Molly Rottman, Author at Public Seminar

How The New School and Parsons merged

January 17, 2020 • by Molly Rottman

Parsons was founded twenty-three years before The New School for Social Research (NSSR), in 1896, which means Parsons had its own history for seventy-three years before merging with The New School in 1970. By the late 1960s the school was in dire straits, with Parsons running an annual deficit of ...

Feature

What We Know About Parsons School of Design’s Namesake

The story behind Frank Alvah Parsons, the man who made art and design accessible to New Yorkers

January 4, 2019 • by Molly Rottman

A hundred and fifty miles from Parsons’ campus in New York City is a small town in the foothills of the Pioneer Valley called Chester. With a population of 1,380, Chester’s only claim to fame was emery, a mineral used in the nineteenth century for grinding metal (and later finger ...