NEWS & PRESS

Create News 35 – Art and Social Action: International education in collaborative and socially engaged art

Issue 35 of Create News features some select reflections on the state of socially engaged art education from SPCUNY, who were invited to contribute to this publication alongside those involved in the new MA/MFA Art and Social Action at NCAD, in which Create is a partner.
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Lessons for Survival by Emily Raboteau, SPCUNY 2023-24 Faculty Fellow, reviewed in the New York Times

"While Raboteau grapples with much that is wrong with our troubled world, she does so with bracing honesty and insight," writes Tiya Miles in this review of Raboteau's newly-released book. "The strength of her book is her willingness to express concerns that many feel but are reluctant to voice."
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Social Practice CUNY Receives a Renewal Grant of $600K from the Mellon Foundation

The Mellon Foundation awarded Social Practice CUNY an additional $600,000 to continue its work into 2026. In that time, the initiative will welcome two more sets of student and faculty fellows and offer programming and mentorship that encourage CUNY artists and scholars to bring social change through art.
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Social Practice Queens alum Cody Herrmann reports on her 2023 apexart fellowship in Saigon

"apex has me out here in a little apartment along a dirty little canal in a neighborhood I would equate to today's Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And that's where things get a little tricky for me—you know I'm not supposed to be making art out here, but if you know one thing about me, you probably know I make work about public policy and development along dirty urban waterways."
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SPCUNY alum Pedro J. Cruz Cruz wins international award at 2022 Lisbon Architecture Triennial

2021-2022 SPCUNY Student Actionist Pedro Cruz won the highly competitive Millennium bcp Universities Competition Award for his project “El Teatro del Pueblo,” a much-revised version of his second-year studio project, in the main exhibit’s Multiplicity section. It is a work of urban ethnography, using oral histories and filmmaking as an architectural research method, that documents street vendors in Corona Plaza, Queens, NY, and emphasizes how vendors have been historically marginalized.
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Artist Rie Osogoe, SPCUNY 2022 alum, featured on Japan’s largest broadcaster for the project she started with SPCUNY

"With the cost of living rising fast in Japan, a growing number of people are living in poverty. This report explores how one Japanese artist is using the power of art to highlight social issues and help support those in need, through creative expression." Spotlight on SPCUNY alum Rie Osogoe on NHK-World Japan.
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“The Last Street End in Gowanus” project collaborator releases cassette, music video from the performance

Just released: a music video and a limited edition cassette of a sound art performance that took place as part of encounter 4 of Nora Almeida's SPCUNY Project. Artist Martin Bisi says: "Each encounter involved transforming the contested area through uses other than those intended by public officials. Our performance would be to transform the location with sound. Objects from the location were integrated into it, like the large piece of scrap metal that Bradford Reed is dragging. Other instruments were self-made from discarded materials in our landscape." By Brad Cohan for Rock & Roll Globe. Photo: Sleeping Giant Glossolalia 2022.
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SPCUNY in ARTnews’ Artist Prize Roundup

The 2022-23 Social Practice CUNY cohort is listed in ARTnews' Artist Prize Roundup in September 2022, alongside recipients of prizes and fellowships across the US including Pew Center Fellowships, Artists’ Legacy Foundation Award, and more.
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“Art for the Future,” including co-director Gregory Sholette’s Insurrection, reviewed in Art in America

"Insurrection was first exhibited at Marian Goodman Gallery in New York as part of the 1984 exhibition 'Artists Call Against US Intervention in Central America' [click for more on Insurrection], one installment of a nationwide grassroots initiative that artist Doug Ashford, critic Lucy R. Lippard, and several others started in 1982, as the Reagan Doctrine of covert political meddling and overt military intervention was rapidly unfolding." By Mahan Moalemi. Photo: Peter Harris, courtesy Tufts University Art Galleries.
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