Newsmakers

Bard alumnus Titus Ogilvie-Laing ’13, a beekeeper who maintains hives on New York City rooftops, was featured in the New York Times. “At the Empire State Building, on a roof of Madison Square Garden and on a terrace adjacent to the Chrysler Building, thousands of veritable worker bees have been turning nectar into honey,” writes Patrick McGeehan for the New York Times. On a recent warm day as he tended to hives belonging to the Danish Consulate, Ogilvie-Laing “blew smoke from silver canisters to calm the bees before opening the hives. Using metal tools shaped like small crowbars, they pried frames out of the wooden hive boxes. Each frame was covered with hundreds of bees and filled with combs brimming with raw honey.” Ogilvie-Laing, who also works part time in the photo and video department of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, beekeeps for the Queens-based company Best Bees, which manages hives in a variety of locations around the metropolitan area, including in Long Island City, the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, and Madison Square Garden. 

Daniel Terna ’09 ICP ’15 was profiled in Artsy Artist’s “Artists On Our Radar,” an editorial series featuring five artists who made an impact in the past month through exhibitions, gallery openings, and other events. Terna’s latest exhibit The Terrain is on view at the Jack Barrett Gallery in Tribeca until December 14. The Terrain features Terna’s photographs of political events from 2017 to the present, including the Women’s March and the Global Climate Strike, along with day-to-day photographs from his own life. The Terrain was also reviewed by the New York Times, which writes that Terna's photography contains “narrative restraint... [it] keeps admitting how hard it is to really know another human being.”

Terna has exhibited at the BRIC Arts Media Biennial, MoMA PS1’s film program, and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, among others, and will exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum’s National Portrait Gallery in May 2025. His photography is focused on intergenerational relationships, combining personal narratives with his outside perspective on current events. Of Terna’s 2023 photo Monastery, taken near the Dachau concentration camp where his father was imprisoned, Artsy writes, “The peaceful scene is transformed by its context, invoking the weight of memory and survival.”

On Monday, November 11, 2024, Bard College will host a Veterans Day event to rededicate the Old Gym at Bard as Memorial Hall in honor and remembrance of alumni/ae, faculty, and staff who have served the country in armed services. Dedication and remarks by Malia Du Mont ’95, vice president for strategy and policy and chief of staff at Bard, will take place at 11 am at 39 Henderson Circle Drive on Bard’s Annandale campus, followed by a reception at 11:30 am in Schwab ’52 Atrium in the Franklin W. Olin Humanities Building. The event will close with a talk given at 3 pm in Barringer House by Dev Crasta ’09, a clinical psychologist who works with veterans in the mental health field. The event is free and open to the public. Please register here.

The event is the culmination of efforts to honor Veterans Day which began last year, when Du Mont asked Bard archivist Helene Tieger ’85 to unearth the College’s veterans-related material. They discovered a 100-year-old handmade service flag, with dozens of stars representing students and alumni/ae of Bard who served during World War I, and learned that the building at the center of Bard’s campus, known as the Old Gym, was built in honor of those Bardians. A new sign at Memorial Hall will be unveiled at the event on Monday to share this history with the Bard community.

“I am looking forward to unveiling the new sign, reacquainting the Bard community with this important history, and helping our colleagues and students understand the role that Bard has played in enabling military service to our nation, in support of democracy and in defense of the US Constitution, throughout the institution's history,” said Du Mont, who is also leading plans to turn a room in the building into a permanent exhibition space where items about the military service of current and past members of the Bard community will have a permanent display in the center of the college’s campus.

Bard’s Center for Indigenous Studies (CfIS) hosted a convening in Venice to consider how Indigenous aesthetics, futurity, and arts intersect with global practices and modernism. The name of the convening, “if I read you/what I wrote bear/in mind I wrote it,” from a poem by Layli Long Soldier MFA ’14 (Oglala Lakota), gathered Native and non-Native poets, academics, artists, musicians, curators, teachers, and students to address the interdisciplinary, transnational nature of Bard Artist in Residence Jeffrey Gibson's (Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee) work in the US Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale Arte.

“The convening as a whole felt like an energizing disco, a kaleidoscopic exploration of Native identities in all their rich dualities, contrasts, and dichotomies: familiar and unfamiliar, past and future, joy and sorrow, detailed and monumental,” wrote Sháńdíín Brown (Navajo) for Hyperallergic.
  
The three-day event hosted luminaries of Native American and Indigenous studies and cutting-edge performers. Panels on beads, materiality, economies of labor and trade, aesthetics, poetry, performance, silhouette, and color also celebrated contemporary Indigenous artists, writers, and activists while examining the continued segregation of Indigenous voices in conversations regarding taste making, trade, modernity, and power. Several Bard College faculty and staff participated including Christian Ayne Crouch, dean of graduate studies, associate professor of history and American and Indigenous studies, and CfIS director; Brandi Norton (Iñupiaq), CfIS curator of public programs; Melina Roise, CfIS program coordinator; and Dinaw Mengetsu, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of the Humanities and director of the Written Arts Program.

Further reading:
The Art of Jeffrey Gibson Shines in Venice (ICT)

Rock band Hello Mary, including bassist Mikaela Oppenheimer ’25, were profiled in a backstage photo essay in Rolling Stone. Alongside images of their October 24 concert at Bowery Ballroom in New York City, Rolling Stone spoke to the band about the significance of headlining a show at the Bowery and their journey through pre-concert nerves. Oppenheimer, shown in the photoset playing bass and also doing homework backstage, says the adrenaline from shows makes her “energized for 10 minutes—then I’m ready to sleep [for] a long time.”

Hello Mary was formed in 2019 and released its first EP, Ginger, in 2020. Their latest album, Emita Ox, was released this year on September 14. Rolling Stone calls the album “excellently moody,” and fellow band member Stella Wave agreed, “there’s definitely a different mood on this album … it’s darker and more subtle.” The band ended this touring season on November 3, and now are taking time to put together their next project.
 

On Monday, November 4, at 5 pm, Bard College will host a screening and discussion for the public premiere of the Open Society University Network’s (OSUN) documentary film, A Poll to Call Our Own: The Bard Voting Story. The screening will be followed by a discussion with key actors, including Bard alumni/ae Sarah deVeer ’17, Jonian Rafti ’15, Seamus Heady ’22 (producer/director), lawyer Yael Bromberg, Bard Vice President for Civic Engagement Erin Cannan, and Bard Vice President for Academic Affairs Jonathan Becker. The event will take place at the Weis Cinema in the Bertelsmann Campus Center. It will also be broadcast as a webinar. Register in advance for this webinar here.

The short film A Poll to Call Our Own: The Bard Voting Story chronicles the quarter-century fight at Bard over student voting rights, a period during which Bard students and administrators, with the support of groups like the Andrew Goodman Foundation and the New York Civil Liberties Union, won four lawsuits—three state and one federal—to protect students’ right to vote locally and to secure a polling place on the Bard campus. Bard’s experience helped inspire New York State to pass a law in 2022 mandating polling places at or near college campuses that have 300 or more registered on-campus voters.

The film was produced as an open educational resource for the course, Student Voting: Power, Politics and Race in the Fight for American Democracy. The course, which is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and OSUN, is collaboratively taught by faculty from Bard, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (North Carolina A&T), Prairie View A&M University, and Tuskegee University. Students meet virtually weekly to discuss issues in the course, including case studies which explore histories of student voting at each institution. By the end of the project, there will be a film and written case study for each campus, chronicling their fight for student voting rights.

A Poll to Call Our Own: The Bard Voting Story contains interviews with key players in the fight for a polling place, including current and former students, key administrators, and legal counsel, as well as archival footage of students being harassed at a local poll site and speaking before the Red Hook Town Board about the need for a polling place on campus. It is accompanied by a written case study.

Director and producer Seamus Heady ’22 said: “Our film reveals the powers which have worked, often quietly, to stand between youth voters and the polls. Nobody goes out of their way to silence meaningless voices. It is my hope that youth everywhere, who may feel dubious about the power of their votes, take this film as an affirmation of the significant role they play in our democracy. Bard as an institution has committed significant resources to bring attention to local municipal injustice, which could otherwise go unnoticed. I believe all universities owe it to their students to do the same.”

Bard College President Leon Botstein, who was a litigant in two of the cases, said: “This film illustrates Bard’s belief in the inextricable link between education and democracy. I am proud to have served as a litigant with Bard students and administrators in our successful campaign to secure a polling place on campus and to advocate for a law mandating polling places on college campuses in New York State with 300 or more registered voters. As trust in institutions and faith in democracy wanes in the United States, particularly amongst American youth, it is more important now than ever to fight for justice and change through securing for all citizens the right to vote.”

Bard’s Vice President for Academic Affairs, Director of Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement, and Professor of Political Studies Jonathan Becker said: “The film covers many of the critical milestones of Bard’s long fight over student voting rights. It effectively captures how successive generations of Bard students mobilized with the support of the Bard administration and partnered with organizations like the Andrew Goodman Foundation and the New York Civil Liberties Union to fight for their democratic rights. It is a testament to the capacity of higher education institutions to serve as civic actors in an America whose democracy is increasingly under threat.”

Bard student Sierra Ford ’26, who is the head of Election@Bard and an Andrew Goodman Ambassador, said: “It is incredible to be a part of a legacy of rich voter advocacy at Bard. What a privilege it has been to join my peers, administration, and mentors in realizing an electorally engaged community.”

Bard Vice President for Civic Engagement Erin Cannan said: “The Bard student voting story is a reminder to all of us that fair elections require vigilance and engagement of young people. And that the fear of ‘over enfranchising’ students cannot be a reason for election officials to act illegally. This work is never finished.”

Assistant Producer at OSUN Maria Pankova said: “Working on this case study was an opportunity for me to learn more about Bard College’s history and the culture of civic engagement on campus. As a Bard graduate, I felt closer to my alma mater, knowing the full extent of voting activism taking place there and administration advocacy for students’ rights.”

In conversation for Bomb magazine, Bard alumnae and visual artists Adriana Farmiga MFA ’04 and Fawn Krieger MFA ’05, who lectured together at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for nearly a decade and now both teach at the Cooper Union School of Art, discussed Farmiga’s new body of work. The AVATAR series features scaled up wooden plywood sculptures described by Farmiga as masks or protest posters, currently on view at Marisa Newman Projects gallery in New York. “A mask allows an individual to lose or transcend their identity, while protest posters serve to signal one’s belief systems or demands,” Farmiga told Krieger. “Both function as barriers between the individual and the world; both peddle in anonymity and identification. In my hybridized version, the scaled-up form of the protest poster on a stick also assumes the role of a mask or shape of a sentient being.”

Valve Turners, a documentary feature film directed and produced by Steve Bonds-Liptay MS ’10, premiered and won the Climate Action Award in this year’s Climate Film Fest. Valve Turners follows a small group of activists from the Pacific Northwest as they turn the valves and halt the flow of five oil pipelines entering the United States from Canada to spotlight the climate emergency. Facing felony charges, they defend their actions as necessary in light of decades of political inaction and urgent warnings from climate scientists. The film festival called Bonds-Liptay’s feature “riveting and incisive.” Bonds-Liptay graduated from Bard’s Graduate Programs in Sustainability with a masters degree in environmental policy. 

The 2024 Dance Magazine Awards honor Bard alumna Joanna Haigood ’79, alongside George Faison, Liz Lerman, Mavis Staines, Shen Wei, and Mikhail Baryshnikov, whose work with Baryshnikov Arts earned him the Chairman’s Award. From its first year in 1954, the Dance Magazine Awards have been given annually in appreciation of the artistry, integrity, and resilience that dance artists have demonstrated over the course of their careers. The theme for this year’s awards is “the stage and beyond”—the dancers, choreographers, and educators recognized are invested in work that often transcends the proscenium.

“Since 1980 Joanna Haigood has been creating work that uses natural, architectural, and cultural environments as points of departure for movement exploration and narrative,” says the Dance Magazine Awards statement. “Her stages have included grain terminals, a clock tower, the pope’s palace, military forts, and a mile of neighborhood streets in the South Bronx. Her work has been commissioned by many arts institutions, including Dancing in the Streets, Jacob’s Pillow, the Walker Art Center, the National Black Arts Festival, and Festival d’Avignon. Haigood has had the privilege to mentor many extraordinary young artists at the École Nationale des Arts du Cirque, the Trinity Laban Conservatoire, Spelman College, Stanford University, the San Francisco Circus Center, and Zaccho Studio.”

Brandon Blackwood ’13, Bard alumnus and designer, has been named in TIME magazine’s TIME100 Next list for 2024, which highlights influential figures who are shaping the future of business, entertainment, sports, politics, science, health, and other fields. “As one of few preeminent Black designers, Blackwood represents changemakers who lead by example with fearlessness, innovation, and a steadfast embrace of inclusivity,” writes Elaine Welteroth for TIME. “His influence extends beyond the runway, inspiring a new generation of designers to merge style with substance. The B on his bags not only honors their namesake—it also reflects his brilliance across every design, collection, and work of art he offers to this world.”

Bard alumni/ae Rosa Polin ’16 and Ryan Rusiecki ’20, graduates of the photography program, have been featured in Cultured magazine’s Young Photographers 2024, a list highlighting the next generation of image makers who have dedicated themselves to photography as an art form. “I try to use photography the same way I try to live the rest of my life,” said Polin ’16, who blends realism and the uncanny in intimate imagery. “I am trying to find my voice. It’s all a big mixture of shame, curiosity, fear, playfulness, boredom, irony, sadness, lust, humor, and empathy.” For his environmental photography, Rusiecki ’20 has revisited the same subject each year, watching its transformation under imminent threat. “The subject of my practice — the Hudson River estuary — is a globally rare habitat that is under threat by rising sea levels and climate change,” he said. “I have only been able to photograph the estuary after having spent four years of repeated return, and multidisciplinary research, to understand its nuances and visual fragility. I consider the estuary a friend.”

A new photo book by Bard alumna Virginia Hanusik ’14, Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana, which documents a decade spent in the coastal region of the state, has been reviewed in Aperture. “Photographs appear alongside an anthology of essays and poetry commissioned for the book,” writes Michael Adno for Aperture. “For Hanusik, architecture is also a clear sign of time passing; buildings, like hands on the face of a clock, float along a canal one year and disappear the next, while others are raised twenty feet up in the air to escape the coming flood.” Hanusik’s photographs and written contributions explore the cultural legacy of weather and storms in coastal areas, the physical and psychological marks left behind by hurricanes, and the privileges afforded to certain communities over others in responses to flood damage. “At the core of the project,” Hanusik writes, “is an effort to encourage thinking of this region—and coastal communities around the country—as an interconnected system rather than as separate and expendable landscapes.”

Mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce VAP ’19, alumna of the Bard Conservatory Vocal Arts Program, has won third prize in Operalia 2024, the world opera competition founded by Plácido Domingo in 1993 to discover and help launch the careers of the most promising young opera singers of today. Operalia’s goal is to attract singers between the ages of 20 and 32, of all voice types from and all over the world, to have them audition and be heard by a panel of distinguished international personalities, in the most prestigious and competitive showcase in the world. 

The international jury, presided by Plácido Domingo, listens to each of the chosen participants during two days of quarterfinals. Twenty participants are then selected to continue on to the semifinals, and ten singers are chosen for the finals. The quarterfinals and semifinals are carried out in audition form, but the final round is presented in the form of a gala concert accompanied by a full orchestra. This year, Operalia was held at The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai, India, September 15–21.

SF Gate profiled Bard alumna Joanna Letz ’06, who is the owner and manager of Bluma Flower Farm in Berkeley, California. She manages the rooftop farm day-to-day and also organizes events and online sales. While the rooftop is idyllic, Letz says running it is hard work: “People romanticize farming —‘it must be so beautiful’ — but it takes so much effort to grow something and to grow it well.”

Letz started her rooftop farm in 2019 after more than a decade of working on other farms and running her own business. Despite initial challenges—farming plants on a rooftop means more wind, for example—Bluma has thrived. As an urban farm, not only does it have a lower carbon footprint than internationally-importing competitors, it also supports biodiversity for pollinators in the area. In the future, Letz hopes to host more educational programming at the farm to teach children about growing plants and share her love of flowers more widely.

Artist Brandon Ndife MFA ’20, whose first solo exhibition, Clearance, is on view at Greene Naftali gallery in Chelsea, was profiled in the New York Times. “His art reminds its viewers that nature—even in the face of civilization—has an ultimately ungovernable power,” writes Zoë Hopkins. Ndife’s otherworldly creations fuse forms that resemble domestic objects, such as furniture, with elements derived from the natural world to evoke the sense of wild growth overtaking built environments. “They’re interchangeable to me, the native and the natural,” Ndife said. “There’s a mutiny that can happen in the work. I describe the sculptures as struggling to be, struggling to take hold in their environment. And I think that’s our story as Black people.”

Celebrated artist R.H. Quaytman ’83 was invited to create new works for Frieze magazine's September issue to accompany an essay about Gertrude Stein’s poem, “If I Told Him: A Portrait of Picasso.” She responded with a series of images using abstract and photographic elements, which she discusses with Marko Gluhaich, associate editor of Frieze. “Naturally I was more interested in Stein than Picasso. How incredibly photogenic she was,” she told Gluhaich. “While playing around with transparencies I accidentally made Picasso’s portrait of her look like a self-portrait. Suddenly his face was her face.”

Quaytman was the 2022 recipient of Bard’s Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters.

The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) has announced that Bard math alumna Mona Merling ’09 has won the 2025 AWM Joan and Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry. Merling was recognized for her innovative and impactful research in algebraic K-theory, equivariant homotopy theory, and their applications to manifold theory.

“I would not be here today without the many amazing women I was lucky to have as role models at every step of the way: from my math teacher back in Romania, Mihaela Flamaropol, who ignited my passion for math competitions; to my undergraduate mentor at Bard College, Lauren Rose, who early on inspired me about both research and teaching; to some of the senior leaders in my field who initiated and fostered the Women in Topology Network, Maria Basterra, Kristine Bauer, Kathryn Hess, and Brenda Johnson, who I was very privileged to be able to collaborate with as part of these workshops and who have always served as a huge inspiration and a source of endless support to me and other younger women in homotopy theory,” said Merling, who is currently associate professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. She was previously a J.J. Sylvester Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, and received her PhD in Mathematics at the University of Chicago in 2014.

In a statement, AWM wrote: “Merling is an exceptional researcher whose work in algebraic topology has both depth and breadth. She is a recognized authority on equivariant homotopy theory and its applications to equivariant manifolds. Her recent work generalizes and reinterprets results in differential topology in the equivariant context. Her work is the first progress seen in decades on certain foundational questions about equivariant manifolds.”

The AWM Joan & Joseph Birman Research Prize in Topology and Geometry serves to highlight to the community outstanding contributions by women in the field and to advance the careers of the prize recipients. The prize is awarded every other year and was made possible by a generous contribution from Joan Birman, whose work has been in low dimensional topology, and her husband, Joseph, who was a theoretical physicist specializing in applications of group theory to solid state physics.

The novella The Plotinus by Bard alumna Rikki Ducornet ’64 was reviewed by Marina Warner in the New York Review of Books. Ducornet’s fifteenth work of fiction, The Plotinus is about a futuristic narrator who is arrested for going on a walk, and it incorporates a style Warner calls “[something] between astringent honesty, madcap fantasy, parodic sci-fi, surreal absurdism, metaphysical absorption, and rapturous lyric.”

Ducornet earned her BA from Bard in fine arts before publishing her first book The Stain in 1984. Throughout her career, she’s followed the trajectory of Surrealist authors and the Latin American literary tradition of the “marvelous real.” In addition to her writing, she has illustrated books by authors including Jorge Luis Borges and Anne Waldman. Warner writes that The Plotinus forms “an arc of feeling [tracing] the transformation of the narrator from despairing to loving,” comparing the novella to sci-fi works by authors like Ursula K. LeGuin, Doris Lessing, and China Miéville. Her many honors include The Bard College Arts and Letters Award (1998), The Lannan Literary Award for Fiction (2004), and The Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2008), among others.

Orange Blossom Trail, a new book of photography by Bard alumnus Joshua Lutz ’97 MFA ’05, documents the lives of workers along a 400-mile stretch of highway from Georgia to Miami. Three texts by author George Saunders accompany Lutz’s photographs, which display an “austere frankness,” writes Walker Mimms in a review for the New York Times. “Though not without dignity—see Lutz’s portraits of fruit inspectors, as they glance up from a conveyor belt of tumbling oranges—his photos lack any social agenda,” Mimms continues, an effect that is emphasized by inclusion of the Saunders texts. Mimms walks away surprised not only by the collaboration itself, but its commitment to portraying “the demoralizing American grind with an attitude between sympathy and resignation. An attitude that’s rare in art because we seldom admit it to ourselves.”

Bard alum Raphael Bob-Waksberg ’06 speaks with the A.V. Club about the lessons learned from his hit Netflix comedy BoJack Horseman and its ever-growing legacy. Ten years since its debut, Bob-Waksberg’s BoJack Horseman, a showbiz satire of life in Hollywood, is finding new fans who resonate with its parody while also continuing to capture the attention of its older fans who first watched the series during its run from 2014 to 2020. “It has been really surprising and rewarding for me to see people are still finding it and still falling in love with it in spite of some parts of it feeling a little dated or irrelevant. And not just as a nostalgic artifact, it holds up as a new thing if you start watching it now,” said Bob-Waksberg.

Bard alum Clark Wolff Hamel ’17, the educational director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group PFLAG NYC, was interviewed on the podcast Leading Queer, hosted by John B. Weinsten, provost of Bard College at Simon’s Rock, and Carla Stephens, director of the Bard Queer Leadership Project at Simon’s Rock. The hosts spoke to Wolff Hamel about his work with PFLAG providing guidance for K–12 educators and administrators on following New York State’s LGBTQ+ policies.

The New York City chapter of PFLAG serves over 1.2 million students, meaning that Wolff Hamel has to balance working across more than 1700 schools. While his work centers on helping overhaul curriculums and school programs to make them more inclusive, Wolff Hamel encourages educators to add inclusive practices to what they already have in place. “It can be small, simple things that actually make a really big difference and ensure that queer young people are seeing themselves in the curriculum.”

Bard College is pleased to announce that the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI, directed by Dr. Suzanne Kite, distinguished artist in residence and assistant professor of American and Indigenous Studies, has been designated as a Humanities Research Center on AI by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). This prestigious recognition will confer a $500,000 grant in support of the Center, and position Wihanble S’a at the forefront of innovative research that integrates Indigenous Knowledge systems with cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

Beginning in Fall 2024, the Wihanble S’a Center will embark on groundbreaking research aimed at developing ethical AI frameworks deeply rooted in Indigenous methodologies. The Center’s mission is to explore and address the ethical, legal, and societal implications of AI through an Indigenous lens, ensuring that AI technologies reflect diverse perspectives and contribute positively to society.

“This award is a tremendous honor and a recognition of the importance of American Indian perspectives in the rapidly evolving fields of AI,” said Dr. Kite, who is an award-winning Oglála Lakȟóta artist and academic, and Bard MFA ’18 alum. “Our goal is to develop ethical methodologies for systems grounded in Indigenous knowledge, offering new guidelines and models through collaboration between Indigenous scholars and AI researchers, challenging the predominantly Western approach to AI. Wihanble S’a (WEE hah blay SAH) means dreamer in Lakota, and we are dreaming of an abundant future.”

The NEH designation will support the Center’s initiatives, including the establishment of a dedicated facility on Bard College’s Massena Campus. This facility will serve as a collaborative hub, bringing together scholars from across diverse academic disciplines—including computer science, cognitive and neuroscience, linguistics, ethics, and Indigenous Studies—to engage in interdisciplinary research and educational activities.

In addition to research, the Center will host public events, workshops, and an interdisciplinary Fellowship and Visiting Scholars program, all aimed at advancing the field of Indigenous-informed AI. The Center’s work will complement the recruitment and support of Indigenous students ongoing at Bard’s Center for Indigenous Studies, enhancing Bard College’s commitment to being a leader in Indigenous studies in the United States as well as complementing Dr. Kite’s work with the international Abundant Intelligences Indigenous AI research program. Wihanble S’a Center’s designation as an NEH Humanities Research Center on AI underscores Bard College’s dedication to fostering innovative, socially responsible research that bridges the humanities and technological advancements.

Bard alumna Michelle Handelman ’01 was awarded an $8,000 grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) as part of their NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship program. The triennial program is highly competitive, and Handelman was one of only 87 artists selected out of an applicant pool of 4,587 this year. “I am endlessly grateful to have received this NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship,” Handelman said. “I’m excited to use it to shoot my new project, DELIRIUM, a multichannel installation featuring the amazing performers Lydia Lunch, Christeene, M Lamar, and Shannon Funchess.” Handelman said she appreciated the “unrestricted access” the fellowship afforded to its winners, who are chosen at all stages of their lives as artists. “It’s a beautiful thing,” she said.

A recent column in The Chronicle of Higher Education describes how, in the three years since the Taliban took power, the exiled American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) is thriving, enrolling 1000+ students in 20 different countries. AUAF President Ian Bickford SR ’95, and former provost of Bard College at Simon’s Rock, explains that liberal arts education is particularly important in authoritarian societies because it encourages agency and critical and independent thinking. “For our students, education is their lifeline,” said Bickford. AUAF offers a dual degree with Bard College and AUAF students can enroll in OSUN Online Courses.

Patrick Kindlon ’08, the frontman of the punk post-hardcore band Drug Church, was profiled in Rolling Stone in advance of the release of the band’s fifth studio album PRUDE on October 4. Drug Church is a collaboration between Kindlon as lyricist and musicians Nick Cogan, Cory Galusha, Chris Villeneuve, and Patrick Wynne.

Drug Church started as a side project a few years after Kindlon left Bard, when he worked with the band Self Defense Family. Rolling Stone described Kindlon’s lyrics as “equal parts poetic and cutting” and said the band’s music as a whole is full of “raw humanity” and “a sympathetic touch.” Speaking about PRUDE’s content, Kindlon said he was interested in writing about ordinary people whose lives take an unexpected turn. “I’m very sympathetic to things just going a little out of control for you.”

Bard College announces the creation of The Barbara Ess Fund for Artistic Expression in Photography. This fund is made possible through a generous endowment from the Schwartz Family to honor their sister, Barbara Ess, a beloved teacher, colleague, mentor, artist, friend, and much-loved family member. The Barbara Ess Fund for Artistic Expression in Photography is an annual award that will cover the cost of course-related materials for a limited number of Bard College photography students on financial aid.

After taking some time to process the loss, Barbara’s sisters, Janet and Ellen, have decided to honor Barbara by creating a special endowment fund at Bard College, The Barbara Ess Fund for Artistic Expression in Photography. This fund will allow students on financial aid to fully participate in photography classes. They believe Barbara would have loved that.

After joining the faculty at Bard in 1997 as a professor in the photography department, Barbara Ess committed herself to inspiring and encouraging her students to be the most interesting artists they could be. She shared her unique perspective and approach to photography and art in a way that connected with her students, demanding only that the work be honest, authentic, and thoughtful. Her students loved and respected her. Many of them have gone on to make impressive art and enjoy successful careers.

According to former student and Co-Chair in Photography at Bard MFA, Megan Plunkett, MFA ’17, “Barbara Ess was an artist of immense power and I continue to be amazed by all that she accomplished in her work. As a teacher, she was abuzz with ideas, energy, and experiments. She gave us the gift of being seen as artists, and the freedom to be ourselves in our studios. She changed so many of her student’s lives, mine very much included. It is my absolute pleasure to speak on behalf of the Barbara Ess Fund for Artistic Expression. In funding materials for photo students with financial need, Barbara’s frenetic, infectious joy for making will continue to thrive in new generations of Bard artists, something I know would bring her immense joy in return.”

To donate to the fund via Bard’s secure website, please click here. For other ways to give to the fund, please click here. Note all contributions are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law. We encourage you to check with your employer to ask if your donation can be matched.

About Barbara Ess
Barbara Ess was born in 1944 in Brooklyn, NY. In 1969 she received her BA in Philosophy and English Literature from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. Ess has been the subject of several solo exhibitions, including at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY (1985); High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (1992); and Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, PA (2003). She has also participated in many group exhibitions, including Currents, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (1985); Postmodern Prints, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England, UK (1991); Bowery Tribute, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY (2010); and Who You Staring At: Culture visuelle de la scène no wave des années 1970 et 1980, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2023). Ess died in 2021 in Elizaville, NY.

The poem “Sudanese Saying” by Bard College alum Pierre Joris ’69 was featured as Poem of the Week in the Guardian. Joris’s work relays the pain and injustice of the 2016 demolition of the refugee encampment once known as the Calais “Jungle” in France, where the inhabitants numbered about 10,000 when they were evicted and the camp demolished. “Poems that put the case for the rights and dignity of refugees often adopt a refugee’s persona,” writes Carol Rumens for the Guardian. “It’s remarkable that Joris’s carefully distanced manner and elegant precision are able to make a statement as powerful—one at whose climax the translated ‘Sudanese saying’ burns into the mind.”
 

Jonian Rafti ’15, a Bard College alumnus, will be inducted into the first annual Andrew Goodman Alumni Hall of Fame. The inaugural cohort includes 10 Andrew Goodman alumni, one from each year of the program since it began in 2014. Inductees are recognized not only for their contributions during their time as Andrew Goodman Ambassadors or Puffin Democracy Fellows, but also for their continued dedication to the Goodman organization’s mission to make young voices and votes a powerful force in democracy by training the next generation of leaders, engaging young voters, and challenging restrictive voter suppression laws. Rafti is an associate in the Corporate Department and a member of the Health Care Group at Proskauer Rose LLP, representing private equity investors, health systems, management companies, physician groups, and lenders in complex transactional and health care regulatory matters. He has previously served as member of the Board of Directors and Vice Chair of the Andrew Goodman Foundation, and as a member of  Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement’s Young Alumni/ae Advisory Council.

Bard alumna Micah Gleason GCP ’21 VAP ’22 was profiled in the New York Times for a piece which for a year followed five students attending the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Gleason is “an easygoing yet fiercely skilled conductor and singer,” writes Joshua Barone for the Times. “On the eve of graduation, Gleason presented a workshop performance of a chamber opera she was developing with Joanne Evans, a former classmate from Bard College and her duo partner.” The Curtis Institute of Music educates and trains exceptionally gifted young musicians to engage a local and global community through the highest level of artistry. Students at Curtis hone their craft through more than 200 orchestra, opera, and solo and chamber music offerings and programs, bringing arts access and education to the community.

Associate Professor of Physics Paul Cadden-Zimansky and three recent Bard graduates in physics and mathematics Li-Heng Henry Chang ’23, Ziyu Xu ’23, and Shea Roccaforte ’21, have coauthored the cover story in the July 2024 issue of the American Journal of Physics. Their peer-reviewed research article, “Geometric visualizations of single and entangled qubits,” presents a new way of visualizing the phenomenon of quantum entanglement between two interacting objects. Intended for a range of audiences—from students just starting to learn about concepts in quantum mechanics to active researchers who are using quantum bits ("qubits") to create new types of computers, sensors, and secure communication systems—the article focuses on visual tools and maps that can be used to complement the formal mathematics and algebra of quantum mechanics.

Jacquelyn Stucker ’13, an alumna of Bard’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program, was reviewed in the New York Times for her role as Delilah in the opera Samson at the Aix-en-Provence festival. Samson, a never-performed opera by Voltaire and Rameau, two of Enlightenment France’s most important cultural figures, was performed as an updated production with pieces drawn from other Rameau works to replace the original score, which was lost some 250 years ago. The Aix production “retains the hypnotic continuity of Rameau’s complete operas, their steadiness and also their variety, veering from festive to soulful, from raucous dances to hushed, hovering arias and radiant choruses,” writes Zachary Woolfe for the New York Times.  “The mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre (Timna) and the soprano Jacquelyn Stucker (Dalila) are both exquisitely sensitive in their floating music.”

Bard alumna Tiffany Sia ’10 thinks and works across text and film. Her newest book, On and Off-Screen Imaginaries, is a collection of six essays that grapple with the complexities of post-colonial experience. The first three essays focus on new Hong Kong cinema and examine the national security policies, censorship, surveillance that followed Hong Kong’s mass protests in 2019 and 2020. The second half of the book “abruptly drifts toward other geographies, specifically the US, as I challenge how dominant Asian American aesthetics conceive of a falsely unified imaginary of Asia and its politics,” says Sia. She reimagines the work of Vietnamese American photographer An-My Lê in one essay and the work of Taiwanese filmmaker King Hu in another. “The essays trace a shift in my focus beyond Hong Kong––toward the ‘elsewhere’ sites of the Cold War, such as Vietnam, Taiwan, and even Lithuania and Turkey, in brief mention––and facile East-West tensions to illuminate a lattice of North-South tensions and their vexing histories and politics,” says Sia, who recently won the prestigious 2024 Art Baloise Prize, which carries an award of approximately $33,400.

The BMI Foundation has named Luke Haaksma ’21 as a recipient of the 72nd BMI Composer Awards, an annual competition open to young composers engaged in the creation of classical music. Haaksma, a composer, filmmaker, and hammered dulcimerist, studied composition at Bard College Conservatory of Music with Joan Tower and George Tsontakis, and is now completing graduate study at Yale School of Music studying with Katherine Balch. His work often focuses on non-human states of consciousness, finding influences in themes of anthropomorphization, murder ballads, and folk-horror, and he has received awards and recognition from organizations such as the Young Concert Artists and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The BMI Foundation is a nonprofit supporting the creation, performance, and study of music through awards, scholarships, grants, and commissions, and its Composer Awards competition has a prestigious history of discovering and encouraging many of today’s most prominent and talented young composers. 

Born in Los Angeles, where he still works, Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio ’12 “finds beauty amid the ruin. His art engages serious social and political experience, but it succeeds by its refusal to be monolithic,” writes the Los Angeles Times. Aparicio’s current solo exhibition of recent works focuses on the various connections between Central America and Los Angeles—and posits multiple sites as a part of the same community and history as a crucial decolonizing strategy and one that problematizes the term “native.” In his cast rubber piece, “Who Do You Believe More, the Subversive or the Embassy? (W. Washington Blvd. and Hoover St., Los Angeles, CA),” specific use of materials that have a strong tie to pre-Hispanic cultures in Central America are key. The living ficus tree from which the work was cast is located at a major street intersection in the heart of the city’s El Salvadoran community. “Nature is scrutinized as an index of American culture. The landscape view subtly shifts. After seeing Aparicio’s show, you’re unlikely to look at our omnipresent ficus trees quite the same way again.” His show is on view at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA through June 16.

The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which is led by three co-artistic directors including Bard Theater and Performance alumna Morgan Green ’12, will receive the 2024 Regional Theatre Tony Award. This honor recognizes a regional theater company that has displayed a continuous level of artistic achievement contributing to the growth of theater nationally and is accompanied by a grant of $25,000. The Wilma Theater was named this year’s recipient based on the recommendation by the American Theatre Critics Association. Green’s recent directing credits include premieres of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Fat Ham by James Ijames (digital, The Wilma Theater) and School Pictures by Milo Cramer ’12  (The Wilma Theater, Playwrights Horizons), who also majored in theater at Bard. In 2019, Green directed the Theater and Performance Program’s production of Promenade at the Fisher Center. This summer, Green and Cramer will return to Bard to present their performance of School Pictures in the Spiegeltent for SummerScape on July 20.

Further reading:
School Pictures, A One-Person Show by Milo Cramer ’12, Featured on This American Life
https://www.bard.edu/news/milo-cramer-12-school-pictures-this-american-life-2024-02-13

Fat Ham, a Black, Queer Take on Hamlet Directed by Morgan Green ’12, Is a New York Times Critic’s Pick
https://www.bard.edu/news/fat-ham-a-black-queer-take-on-hamlet-directed-by-morgan-green-12-is-a-new-york-times-critics-pick-2021-05-04

Bard College is pleased to announce that Dariel Vasquez ’17 has been appointed Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Institutional Initiatives, a newly created position at Bard. In this role at the College, Vasquez will help to usher in a new wave of transformational change and collaboration with other collegiate institutions across the country. While his main focus will remain on leading Brothers@, which facilitates the persistence and graduation of collegiate men of color, he will also expand the College’s reach through partnerships and initiatives to support students with identities historically underrepresented in higher education attain a rigorous liberal arts education. In addition to the work being done at Brothers@, Vasquez will be facilitating a center between Bard College and Howard University. This center will be a collaboration between Bard and Howard working for the advancement and persistence for young men of color, with the focus of supporting and graduating the most marginalized populations in higher education within and beyond Bard College.

From Harlem, New York, Dariel Vasquez was raised by immigrant parents in public housing and became a first-generation college graduate from Bard College’s class of 2017, where he achieved a joint bachelor’s degree in history and sociology with a concentration in Africana-Studies. Vasquez’s passion for his community has led him into program design and facilitation of youth engagement workshops since he was 16 years old. He eventually expanded his programming to Bard where he cofounded Brothers at Bard during his first year. Within the last three years of Brothers@, Vasquez has raised more than six million dollars, expanding the organization to 133 college students, 98 of which participate in the Ambassador program reaching Oakland, California; Dallas, Texas; Chicago, Illinois; Washington, DC; and New York State. Alongside this the high school academic persistence programs across New York state have aa roster of 150 students. Through the high school and college initiatives, Brothers@ currently serves nearly 300 students. At Bard College, Dariel Vasquez will become one of the youngest vice presidents in the College’s history.

Alumna Lexi Parra ’18 contributed photography and video to an NPR article about Girl Scout Troop 6000, a New York City–based troop composed of the daughters of asylum seekers. Parra’s photos and videos accompany the story of Troop 6000, whose members take part in traditional scouting activities, as well as supporting each other through the traumas associated with migrancy. “This is probably the only sense of stability they have right now,” Giselle Burgess, founder and senior director of Troop 6000, told NPR. The mission of Troop 6000 aligns with the broader mission of the Girl Scouts, said Meredith Mascara, CEO of Girl Scouts of Greater New York. “They will be the ones running the city,” Mascara said. “I’m proud that Girl Scouts are part of that.”

Two Bard College graduates have won 2024–25 Fulbright Awards for individually designed research projects and English teaching assistantships. During their grants, Fulbrighters meet, work, live with, and learn from the people of the host country, sharing daily experiences. The Fulbright program facilitates cultural exchange through direct interaction on an individual basis in the classroom, field, home, and in routine tasks, allowing the grantee to gain an appreciation of others’ viewpoints and beliefs, the way they do things, and the way they think. Bard College is a Fulbright top producing institution.

Sara Varde de Nieves ’22, who was a joint major in film and electronic arts and in human rights at Bard, has been selected for a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Chile for the 2024–25 academic year. Their project, “Regresando al Hogar/Returning Home,” aims to preserve the legacy of Villa San Luis, a large-scale public housing complex built in Las Condes, Santiago, Chile from 1971 to 1972. Through a multi-format documentary comprising interviews with former residents and project planners, archival documents, and footage of the current buildings, Varde de Nieves seeks to capture the collective memory of Villa San Luis’s original residents and planners. In executing this project, Varde de Nieves aims to expand the label of “heritage conservation” to include buildings and infrastructure that are not considered culturally significant as classic historical monuments and to make connections among narrative, memory, ephemera, and the historical archive. “I’m very excited to conduct in-person research on Villa San Luis, an innovative project that strove for class integration and high-quality construction. During my time abroad, I hope to foster long-lasting relationships and get acquainted with Chile's fascinating topography,” says Varde de Nieves.

While at Bard, Varde de Nieves worked as an English language tutor in Red Hook as well as at La Voz, the Hudson Valley Spanish language magazine. Their Senior Project, “Re-igniting the Clit Club,” a documentary about a queer party in the Meatpacking district during the 1990s, won multiple awards at Bard.

Jonathan Asiedu ’24, a written arts major, has been selected for an English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) Fulbright to Spain. His teaching placement will be in the Canary Islands. While in Spain, Asiedu plans to hold weekly poetry workshops in local cultural centers, communities, and schools. He hopes to invite the community to bring in their work or poems that speak to them, to share poets and writers and the ways they speak to us. “Studying poetry, learning pedagogical practices to inform my future as an educator, and mentorship opportunities throughout my college career have shaped both my perception of education and the work that needs to be done to improve students’ experiences within the educational system,” he says.

At Bard, Asiedu serves as a lead peer counselor through Residence Life, an Equity and Inclusion Mentor with the Office of Equity and Inclusion, admission tour guide, and works as a campus photographer. Moreover, this past year, he gained TESOL certification and has served as an English language tutor, as well as a writing tutor at the Eastern Correctional Facility through the Bard Prison Initiative. Asiedu, who is from the South Bronx, decided early on that he wanted to speak Spanish and has taken the Spanish Language Intensive at Bard, which includes four weeks of study in Oaxaca, Mexico. After the completion of his Fulbright ETA, he plans to pursue a master degree in education with a specialization in literature from Bard’s Master of Arts in Teaching program.

Three Bard students have also been named alternates for Fulbright Awards. Bard Conservatory student Nita Vemuri ’24, who is majoring in piano performance and economics, is an alternate for a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Hungary. Film and electronic arts graduate Elizabeth Sullivan ’23 is an alternate for a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Germany. Mathematics major Skye Rothstein ’24 is an alternate for a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Germany.

Fulbright is a program of the US Department of State, with funding provided by the US Government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program.

Fulbright alumni work to make a positive impact on their communities, sectors, and the world and have included 41 heads of state or government, 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, and countless leaders and changemakers who build mutual understanding between the people of the United State and the people of other countries.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship to Adam Shatz, visiting professor of the humanities at Bard College. Chosen through a rigorous review process from 3,000 applicants, Shatz was among 188 scholars, photographers, novelists, historians, and data scientists to receive a 2024 Fellowship. Bard MFA faculty and alumna Lotus Kang MFA ’15, and alumnae Katherine Hubbard MFA ’10 and Ahndraya Parlato ’02 were also named Guggenheim Fellows for 2024. 

“Humanity faces some profound existential challenges,” said Edward Hirsch, President of the Guggenheim Foundation and 1985 Fellow in Poetry. “The Guggenheim Fellowship is a life-changing recognition. It’s a celebrated investment into the lives and careers of distinguished artists, scholars, scientists, writers and other cultural visionaries who are meeting these challenges head-on and generating new possibilities and pathways across the broader culture as they do so.”

In all, 52 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 84 academic institutions, 38 US states and the District of Columbia, and four Canadian provinces are represented in the 2024 class, who range in age from 28 to 89. More than 40 Fellows (roughly 1 out of 4) do not hold a full-time affiliation with a college or university. Many Fellows’ projects directly respond to timely issues such as democracy and politics, identity, disability activism, machine learning, incarceration, climate change and community.

Created and initially funded in 1925, by US Senator Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has sought to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions.” Since its establishment, the Foundation has granted over $400 million in Fellowships to more than 19,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors. The broad range of fields of study is a unique characteristic of the Fellowship program. For more information on the 2024 Fellows, please visit the Foundation’s website at gf.org.

Adam Shatz, who will be working on a book about jazz throughout his Fellowship, is the US editor of the London Review of Books and a contributor to the New York Times Magazine, New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and The Nation, among other publications. He is the author of The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024) and Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination (Verso, 2023). He is also host of the podcast Myself with Others, produced by the pianist Richard Sears. His political reporting and commentary have covered subjects such as Trump and the white supremacists in Charlottesville, mass incarceration, Israel’s Putinization, the deep state, and Egypt after Mubarak. Published profiles and portraits include Franz Fanon and Michel Houellebecq (London Review of Books), Nina Simone (New York Review of Books), saxophonist Kamasi Washington (New York Times Magazine); French cartoonist Riad Sattouf (New Yorker); and jazz great Charles Mingus (The Nation). Shatz previously taught at New York University and was a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars.

Lotus Laurie Kang MFA ’15 works with sculpture, photography and site-responsive installation, exploring the body as an ongoing process. Combining theory, poetics and biography, her work takes a regurgitative approach rather than a prescriptive or reiterative one. Kang considers the multiplicitous, constructed nature of identity and the body and its knots to larger social structures through sculpture, architectural interventions and material innovations, and an expansive approach to photography where materials are often left in unfixed and continually sensitive states. Notable group exhibitions include Hessel Museum of Art, The New Museum, SculptureCenter, Cue Art Foundation, New York; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver; The Power Plant, Art Gallery of Ontario, Franz Kaka, Cooper Cole, Toronto; Remai Modern, Saskatoon; Misk Art Institute, Riyadh; Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana; and Camera Austria, Graz. Recent solo exhibitions of her work include Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Mercer Union, Gallery TPW, Franz Kaka, Toronto; Oakville Galleries, Oakville, and Helena Anrather, Interstate Projects, New York. Artists residencies include Rupert, Vilnius; Tag Team, Bergen; The Banff Centre, Alberta; Triangle Arts Association and Interstate Projects, Brooklyn; and Horizon Art Foundation, Los Angeles.

Katherine Hubbard MFA ’10 uses photography, writing and performance to plumb photography’s continuing significance. Considering analog photography as a mimesis of the body, Hubbard asks how its procedures might be called upon to investigate social politics, history, and narrative. In her photographs, the physical positioning of one’s body has an essential relationship to how one processes images, exploring this encounter as a time based experience. Hubbard’s writing practice forms the core of her performances, culling the malleability of vision to frame a politics of looking, bridging the imaginary with the familiar. She is currently Associate Professor and MFA Director at Carnegie Mellon University School of Art.

Ahndraya Parlato ’02 is an artist based in Rochester, New York. She has published three books, including Who Is Changed and Who Is Dead, (Mack Books, 2021), A Spectacle and Nothing Strange, (Kehrer Verlag, 2016), East of the Sun, West of the Moon, (a collaboration with Gregory Halpern, Études Books, 2014). Additionally, she has contributed texts to Photo No-Nos: Meditations on What Not to Shoot (Aperture, 2021), and The Photographer's Playbook (Aperture, 2014). Parlato has exhibited work at Spazio Labo, Bologna, Italy; Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; The Aperture Foundation, New York, New York; and The Swiss Institute, Milan, Italy. She has been awarded residencies at Light Work and The Visual Studies Workshop and was a 2020 New York Foundation for the Arts Joy of Photography Grant recipient.

Nona Faustine: White Shoes, a series of 43 self-portraits shot throughout New York City over the course of decades, explores the city’s central but often obscured role in the history of the transatlantic slave trade, as well as examining questions about representation and perception of the Black body—and, more specifically, the Black female body—in art and other spaces. Currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum through July 7, this first solo exhibition of Nona Faustine MFA ’13 was selected as a New York Times Critic’s Pick when it opened in March and was recently reviewed on CNN. The body of work, including many striking photographs of the artist posing fully nude apart from a pair of crisp white pumps, began while Faustine was a graduate student at the International Center of Photography (ICP) program at Bard College. “All my knowledge, everything I know about photography, and everything I know about history and life is part of the work. My heart and soul is in that series,” Faustine told CNN in an email. 

How does one combat disparities in access to computer science classes for historically marginalized populations? One answer, proposed in a paper coauthored by Bard alum Megumi Kivuva ’22, could be embroidery. “We’ve come a long way as a country in offering some computer science courses in schools,” Kivuva said to the University of Washington. “But we’re learning that access doesn’t necessarily mean equity. It doesn’t mean underrepresented minority groups are always getting the opportunity to learn.” Using Turtlestitch, an open-source coding language, Kivuva and their coparticipants worked with 12 students from demographically diverse backgrounds, using a unique pedagogical approach “where the students had a say each week in what they learned and how they’d be assessed,” the University of Washington reports. “We wanted to dispel the myth that a coder is someone sitting in a corner, not being very social, typing on their computer,” Kivuva said. The subsequent paper on their findings, “Cultural-Centric Computational Embroidery,” won Best Paper at the inaugural technical symposium of Special Interest the Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE).

The late Bard alumnus and Manhattan cinematographer Jamie Livingston ’79 took a single Polaroid photo every day, from when he was a senior at Bard College, in 1979, until 1997, when he died of cancer at the age of 41. Livingston’s photos captured everyday moments in New York City, forming a unique visual diary of the era. After Livingston’s passing, his friends scanned and shared his Polaroids online, garnering more than 300 million views, as well as an exhibition, a book, and daily posts on Instagram. Now Livingston’s work will have yet another life in music: In Number Our Days: A Photographic Oratorio, his friend David Van Taylor honors his memory. The production runs April 12–14 at PAC NYC.

In ceremonies held in Japan in summer 2023, Tatjana Myoko von Prittwitz und Gaffron CCS ’99, artist in residence and Buddhist chaplain, achieved the rank of Zen priest, symbolically officiating at the two Soto Zen head monasteries of Eiheiji and Sojiji. These ceremonies marked the culmination of a 25-year journey for Tatjana Myoko, which began during her time as a Bard student. “I came to Bard to study at the Center for Curatorial Studies,” she said. “At that time, after the sudden death of a close friend, I encountered the Buddhist path, which transformed and shaped my entire life, both in terms of creativity as well as my academic career.” She spoke about the experience in her talk at TEDxBard College.

Studying at Zen Mountain Monastery as a lay practitioner for 20 years, she founded the Bard Meditation Group in 2001, helped to create the interfaith Center for Spiritual Life, and became the College’s first Buddhist chaplain in 2015. In 2017, Tatjana Myoko took a leave of absence from Bard in order to begin the process of acquiring the necessary qualifications to become a certified Zen priest at a three-year residency at Toshoji, the International Training Monastery of the Soto Zen school in Okayama. “Without that residency I would never be a Zen priest now,” she said. “So I think this mutual support, of Bard giving me a vessel to fill, and me ready to fill it, has been an amazing journey together, and I am very grateful.” 

This new status will allow Myoko Osho, her official title, to perform ceremonies like weddings and funerals, as well as the ability to open her own Zen temple, but the achievement has personal significance for her as well. “For me it is the formal recognition of a 25-year-long training path,” Tatjana Myoko said. “To be recognized as a lineage holder in a tradition extending from the Buddha, to my teacher in Japan, and now to me, confirms and upholds me to the highest standards of integrity. I am excited to pass on this way of liberation, especially as expressed through the Zen arts, to the next generation: my students.”

“I’m very interested in how truth and belief are created,” Kite, aka Suzanne Kite MFA ’18, told the Times Union. In a profile of Kite, published in conjunction with her inclusion in the 81st Whitney Biennial, Times reporter Michelle Falkenstein asked Kite about her artistic practice and pedagogy, including her embrace of AI in the creation of art. “We’re making art with dreams and AI,” Kite said. “I move and the computer translates that movement into sound.” Kite also spoke about her life in the Hudson Valley, including her teaching at Bard and her involvement with the Forge Project. “It’s made it wonderful to live here,” Kite said.

The Hudson Valley Venture Hub, a local organization and resource for startups and entrepreneurs, was designated by Empire State Development as one of five innovation hotspots in New York State to receive $250,000 annually for the next five years. “The biggest change, with the new funding, is that we’re running an accelerator program with 20 of the strongest technology-forward companies that come out of our region, and we’re working very closely with them,” Eliza Edge MBA ’20, director of the organization, told Chronogram. The goal is to connect entrepreneurs with various funders, educational experts, and angel investors, and to expand business resources to underserved communities. As of 2023, 70 percent of the businesses served by the Hudson Valley Venture Hub were women- or minority-owned. “As someone from the Hudson Valley, a big part of my vision is to provide the kind of job I was looking for when I left the area at age 18,” Edge said.

“James Fuentes Gallery, long a forward-looking presence in the contemporary art scene on New York’s Lower East Side, is the latest space to decamp to Tribeca,” writes Jillian Billard for the Art Newspaper. The eponymous gallery of alumnus James Fuentes ’98, who will be awarded the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters at this year’s Bard College Awards, has long championed “artists with practices outside the commercial conventions of the contemporary art market.” This curatorial focus, Fuentes says, was first furnished at Bard. “I kind of picked up this idea of curating as a profession through osmosis, studying adjacent to the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies and spending time in the library founded by Marieluise Hessel,” Fuentes says. “The program planted a seed.”

Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck and Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College proudly hosts Returning Home, an exhibition curated by Rethinking Place Post-Baccalaureate Fellow Olivia Tencer ’22 and Rethinking Place Administrative Coordinator Melina Roise ’21, open from April 6 to 12, 2024. This groundbreaking exhibition features works by four contemporary Indigenous photographers, Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nations), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi Indian Tribe), and Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke (Crow)), along with a written commission by Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican) and archival records of local land transfers and the United States’ Indian boarding school history. The exhibition, centered around narratives of Indigenous families, particularly women and children, will delve into the experiences of Native peoples facing settler colonialism, focusing specifically on Indigenous child removal practices and policies.

Returning Home aims to highlight Indigenous representation, narrative, survivance, futurism, and resilience through contemporary Native art. The show will include pieces from the Forge Project’s collection, as well as a written commission from Bonney Hartley, who is an MFA candidate at Institute of American Indian Arts. An accompanying publication will provide in-depth contextualization of land dispossession in the United States, forced removal of Native peoples in New York State, and the impact of Indian boarding schools.

The exhibition will fill various rooms within the historic Montgomery Place mansion, situated on Bard College’s 380-acre estate. While the estate is renowned for its ties to the Livingston family, Montgomery Place is committed to exploring marginalized histories, including the forced removal of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and the estate’s use of enslaved African American labor.

On the exhibition, Tencer writes: “This will be the first exhibition in the mansion, and the first exhibition on campus that will discuss the forced removal of the Stockbridge-Munsee peoples on current Bard lands or the Livingston’s history as one intertwined with the land dispossession of Native people in the Hudson Valley and other land bases in the East Coast. Positioned as an intervention, Returning Home disrupts preconceived notions of Native people, specifically Native women, and makes visible purposefully erased historical narratives of land and wealth accumulation in New York State.”

“I am grateful for all the support my artwork and cultural work has received. I am indebted to the sun and my sundance teachings – mni ki wakan – water is sacred,” says artist Dana Claxton.

The exhibition is free and open to the public.

On behalf of the curators and Rethinking Place team, we would like to extend gratitude to The Mellon Foundation, Hudson Valley Greenway, Forge Project, and Montgomery Place Historic Estate for making this exhibition possible. 

Exhibition Viewing Hours:
April 6 and 7, 1:00pm–5:00pm (timed entry every half hour - register here)
April 10 to 12, 1:30pm–4:00pm (timed entry every half hour - register here)

Schedule of Events:
April 6, 1:30pm: Opening Remarks & Activation, poetry reading by Bonney Hartley. Doors open at 1:00pm. Registration required. Register here.
April 6, 4:00pm: Cara Romero in conversation with Suzanne Kite. Registration required. Register here.
April 7, 3:00pm: Dana Claxton Artist Talk, on zoom, seating available at MP visitor’s center. Register for the zoom talk here.
April 10, 6:30pm: Cara Romero: Following the Light, Preston Cinema, Bard College. A short documentary on the work & practice of Cara Romero. No registration required.

To celebrate the 81st edition of the Whitney Biennial, the New York Times sent three critics to report “on the highs and lows of the exhibition everyone will have an opinion about.” Their consensus? Bard faculty and alumni/ae are ones to watch. Jason Fargo called Lotus L. Kang MFA ’15 “an artist of rare precision,” calling her work, In Cascades, a “richly sedimented, beautifully vulnerable installation in a perpetual state of becoming.” Fargo went on to praise the film In Her Time by Diane Severin Nguyen MFA ’19, calling it “a vibrant case study of digital-political bafflement and the hazards of projecting the present onto the past.” Travis Diehl, meanwhile, asks, “Should art comfort?” Reviewing Toilette by Bard alum Carolyn Lazard ’10, “a small maze of chrome medicine cabinets standing on the floor,” the answer, for Diehl, is a resounding no. “The piece addresses you, the viewer, as someone with a body,” Diehl writes. “These works ask, ‘Are you comfortable?’ and don’t expect you to say yes.” Paloma Blanca Deja Volar/White Dove Let Us Fly by Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio ’12, a “block of shifting, pre-fossilized amber, embedded with plants and even typewritten documents,” was named one of the best works in the show by Martha Schwendener. The 81st edition of the Whitney Biennial is now open to the public and runs through August 11, 2024.

Rita McBride ’82 spoke with Art Newspaper about her exhibition Particulates, which was on view at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibition, which built on McBride’s past work Portal, was “composed of high-intensity laser beams, water molecules, and dust particles dancing mid-air.” The exhibition was installed in conjunction with a renovation of the Hammer Museum, which McBride said influenced her artistic process. “I was thinking about it as a corporate ruin: what things were important to keep and what things were important to get away from as they went forward with their renovations,” McBride said. “Particulates can exist anywhere—any size, any scale—so it can take on hermetic situations or, like this one, open to the street and to a more narrative space than at Dia or in Liverpool.”

What started as a Bard College Trustee Leader Scholar program is now celebrating its 20th anniversary. La Voz, founded by Mariel Fiori ’05 and Emily Schmall ’05 in 2004, was conceived to address a lack of quality Spanish-language publications in the Hudson Valley—a need it is still meeting in 2024. “When all these newspapers were coming out with statistics and information about vaccines, all really crucial information, it was only in English,” said Elizabeth Liotta ’24, one of six editorial assistants for La Voz, to Hudson Valley Pilot. “La Voz was translating everything, and every day we’d share what we translated with those who needed it.” While La Voz has evolved and expanded over the years, the central mission remains the same, says Managing Editor Mariel Fiori ’05. “Our goal has always been to share what’s available with these populations, to encourage them to have hope, and to ultimately uplift them,” said Fiori.