Thursday, November 14, 6:30 – 8:00pm | Speaker Series: Design for Strategic Differentiation | 136 W 21st St., 7th floor

MFA Products of Design presents “Design for Strategic Differentiation,” a talk with Todd Bracher, who works at the intersection of design, science, and business. In this talk, Bracher will draw upon his new book, Design in Context: A Framework for Strategic Differentiation, to explore how he has leveraged design for the companies he’s worked for. Design in Context serves as a comprehensive guide that explores the transformative power of strategic design and innovation.

Friday, November 15, 3:30 – 6:30pm | MPS Branding 2024 Thesis Premiere: Engendering | SVA Theatre

MPS Branding presents thesis projects from the class of 2024. This year, students were asked to look at typically gendered brands and arenas and investigate how brands are currently reflecting gender. The task of the 2024 thesis was to question existing legacy systems to unearth opportunities that can solve brand, societal, community, and personal challenges. Through robust critical analysis, students reposition gender for brands that have fallen out of pace with culture. The criteria included how to reposition these brands, develop strategies for greater relevance, and create new tactics in a rapidly changing cultural landscape.

Monday, November 18, 6:30 – 8:00pm | Samir Gandesha—Prophets of Deceit Today | 133/141 W 21st St., room 101C

BFA Visual & Critical Studies and Honors Program present political theorist and author Samir Gandesha, who will sketch the historical context, main arguments and contemporary relevance of Leo Lowenthal’s and Norbert Guterman’s landmark text of Critical Theory, Prophets of Deceit. He will focus on its typology of political responses to socio-economic crises, its treatment of susceptibility to fascist propaganda as symptomatic of real maladies to which agitators can only provide quack cures, and its influence on Theodor W. Adorno’s analysis of fascist propaganda. He will conclude by reflecting on the results of the 2024 US Presidential Election. Gandesha is the director of the Institute of Humanities, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. His most recent volume is Spectres of Fascism: Historical, Theoretical and International Perspectives.

Monday, November 18, 7:00 – 8:00pm | Visiting Artist Lecture: Simon Benjamin | 335 W 16th St.

BFA Fine Arts presents a visiting artist lecture with New York-based Jamaican multi-disciplinary artist and filmmaker Simon Benjamin, whose practice considers how the past ripples into the present in unexpected ways. Using the sea and coastal space as frameworks, his current body of work explores how lesser-known histories and colonial legacies impact on our present and contribute to an interconnected future.

Tuesday, November 19, 3:00 – 5:00pm | Jayson Musson | 133/141 W 21st St., room 101C & online

MFA Fine Arts presents a talk by the artist and SVA faculty member Jayson Musson, who has worked across performance, video, textiles, painting, and sculpture, utilizing art as a vehicle to probe historical legacy and cultural memory. Musson has exhibited internationally.

Tuesday, November 19, 5:00 – 6:00pm | The Artists Roundtable: Jesse Krimes | Online

MA Curatorial Practice presents a talk with Pennsylvania-based multimedia artist Jesse Krimes, whose work explores societal mechanisms of power and control, with a focus on criminal and racial justice. He is the founder and director of the Center for Art & Advocacy, the first national organization dedicated to supporting justice-impacted creatives. Krimes also led a successful class-action lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase for charging formerly incarcerated individuals predatory fees after their release from prison. This fall, Krimes has exhibitions opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Jack Shainman Gallery. He won an Emmy Award for his documentary Art and Krimes by Krimes.

Tuesday, November 19, 6:30 – 8:30pm | Race and Visual Literacy | 214 E 21st St.

MFA Photography, Video and Related Media presents a panel discussion about Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images by Maurice Berger and edited by Marvin Heiferman (Aperture, 2024). Joining Marvin Heiferman are Noelle Flores Théard, photo editor and photographer, and Zun Lee, physician, photographer, and educator. Flores and Lee are both featured in Race Stories and share Berger’s desire to use images—still and moving—to engage the world and reach new audiences.

Tuesday, November 19, 7:00 – 8:30pm | i3 Photo Lecture: Allen Furbeck | 136 W 21st St., room 418F

MPS Digital Photography presents a talk with faculty member Allen Furbeck (MPS 2008 Digital Photography), part of the i3: Images, Ideas, Inspiration lecture series. Furbeck has been a photographer and a painter for over 50 years, working in a number of styles both abstract and representational. He finds the intersections between these different media and styles to be a fertile ground for new ways to be creative. His current work begins with 360-degree spherical photographic captures, which he transforms digitally into panoramic photos using various geometric projections.

Programming at the College this month includes talks and exhibitions on politics, the environment, and civic duty; plus the opening of a new space on campus.