The Vera List Center for Art and Politics and multimedia platform Contemporary And (C&) present the C& Center of Unfinished Business at The New School, a roving reading room and exhibition that speaks to the persistence and presence of colonialism in contemporary life. Conceived by Contemporary And, the project offers a selection of key, and, at times, unexpected texts that spark discourse on the enduring structures that continuously undergird colonial legacies in modern society. “Unfinished,” here, subtly echoes the “post” in postcolonial—hinting at an incomplete reckoning with colonialism and its evident and insidious aftermaths.

This publication accompanies the Vera List Center iteration of the exhibition, with details of public programs hosted within it that inscribe the VLC’s 2022–2024 Focus Theme Correction* into colonial legacies and postcolonial realities. Conversations with local and international libraries as well as a public reading series explore libraries as sites of intervention, liberation, and repair.

Extending from this programatic focus, a main feature of the publication is an incomplete map of local libraries, reading rooms, and archives throughout New York City coupled with roving libraries and open access digital collections, referencing the itinerant nature of the C& Center of Unfinished Business. This listing is by no means comprehensive and remains unfinished, awaiting updates, additions, and corrections.

This publication includes the winning essay of the 2023 Vera List New School Art Collection Writing Awards, which are bestowed on New School students for the best essays inspired by works in the university’s art collection. The 2023 edition, written by Parsons Photography student Ashley Zhang, reflects on The New School Art Collection’s 2014 commission of Alfredo Jaar’s iconic Searching for Africa in LIFE, permanently installed in the seventh-floor reading room in the University Center’s Arnhold Forum Library. Zhang’s essay explores the power and potential of the photograph to preserve personal and collective legacies, while examining LIFE‘s exclusion of African subjects, as revealed through Jaar’s installation, as a form of cultural erasure.