Orozco Archives - Public Seminar

An Awful Color

A short story inspired by the history of the Orozco frescoes at The New School

May 6, 2026 • by Mary Karmelek

The New School for Social Research will keep indefinitely a yellow cotton curtain over the "Revolutionary Violence" section of a mural in the school's cafeteria by the late Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco, because the painting "does not express the philosophy of the faculty," Dr. Hans Simons, president of the ...

Rethinking Orozco

A Landscape Inside a Tent

On embodied learning with José Clemente Orozco

May 1, 2026 • by Pascal Glissmann

I tilt my head slightly, eyes narrowing in focus. I take two steps back. Then forward again—my feet almost touching the wall, my fingers tempted to touch the surface: pigment, paint, and the silver efflorescence populating at the edges. As I shift toward the opposite wall, I become aware of ...

Rethinking Orozco

Orozco’s Rainbow

An alchemical analysis

April 23, 2026 • by Jaime Arredondo

José Clemente Orozco’s first experience in the United States was colored by Jim Crow–era violence. At the border entrypoint of Laredo, Texas, guards burned 60 of the young artist’s drawings. This was 1917; it could have been worse. At least 124 people of Mexican descent were lynched in Texas between ...

Rethinking Orozco

How Alma Reed Triumphed Over “Positively Frightened” Critics of the Orozco Room

On the woman behind the brotherhood

April 17, 2026 • by John Reed

In January 1931, journalist and art-world impresario Alma Reed attended the unveiling of A Call to Revolution and Table of Universal Brotherhood, a cycle of frescoes by José Clemente Orozco and the first mural commissioned for The New School's bespoke building in New York City's progressive haven of Greenwich Village. ...