Artist, educator and writer Pablo Helguera has been appointed director of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School in New York, taking over from Carin Kuoni, who led the research centre as senior director and chief curator for 22 years. He will also direct the university's art collection, which holds more than 2,000 postwar and contemporary works. He began the role on Monday 2 November.

Helguera arrives after six years at the New School, where he was an assistant professor and directed the graduate programme in arts management and entrepreneurship at the College of Performing Arts. Before that he spent more than a decade at the Museum of Modern Art, running its adult and academic programmes. On taking up the post, he spoke of the need to make sense of events unfolding quickly, to question the stories that dominate public life, and to imagine different futures.

His own art practice is built on social engagement, combining public performance and installation with archival research, teaching and more traditional media. His best-known project, The School of Panamerican Unrest from 2006, was a road journey from Anchorage in Alaska to Ushuaia in Argentina that staged more than 100 public events in 25 cities across 20 countries. He also created Libreria Donceles, a travelling secondhand bookshop devoted to Spanish-language texts that visited 13 countries.

Language, and the social and political frameworks it carries, runs through much of his work, connecting his art with his roles in education and public programming. His honours include a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008, support from the Franklin Furnace Archive, Art Matters and the Blade of Grass fund, a Creative Capital grant and an honorary doctorate from the Kansas City Art Institute.