Visual Research Center for Education, Art & Social Change

exhibit at the Macy Art Gallery

Feb. 14 – Mar. 4, 2022

Featuring work by Teachers College faculty from various departments, this exhibition illustrates how scholars across a range of disciplines incorporate visual and artistic processes in their research and everyday lives. Organized by the Teachers College Program in Art & Art Education, MASCLab, and Visual Research Center.

View the full exhibit here.

 (DIS)EMBODIMENT

Laura Azzarito, Ph.D.

A few years ago, as I was walking through Frogner Park in Olso, I found myself obsessively taking photos of Gustav Vigeland’s sculptures. It is difficult to put into words, but I remember feeling enthusiastic about “being there” (Pink, 2008) and somehow connected to this “bodywork.” It was freezing cold, but I kept walking through the park for hours, looking at this artwork. It was hard to leave...view the full series here.

Empire II and Empire IV

Kim Baranowski

The Empire Series reimagines New York City historical landmarks and cultural institutions as the architectural remnants of an ancient civilization.

View the full series here.

Pandemic Weavings, Rivers and Caves, and Spaces Between

Melanie Brewster

In Pandemic Weavings, reclaimed fabric and felt were woven directly on to downed branches; these pieces were then returned to forests and natural spaces. The psychedelic, unnatural outburst of color on the branches spoke to hypnagogia--the liminal space between waking and dreaming where we have been held for the last two years. Such...view the full series here.

The 99ers

Stephen Brookfield

The 99ers have a trifecta philosophy--BANG IT OUT, KEEP IT SHORT & NO MESSING ABOUT! We strive for no artistic and political significance, but do agree with Herbert Marcuse's claim that experiencing and playing music creates a temporary estrangement from what we view as the 'normal'. Smashing an 'A' power chord and feeling the power surge through the band and across the...view the full series here.

Plot Series

Bryan Keller

In general, I use graphs like those in Plot 1 and Plot 2 to highlight patterns in simulation results that would be difficult to discern if presented in a table or as text. The graphs in Plots 3-5 summarize results of a data analysis. When creating plots I strive to adhere to Edward Tufte's principles of graphical excellence; I hope that the plots I create communicate complex ideas with "clarity, precision...view the full series here.

Memes in the Time of Corona: An Autoethnographic Visual Essay on Memes as Relational Resources during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Ioana Literat

More than just humorous online content, memes fulfill significant affective, sociocultural and political functions at both the individual and collective level. Analyzing personally significant COVID-19 memes within their larger communication contexts, this autoethnographic...view the full series here.

Exploring the Intersection of Race, Trauma, and Education in the Closure of Public Schools in Puerto Rico: A Visual Narrative of Memories and Testimonios from Communities in Loíza.

Carmen M. Martínez-Roldán

This visual presentation foregrounds preliminary analysis and insights from a research study I conducted in Puerto Rico with my collaborators Elizabeth Taveras Rivera, Belinda Arana and graduate student Lilliana Romero...view the video here.

School Leadership in Refugee Settings

Mary Mendenhall

We developed these multimedia resources as part of a larger initiative to assist school leaders in under-resourced regions by providing unique case study training material via a smartphone-based virtual learning platform. The learning platform—Comparative Education Leadership Lab (CELL)—was initiated by Prof. Cathryn Magno at the University of...view the full series here.

Sound Mosaic: An Original Hip-Hop and Spoken Word Composition

Brian Mooney

"Sound Mosaic" is an original Hip-Hop and spoken word composition produced by TC instructor and English Education doctoral student Brian Mooney. The song utilizes the Hip-Hop aesthetics of sampling and remix as decolonizing methodologies to explore multimodality through sound. The song samples scholars such as...listen and view the full series here.

The Reservoir Project

Sonali Rajan

Nearly every morning of my adult life, I have gone running. And this habit of running--while always a source of happiness--served as a particularly important touchstone for me during the Covid19 pandemic. The majority of these runs over the past decade + have taken place in Central Park. No matter the season, the weather, the day, my daily photo of the reservoir (or near it) has served as a simple/private...view the full series here.

Mood Series

Jacqueline Simmons

I began this collage series as part of a Black Paint Curriculum Lab session where we explored relationships between materials + meaning + memory as a curricular process. We mailed materials kits to anyone who wished to participate and then we shared a Zoom space while we individually engaged in creating. Throughout the pandemic we found many practices like this to push on the limitations of...view the full series here.

Enter Graffiti: Hanging out with Graffiti Writers During the Covid Pandemic

Amina Tawasil

On April 2020, the New York City graffiti cleanup program was suspended, and a moratorium was placed on the NYPD response to graffiti reports, in order to channel policing efforts towards the COVID-19 crisis. This, along with empty streets, and closed non-essential businesses, the city became an open canvas for graffiti writers...view the video here.

Disorientation: Walking Manhattan

Barbara Tversky

The camera homes in on a small boy running wildly in circles, trapped in a cramped room lined with adults sitting firmly on chairs.  A circle whirling in a box, that box in a larger box inside an even larger box: a warehouse of boxes each holding a family of migrants. The boy, a caged animal. A scene from Ai Wei Wei’s stunning and disturbing film on...view the full series here.

Untethered

Lalitha Vasudevan

This photo essay was forged while completing work on a manuscript about collaborative, community-based research and is an attempt to collapse spatial and temporal boundaries between artifacts from different projects, allowing them to reach across time to occupy the same space.

View the video here.

Zines as Public Scholarship

Haeny Yoon

Zines, short for magazines, are handmade booklets amplifying marginalized voices and documenting stories that are often unheard. In this collection, Asian American women speak to the tenuous, complicated, and loving relationships we have to our mothers. In between connection and disconnection, we reflect on the hardships many of our mothers faced navigating a world that rendered...view the video here.