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...
MA Fashion Studies In this groundbreaking MA program that launched in fall 2010, students engage in the evolving field of fashion studies. Using an interdisciplinary…
The Whitney Museum of American Art‘s Independent Study Program (ISP) consists of three interrelated parts: Studio Program, Curatorial Program, and Critical Studies Program. The ISP provides…
On February 23rd, Radhika Subramaniam will be speaking on a panel entitled, “Civic Engagement, Activism and Art”, which will examine the expansion of interest in…
Janet Kraynak is a recipient of The College Art Association 2011 Art Journal Award for Distinction. Her article, entitled, “‘The Land’ and the Economics of…
The College Art Association will be holding its one-hundredth anniversary celebration and its 99th annual conference in midtown from February 9-12, 2011. Hailed as the largest…
David Brody’s article, “The Functionalist’s Agenda: George Howe, the T-Square Club Journal, and the Dissemination of Architectural Modernism,” was published in the most recent issue of American…
January 21 – February 19, 2011 Paula Cooper Gallery, 534 W. 21st Street Living in New York City can mean a relentless round of activities—coffee dates,…
In December 2010, Dr. Rosemary O’Neill published an essay titled, “Frédéric Altmann et Nivèse: entre communion et liberté creative” [Integral Partnership and Creative Liberty: Frédéric…
On February 7, Radhika Subramaniam will be leading a seminar, entitled “The City as an Illegible Document,” as part of the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts’ Art &…