. They have access to a wide range of activities throughout The New School and enjoy extensive library privileges. Meetings and informal gatherings with New School faculty and students, past VLC Fellows, and other constituencies are organized regularly and offer opportunities for professional development as well as social exchanges. 

Requirements and Eligibility

Journalists, scholars, activists, visual and performing artists, critics, public intellectuals, curators, and cultural practitioners working in any field where they engage art and politics are encouraged to apply. 

The New School is an equal opportunity, affirmative action institution. We strongly encourage applications from diverse candidates across the world, especially from those who have not yet received major institutional support and for whom the opportunity to research, experiment, and make new work in a university setting would be impactful. Applicants must demonstrate experience conceiving, researching, and executing work and projects. 

We are not in a position to offer visa or immigration assistance for international fellows. Fellowship appointment letters, necessary to apply for a visa, will be provided but it is the responsibility of a Fellow to apply and secure the appropriate visa on their own. Any related visa fees are the responsibility of the Fellow. The VLC Fellowship research stipend (US$15,000) may be subject to tax and other governmental deductions which are the sole responsibility of the VLC Fellow.  

Considerations

In addition to the artistic and/or scholarly excellence of the proposed fellowship project, applications will be assessed for:

• The significance of the VLC Fellowship to the candidate’s long-term practice
• The critical and creative ways the proposal expands on and interrogates the VLC Focus Theme
• How closely VLC and New School resources match the needs of the proposed project
• Whether the proposed project contributes new and diverse insights to the field, the Vera List Center, and The New School 
• The candidate’s ability to translate research interests to practical and feasible work or project within the fellowship timeframe

You can learn about previous VLC Fellows and their projects on our fellowship page. 

Expectations

• The VLC Fellowship is predicated on active engagement with the VLC Fellowship cohort, VLC staff, and our community. Meeting frequency varies throughout the fellowship trajectory.
• Organize and present ongoing research and results of the fellowship project in public events at the Vera List Center as well as contribute to the programming at the Center during the fellowship. 
• Join the VLC Advisory Board ex officio and participate in the board’s biannual meetings.
• Participate in the life of the Vera List Center by joining key public events, study groups, classes, social gatherings, or some of the VLC Field Trips.

Timeline

Information Session
Feb 2, 11 am EST Zoom Registration link
March 2, 11 am EST IG Live
March 13, 2022 11:59 PM ET
Application deadline, followed by application review by an ad-hoc selection committee composed of members of the VLC staff and Advisory Board, past VLC Fellows, and New School faculty.
April–May 2, 2022
Finalists are invited to expand on their proposals and interviews; appointments offered.
June 3, 2022 
Announcement of fellowship appointments.
October 2022
Vera List Center Forum 2022 and convening of 2022-2024 Vera List Center Fellows

For tech support please contact support@submittable.com
For fellowship-related questions please contact vlc@newschool.edu with “VLC Fellowship” in the subject line.

Correction*: 2022–2024 Vera List Center Biennial Focus Theme

From correction on the page to correction of one’s body to the course correction of the body politic or financial markets—correction holds the potential to learn, reshape, and turn things around. Correction, the act of identifying and rectifying an error or inaccuracy, is ostensibly intended to make things better or right. Yet the transformative potential of the correction and its capacity to offer transformation and repair have their corollary in discipline and censure.

The 2022–2024 VLC Focus Theme: Correction* and the programs dedicated to it explore the tension and discomfort it inspires to pose questions about the metaphorical, political, and social dimensions and implications of correction. How is correctness enacted and performed across histories and institutions? Who is asked to correct and who resists and refuses correction or accountability? How is correction internalized, and is it ever enough? Can it get us closer to truth, to liberation? To our authentic (and improved) selves? How do we teach or learn through correction? What are we correcting towards and along which measure? When does reform give way to overhaul, to revolution?

The focus theme—which permeates all of the Center’s activities—is an opportunity to investigate the contradictions of correction, making space not only to consider existing histories, systems, and modes but also to challenge our position and relationship to the act of correcting. Accordingly, the asterisk holds space for future annotations. As the Vera List Center for Art and Politics enters its 30th year, the theme is also a call for adjustments, revisions, and course correction for the organization as it takes up the demands and challenges of our moment. 

2022-2024 Vera List Center Fellowship Application Frequently Asked Questions