Cloud of witnesses

A slide from the talk J and I gave today in the university civic engagement series, accompanying a description of the biographies we had students do. How many can you name? You've met most of them, if you've been following this blog, but they may be hard to recognize. I've tried to find images from the time these various luminaries were involved with The New School - in many cases before they became luminaries! - so even the recognizable ones might not be so immediately.

(Clockwise from lower left: composer John Cage, choreographer Martha Graham, fashion designer Claire McCardell, political philosopher Leo Strauss, actor Marlon Brando, urbanist Jane Jacobs, economist Thorstein Veblen, anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, feminist philosopher Sara Ruddick, political theorist Hannah Arendt, muralist José Clemente Orozco, director Erwin Piscator; middle row: psychologist Max Wertheimer, photographer Berenice Abbott, writer James Baldwin, editor-in-chief Alvin Johnson.)