Artist Pablo Helguera Takes the Helm at New School’s Vera List Center for Art and Politics Amid an Electoral Earthquake

New York artist and educator Pablo Helguera, whose work has long focused on socially engaged practice, has been named director of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics (VLC) at the New School in New York, as well as director of the New School’s art collection.

He is an inside hire: since 2020 he has been an assistant professor of arts management and entrepreneurship at the school’s College of Performing Arts, where he oversees a master’s program. Before that, he spent 13 years as director of adult and academic programs at the Museum of Modern Art. Helguera succeeds Carin Kuoni, senior director and chief curator, who had led the center since 2004.

“It feels like such a wonderful transition,” Helguera told ARTnews in a phone interview. “It’s exactly what I’ve done my whole career. I’ve been a programmer forever and there’s very few people of my species.” The VLC supports research, teaching, exhibitions, publications, and public programs. Its signature event is an annual public forum. At Kuoni’s initiative, the center adopts a new theme every two years; the current one is “Matter of Intelligence.”

“Pablo Helguera brings an extraordinary combination of artistic vision, intellectual curiosity, and institutional experience to the Vera List Center for Art and Politics,” JK Brown, chair of the Vera List Center advisory board, said in a statement. “His commitment to socially engaged art and the role of artists in shaping public life aligns deeply with the Center’s mission. As we welcome Pablo, we also celebrate Carin Kuoni’s remarkable leadership over the past two decades. She has built an institution of international significance, grounded in rigorous inquiry, artistic experimentation, and a profound commitment to social justice.”

Helguera has long been a fixture of the international art scene, and he has long been interested in exactly the kinds of intersections the Vera List Center explores. This summer, the Sheldon Museum of Art in Nebraska received a $100,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation to support “Pablo Helguera: Socialscapes and Bad Witches,” a midcareer retrospective planned for 2027. “The Schoolhouse and the Bus,” his two-artist show with Suzanne Lacy, was part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA in 2018. While he was at MoMA, artist-writers Dushko Petrovich and Roger White sought him out as a contributor to their 2018 book As Radical, as Mother, as Salad, as Shelter: What Should Art Institutions Do Now? He conceived and directed “The School of Panamerican Unrest,” which included more than 100 public programs across 20 countries. He also founded Librería Donceles, a Spanish-language used bookstore that has traveled to 13 cities.

He has written two books, both published by Jorge Pinto Books: Education for Socially Engaged Art: A Materials and Techniques Handbook (2011) and Art Scenes: The Social Scripts of the Art World (2012). His curatorial credits include “Club Americano” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2017), and serving as “pedagogical curator” of the Eighth Mercosul Biennial (2011) and “cultural mediator” for Manifesta 15 in Barcelona (2024). His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital grant, and fellowships and awards from A Blade of Grass, Franklin Furnace, and Art Matters.

At MoMA, he developed and led symposia, including an annual forum on contemporary art. He also conceived the Artists Experiment initiative, which brought artists including Nina Katchadourian, Michael Rakowitz, and Caroline Woolard into dialogue with MoMA educators. Before MoMA, he shaped public programming at the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

The VLC was founded in 1992 and named for life trustee Vera G. List (1908–2002), an art collector and philanthropist. It has an annual operating budget of $1.1 million, with support from organizations including the Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation.

Helguera started in the role this week, at a dynamic moment in American politics. Democrats routed Republicans in national and state races across the country, flipping Senate and House seats and winning governorships in what had been considered deep-red territory. It was a realignment unseen since the aftermath of the Watergate scandal. Florida’s outgoing Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, called Election Day “close to an extinction level event.”

“I’m so lucky,” Helguera said. “We’ve lived through dark times for democracy, and this is an enormous event that allows us to think again: How do we rebuild trust in democratic institutions, and what role can artists play in helping us think about democracy and about what populism means? These questions are super-important right now. How can we ask them from a place of hope rather than the despair we have lived in for 10 years?”