The New School Libraries and Archives was recently contacted by a media archivist at the University of Georgia about an intriguing movie reel in one of its collections. Our Georgian counterpart, Margie Compton, was examining what looked to be a fabulous costume party. People were dressed as giant fishes and chairs. Could we help explain what was going on in this silent, yet sumptuously colored film? Luckily, we knew right away that this film was documenting a past Parsons School of Design tradition, the annual Mardi Gras costume ball. Read Margie’s response to her finding on the Walter J. Brown Media Archives blog.

The Mardi Gras costume balls of Parsons past are a topic we know well from the rich photographic legacy of the Parsons School of Design Alumni Association records, as well as a student collection donated to the Archives by Parsons alumna, Carolyn Nesbitt Wagenseller (class of 1963). But how do you explain to someone unfamiliar with Parsons what these annual events were? Below is a primer that will help you to contextualize the newly digitized film:

Parsons School of Design is the art and design college of The New School, a university situated in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and associated with, for better or for worse, Project Runway. However, in 1960, when this movie was shot, “Parsons” was an independent school, located in Midtown Manhattan in a district known for its proximity to antiques stores and interior design firms, many of which employed faculty, students, and graduates. It was a cross-town bus ride away from New York’s Garment District, at that time a bustling neighborhood employing thousands of people, including numerous Parsons students, faculty, and visiting lecturers, in the domestic fashion industry. Parsons was not accredited to award bachelor’s degrees and students often came to Parsons after obtaining undergraduate degrees elsewhere. There were no residence halls or gymnasiums. Manhattan was Parsons’s campus.

What there was of organized student life at Parsons revolved around dances and exhibitions of student work, including the annual blow-out fashion show in late spring during which numerous celebrated designers have made their literal entrance onto the stage of fashion design. For many years, Parsons also sponsored a school-wide annual Mardi Gras costume ball. This event, held at a Manhattan hotel during the months of February, March or April, was a highlight of the school’s academic year, significant enough of a ritual to be featured in the published academic calendar every autumn. The Mardi Gras ball was attended not only by students but by faculty, school administrators, alumni, trustees, and donors.

The first mention The New School Archives staff can locate of Mardi Gras-related festivities is from the Parsons School of Design Alumni newsletter from July 1953. A subsequent article in the same newsletter from November 1953 indicates that the 1953 event may have been the first one. Note that this is the Alumni newsletter, and tickets are being marketed directly to alumni.

It is possible that the costumed dance party, a tradition in many Catholic majority cultures, was initiated by incoming school president Pierre Bedard. Bedard’s professional background in the film industry and in promoting Franco-American relations supports this conjecture. The dance appears to be sponsored by the Student Council, which was chartered in spring 1954, and the Student Activities Committee, comprised entirely of female donors and the president’s wife. Mardi Gras is first mentioned in the school catalog published for the 1954-1955 academic year.  Costume judges were leading fashion designers, such as Charles James and Norman Norell, alumna and famed interior designer Melanie Kahane, and rock star display designer (yes, there were and still are rock star display designers) Henry Callahan of Saks Fifth Avenue, all pictured in the image above. Donors for decorations and prizes included such firms as Chanel and Lord & Taylor.

Another possible source of inspiration for a costumed dance party at Parsons is the tradition, begun in 1892, of the themed Beaux Arts ball, or Bal des Quat’Z’Arts, for art students in Paris, which eventually spread to the United States. We know, thanks to Cristina Fontánez Rodríguez of the Pratt Institute Archives, that the Pratt Institute hosted a Mardi Gras event for its students around the turn of the twentieth century. Check out page 18 of the 1907 yearbook! President Bedard’s long career of bringing French history and culture to American audiences makes the Beaux Arts ball theory another possibility.

Regardless of its origins at Parsons, following the March 1960 event and within the first year of the presidency of Sterling Callisen, the Parsons School of Design Mardi Gras costume ball was canceled by presidential order. A memorandum dated May 25, 1960, states, “The Mardi Gras has shown signs of getting far out of control and there have been increasing objections and criticisms on the part of some of the students, faculty, alumni, and trustees. It will not be scheduled” (Parsons Faculty Council folder, 1959-1962, in Parsons School of Design Office of the President records, Box 5, Folders 7-8). An adjacent memorandum indicates that Mardi Gras was to be promptly removed from the upcoming year’s catalog being readied for production. It was not removed; however, we find no evidence of a 1961 Mardi Gras ball being held.

It is unclear how long this hiatus lasted. Photographs contributed to The New School Archives by alumna Carolyn Nesbitt Wagenseller indicate there was some sort of costume party with an Ides of March theme held at Parsons in March 1963, curiously around the time of President Callisen’s resignation. It looks suspiciously like a Mardi Gras ball. Unfortunately, there is no student publication from this time that provides further insight, nor is there any mention of the party in the Alumni newsletter. Parsons School of Design’s student newspaper, Parsonspaper, began publication in 1976.

A mid-1970s poster in the Archives advertising an all-NYC art school Mardi Gras Costume Ball indicates tickets were available through the Office of the Dean, providing evidence that the Mardi Gras tradition was reinstated and enlarged with the support of school leadership after Parsons School of Design became affiliated with The New School for Social Research in 1970. Again, The Pratt Institute Archives comes to the historical rescue, confirming that the student newspaper, The Prattler, reported the 1977 event was “the best party Pratt has seen in a while!” (email to the author, February 12, 2021).  Art school costume parties also make an appearance in Parsons alumnus (class of 1975) Duncan Hannah’s memoir, Twentieth Century Boy (2018). The New School Archives staff does not know when this iteration of the Mardi Gras costume ball ended, most likely replaced with Halloween parties, popular events of the 1980s.

Okay, but how did this movie of a Parsons Mardi Gras ball from 1960 end up in Georgia? The answer is Francis Ruzicka, who concluded his long academic career at the University of Georgia.

Francis A. Ruzicka first appears in Parsons School of Design course catalogs in 1958 as assistant dean toward the end of Pierre Bedard’s presidency. According to catalog text written by Ruzicka, he was hired by Parsons in 1957. The following year, his title changed to administrative dean, and this would have been his title at the time of the 1960 Mardi Gras costume ball. He also taught drawing and courses titled, “Design Orientation” and “Introduction to the Fields of Design.” With President Callisen’s resignation in early 1963, Francis Ruzicka became president-elect of Parsons and then president in the fall of that year, a position he held until his own resignation in 1969. He holds the distinction of being the last president of Parsons School of Design as it merged, sans president, with The New School for Social Research in the early months of 1970.

This answers, of course, the “how” but not the “why.” Why did Francis Ruzicka schlep this film canister around with him for the rest of his four decades on earth, from New York City to Ohio (he was Ohio State University’s College of the Arts associate dean) to Georgia? The answer is we don’t and possibly cannot know. Why does anyone hang onto objects of long past events? Because they want to remember? Because they forgot to throw it out? Because they thought it was important and figured this would be readily apparent to anyone in the future who opened the film canister? Isn’t it self-explanatory?

If you are a Parsons alum and recognize anyone in this movie, please contact The New School Archives: archivist@newschool.edu

Acknowledgments: This post could not have been written without the dedicated curiosity and intellectual generosity of Margie Compton of the University of Georgia. Thanks also to Virginia Thoren and Pratt Institute Archivist Cristina Fontánez Rodríguez for supplying documentation of costumed dance parties at the Pratt Institute.

Photograph and description of 1954 Mardi Gras ball appearing at top of article may be viewed through the New School Archives Digital Collections database.