Graduate Alumni/ae

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Bard Graduate Center Student Mya Benally to Participate in Prestigious Storytelling Program

The environmental storytelling project Planet Forward has selected Mya Benally, Bard Graduate Center ’28 (Diné), as one of ten students nationwide to participate in its 2026-27 Ilíiaitchik: Indigenous Correspondents Program. Now in its fifth year, the ten-month program helps the next generation of Indigenous scholars hone their environmental communication skills in order to share environmental stories and resilient solutions of global relevance.

Founded by Emmy Award-winning journalist Frank Sesno and based at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs, Planet Forward was established to equip university students with hands-on skills to lead conversations on science and the planet’s future. Planet Forward partnered with the University of Arizona to launch Ilíiaitchik and promote the participation of Indigenous students in this vital work. The name of the program (pronounced il-lia-it-chick) means “to speak good words” in the Biiluuke/Our Side/Crow language.

Benally is an art historian and museum professional from Kirtland, New Mexico, dedicated to creating more supportive spaces for Indigenous artists within the global art world. Her commitment to advancing the ethical representation of contemporary Indigenous art has been guided by struggles in her own research with encountering outdated information and institutional texts written by non-Indigenous authors.

Before moving to New York City to pursue a master’s degree in decorative arts, design history, and material culture at Bard Graduate Center, Benally was a student at Bowdoin College, where she completed her art history degree earlier this year with a minor in gender, sexuality, and women’s studies. During her undergraduate study, she developed a diverse portfolio of institutional experience around contemporary Indigenous art, with notable internships with the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the nation’s premier institution for the collection and interpretation of contemporary Native art.

Benally’s cohortmates in Ilíiaitchik come from eight schools and a wide range of Indigenous nations. Over the coming months, the correspondents will participate in monthly workshops led by primarily Indigenous communications experts, and will receive one-on-one editorial and mentorship from Ivey-Camille Manybeads Tso, an award-winning Diné filmmaker. The project will culminate when correspondents travel to the annual Planet Forward Summit in Washington, DC, in 2027, where they will engage in workshops and present their work. The correspondents will also each publish at least one story on PlanetForward.org over the course of the project.

“Our correspondents have told stories that reflect who they are and where they come from, teachings from the land and their people, highlighting critical issues that need to be heard but are often overlooked and, most importantly, remembering the past to build a better future,” said JoRee LaFrance, Ilíiaitchik co-founder and co-program coordinator.

During her studies at Bard Graduate Center, Benally will utilize the virtual workshops and mentorship offered through Ilíiaitchik to explore the vital connection between Indigenous land stewardship and cultural expression.

“I view this opportunity as a critical launchpad to expand my research, aiming to bridge traditional ecological knowledge with contemporary artistic practices,” said Benally. “Ultimately, my work seeks to elevate the profiles of Indigenous creators who use their art to advocate for environmental preservation and cultural sovereignty."

Post Date: 10-07-2026

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Two Bard Alumnae Christine Sun Kim MFA ’13 and Layli Long Soldier MFA ’14 Named 2026 MacArthur Fellows

Bard alumnae Christine Sun Kim MFA ’13 and Layli Long Soldier MFA ’14 have been named 2026 MacArthur Fellows. Kim, an artist exploring the political, cultural, and multisensory dimensions of sound, spoken language, and communication, and Long Soldier, a poet illustrating how language can be a tool of oppression or a means to reshape ourselves and the world around us, are two of this year’s 20 recipients of the prestigious “genius grant” awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. 

In a statement about Kim’s work, the MacArthur Foundation says, “Across a varied body of work that includes drawings, large-scale murals, video, and interactive installations, Kim creates visual and conceptual representations of sound. She engages with the complexities deaf people experience in a world that prioritizes sound and spoken forms of communication.”

The MacArthur Foundation says about Long Soldier’s work, “Across her widely experimental, yet accessible, body of work, Long Soldier interrogates the colonial violence inflicted on Native Americans. At the same time, she celebrates the beauty, love, and resilience passed down through generations and communities by way of care and tradition.”

Former MFA faculty member in painting Rodney McMillan and member of the Advisory Council of the Center for Indigenous Studies at Bard College Elizabeth Ellis have also been named 2026 MacArthur Fellows. 

The MacArthur Fellowship is a no-strings-attached award for extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential. There are three criteria for selection of MacArthur Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or those in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations. Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential.

MacArthur Fellows receive $800,000 stipends that are bestowed with no conditions; recipients may use the money as they see fit. Nominated anonymously by leaders in their respective fields and considered by an anonymous selection committee, recipients learn of their selection only when they receive a call from the MacArthur Foundation just before the public announcement.

“For 45 years, MacArthur Fellows have defied boundaries, by questioning conventions, crossing disciplines, and driving collective progress. The 2026 Fellows continue that creative tradition—they explore the depths of our humanity; they reveal untold origins to modern challenges; they expand the edges of scientific inquiry and life-saving research. They show us new ways to understand the world,” says Kristen Mack, Vice President, Communications, MacArthur Fellows, and Partnerships.

Christine Sun Kim received a BS (2002) from the Rochester Institute of Technology and MFAs from the School of Visual Arts (2006) and Bard College (2013). Her work has been exhibited at such venues as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul, South Korea); the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN); the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (Canada); the Art Institute of Chicago; Secession (Vienna, Austria); and the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY).

In the participatory sound-based work Game of Skill 2.0 (2015), Kim foregrounds the labor involved in listening, typically considered a passive mode of engagement. For this installation, an individual must painstakingly maneuver a handheld device to make it emit a spoken word text written by the artist. An arm topped with a magnet extends from the device, and participants must carefully keep it in contact with wires stretched across the gallery as they move through the space. How a participant holds the device, moves, or walks affects how the audio is emitted. Kim’s Degrees of Deaf Rage (2018-2019) series is a candid and humorous accounting of the difficulties deaf people face in scenarios where the ability to hear is taken for granted. The series comprises charcoal and oil pastel drawings of geometric angles that visualize Kim and her deaf friends’ frustration and anger in various institutional settings. An acute angle describes their anger when an Uber driver calls instead of texts, while a right angle indicates their “legit” rage at hotels that use fire alarms without strobe lights. A full circle (360 degrees) represents their “full on rage” when their suitcases are left on a runway after a flight attendant asks for the owner in spoken English only.
Many of Kim’s works include infographics, musical notation, and her own graphic lexicon. The mural Prolonged Echo (2023) features black arching forms against a white background, evoking the American Sign Language (ASL) sign for “echo.” The source material for the drawing is illegible to a viewer unfamiliar with ASL, replicating deaf people’s experience of receiving information in echo form; everything is repeated, with more or less detail. This reflects the fact that deaf people do not have direct access to the source of spoken communication and must rely on intermediaries like sign language or writing. Another large-scale mural, Ghost(ed) Notes (2024), depicts musical notes falling outside of and around four-line staves, indicating rhythm without discernable pitch and prompting reflection on omissions and breakdowns in communication. Kim’s work powerfully conveys the experiences of deaf people and opens up new ways of understanding sound and hearing.

Layli Long Soldier received a BFA (2009) from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA (2014) from Bard College. Her poems have appeared in the documentary film Lakota Nation vs. United States (2022) and such publications as Poetry Magazine, BOMB, and The Kenyon Review, among others. She has taught at Diné College, the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Randolph College, and the Institute of American Indian Arts, and she was the endowed chair of creative writing at Texas State University (2024-2025). Long Soldier is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation.

In her collection Whereas (2017), Long Soldier uses a variety of poetic forms and textual manipulations that draw attention to the materiality of language: words arranged into geometric shapes, crossed out text, blank spaces, words for punctuation written out in place of punctuation marks. In many poems, she quotes, revises, and repurposes text from congressional statements, newspaper articles, and historical studies, unmasking acts of violence, theft, and erasure that legalistic and sanitized language obscures. For example, the prose poem “38” ponders the role of language in the hanging of 38 Dakota men in 1862 after the so-called Sioux uprising. The poem clarifies that the uprising occurred as the Dakota People were starving after a series of opaque treaties—forged and repeatedly broken by the U.S. government—took their land and livelihood. The centerpiece of Whereas is the titular poem, in which Long Solider responds to the 2009 Congressional Resolution of Apology to Native Americans. She juxtaposes the impersonal legalese of the text with Lakota traditions and cultural teachings, revealing the continued conflict between two opposing worldviews.

Long Soldier also has created several works that present poetry in visual media such as sculpture and video. For example, Long Soldier’s Obligations series of poems began as a hanging sculptural piece. The sculpture emulates a Lakota star quilt, with each diamond-shaped point of the star containing a poem from the series. The words of each poem can be read in multiple directions, creating many different iterations; likewise, the points of the star can be rearranged within the star configuration, adding new dimensions to the poems’ consideration of what we owe each other and how to remain in relationship with one another. The Obligations series will appear in printed form in Long Soldier’s forthcoming collection, We (October 2026). Through her eclectic body of work, Long Soldier demonstrates the power of poetry to articulate our past and build a better future.

 

Post Date: 09-29-2026