Students entering Parsons share a common first-year experience. The same course sequence constitutes the first year of every BFA and BBA program, providing a foundational experience that familiarizes students with the tools, methods, and skills of art and design. First-year courses prepare students for life as skilled and socially aware artists and designers. Classes focusing on broadly relevant design concepts, tools, and methods—including studios exploring 2D and 3D processes, drawing, and digital design as well as liberal arts seminars—bring together students who are passionate about all kinds of art and design and who will one day forge new paths in an array of disciplines.
Drawing on the breadth and depth of expertise in design theory and practice at Parsons, this new Master of Arts program offers students the opportunity to explore design as both a field of scholarly research and an agent of social change.
Launched in fall 2010, this Master of Arts program allows students to engage in the evolving field of fashion studies. Using an interdisciplinary approach, students explore fashion as object, image, text, practice, theory, and concept and develop a critical understanding of fashion and its complex global intersections with identities, histories, and cultures in the contemporary world.
Offered jointly with the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, the History of Design and Curatorial Studies program leads to a Master of Arts degree. Graduates go on to careers as historians, curators, and scholars in museums, universities, historic houses, auction houses, and galleries.
Part-time faculty member Jeffrey Rosenfeld took his Design for Aging Populations class on a tour of 305 West End Avenue, a nationally recognized Senior Residence....
Fantastic Fauna from China to Crimea Image-Making in Eurasian Nomadic Societies, 700 BCE-500 CE Explores the zoomorphic imagination and image-making of Eurasian nomads and their...
Design, Displacement, Migration: Spatial and Material Histories gathers a collection of scholarly and creative voices—spanning design, art, and architectural history; design studies; curation; poetry; activism; and...
Recently published by Routledge, Caroline Dionne’s book Design Theory, Language and Architectural Space in Lewis Carroll offers spatial theories of the emergent based on a...
Robert Smithson, Land Art, and Speculative Realities, a new book by Rory O’Dea, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art and Design at Parsons, was released on...
In Spring 2010 Jilly Traganou will be working on a participatory research project titled “Routes & Homes: Prototyping socio-spatial micro-structures in conditions of migration and…
From 2005-2009 Sarah Lichtman was the Internship Coordinator for the Manitoga/Russel Wright Design Center. Professor Lichtman worked closely with several students from the Parsons Masters…
On January 21, 2010 Sarah Lichtman gave a lecture at the Museum of Art and Design entitled “Affluence and Anxiety: Aspects in postwar America, 1945-1965.
Margot Bouman is presenting a paper “Televisual Spaces and the Paradox of Anamorphosis” in the session Art and the Televisual at College Art Association 2010,…
Rosemary O’Neill is presenting a paper “All about Yves” in the session Autofictions, Avatars, and Alter Egos: Fabricating Artists, at College Art Association 2010, the…
Laura Auricchio is chairing the session New Scholars: Transforming Traditions in Eighteenth-Century Art. Dr. Auricchio is also presenting a paper on “Sex, Lies, and Caricature:…
In April Laura Auricchio will give a lecture: “Beyond the Body of the Queen: Critiquing Masculinity in the Pornography of the French Revolution” at Skidmore…
Recently, there has been a resurgence of land or site-based artistic practices, in which themes of site, territories, borders, and boundaries intersect with ecological, political…
This lecture will present research on the reciprocity of textiles and architecture. Contemporary textile-based structures will be viewed in light of the cultural conventions and…
Susan Yelavich teaches Global Issues in Design and Visuality in the 21st Century: Culture. Open to the public, this junior seminar features guest speakers such…