Collective Efforts toward Equity and Decolonization

Against the pervasive backdrop of a one and a half trillion dollar student debt crisis, the rapid expansion of art schools across the country, and the recent launch of the MFA Art Fair, visual artist and educator Marc Handelman will share three stories that trace the ongoing challenges, failures, and successful models towards equity and decolonization within the Art & Design Program at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. Handelman will discuss the recent collective efforts in implementing a new MFA scholarship system that covers tuition for all graduate students and what this shift towards egalitarianism attempts to achieve for its students and other graduate programs in reimagining the conditions that shape student debt. Another report explores how Mason Gross is confronting ableist biases and inaccessibility within its facilities and how students, disability advocates, and faculty and staff worked through key problems eventually shutting down the use and access of an arts building until it can be brought up to code. Handelman will also speak about collaborating on “The Windows of Understanding,” a community-based public arts project funded by a Research Partnership Grant for which he was a principal investigator. The project brought together over 120 local artists, businesses and non-profit organizations engaging the University and the larger community in new and difficult conversations that amplified underrepresented voices, promoted social justice initiatives, and engendered cross-cultural dialogues around the question of how “we see through hate” in our current political climate.