All Bard News by Date
April 2022
04-26-2022
In 2021, Maya Whalen-Kipp MS ’20 was awarded a John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship by the New York Sea Grant. One of 74 chosen for the 42nd class of Knauss Fellows, Whalen-Kipp began her one-year fellowship in February 2021, working as the marine and energy interagency coordinator for the DOE Wind Energy Technology Office and Water Power Technology Office. “Through the Knauss Fellowship, I have gained hands-on experience in understanding how innovative technology gets funded by the federal government and am working with phenomenal people who are thinking very critically on how we can support a just renewable energy transition,” said Whalen-Kipp. “My experience here is valuable for my professional career transition from environmental academia to real applications of ocean renewable energy development. I hope to now continue in the field for the foreseeable future.”
Learn More
Learn More
04-12-2022
After 26 years, New York’s Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) was restored for incarcerated students in New York State, thanks to the advocacy of BPI and others. TAP helps eligible New York State residents pay tuition at approved schools in New York State. BPI’s Senior Government Affairs Officer Dyjuan Tatro ’18, alongside the College & Community Fellowship, led a grassroots effort to call for the restoration of TAP for incarcerated people, mobilizing advocates, educators, alumni/ae, and those communities directly impacted by this policy. “Restoring TAP funding to incarcerated people will increase public safety, save taxpayer dollars, and create extraordinary inroads to college in communities we most often fail to engage in higher education,” Tatro said.
In addition to expanding access for individuals pursuing college-in-prison, BPI hopes that this landmark decision will help further national reform. “In this new era, we look forward to many more educators and institutions joining us as we continue the work to expand college opportunity in and outside of prison that is as ambitious and optimistic as our students, and that honors the breadth and capacity of their imaginations,” said Jessica Neptune ’02, director of national engagement at the Bard Prison Initiative. “There’s never been a more crucial time to do this work.”
Read More
In addition to expanding access for individuals pursuing college-in-prison, BPI hopes that this landmark decision will help further national reform. “In this new era, we look forward to many more educators and institutions joining us as we continue the work to expand college opportunity in and outside of prison that is as ambitious and optimistic as our students, and that honors the breadth and capacity of their imaginations,” said Jessica Neptune ’02, director of national engagement at the Bard Prison Initiative. “There’s never been a more crucial time to do this work.”
Read More
04-05-2022
After coauthoring Flavors of Oakland at 17, it might have seemed inevitable that Bard alum Elazar Sontag would end up as the restaurant editor for a major publication. But according to Sontag, who worked for years in the food industry, that hasn’t always been the plan. “I didn’t work in restaurants because I thought it would make me a better food writer,” Sontag said in an interview with the Oaklandside. “I worked in restaurants because I truly believed that I was going to become a restaurant cook and eventually a chef.” Several experiences led Sontag to a different path, however, who noted that “kitchens are complicated places to be queer.” Now, in his new role as restaurant editor for Bon Appétit, Sontag will continue writing about queer food culture. “So much of what I love to cover as a writer and editor is about these queer restaurant spaces,” he says. “It feels like such a gift that I get to tell the stories and celebrate these spaces that when I was a teen, I didn’t even know that existed.”
Read More on the Oaklandside
Read More on the Oaklandside
04-05-2022
Named in memory of Bard alumna Betsaida Alcantara ’05, the Anti-Defamation League’s first vice president of communications and digital, who died in February 2022, the Betsaida Alcantara ’05 Communications Professional Internship will offer a Bard student the opportunity to gain firsthand experience working alongside veteran communications professionals. Current Bard students, especially students of color, who have an interest in communications, journalism, public policy, social justice, and/or human rights are encouraged to apply. Applications are due by April 22, 2022.
March 2022
03-22-2022
With fewer students choosing to enroll in college immediately after high school, the Bard High School Early College model provides not only hope but proof that educational reform is possible. Early colleges, which give students the opportunity to earn an associate’s degree while in high school, have been proven to “bridge the gap between high school and higher education,” writes Wayne D’Orio for Education Next. The benefits of attending an early college are many, including savings in tuition costs and higher college graduation rates. Building off of ideas first forwarded by Bard President Leon Botstein in Jefferson’s Children: Education and the Creation of a Hopeful Culture, there are now seven Bard High School Early Colleges nationwide, each of them charting a path forward for their students and for American education as a whole. Still, though the early college model is, by definition, future-focused, the immediate student experience is one of self-discovery and self-belief. “Students surprise themselves” with their achievements, says Stephen Tremaine ’07, vice president for the Early Colleges. After a student told him they hated reading but loved Gilgamesh, he responded: “‘Maybe you don’t hate reading.’ They have success that hasn’t registered yet.”
Read More in Education Next
Read More in Education Next
03-22-2022
It might seem natural that visual artists look to the visual for inspiration, but what about the written word? Mieke Marple, writing for LitHub, spoke with 14 contemporary artists about how reading influences their work, including Jibade-Khalil Huffman ’03 and Azikiwe Mohammed ’05. Huffman, whose work incorporates “subtitles, titles, and more abstract juxtapositions of text,” and who has published several books of poetry, says he’s currently reading Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib. In his work, “there is typically lots of veering back and forth between a clear sort of description/essay and the more indeterminate shifts of thought that poetry allows.” Mohammed, meanwhile, cites Todd McFarlane’s Spawn as an inspiration. “It is drawn out in a way that feels luxurious, for me, as a Black man, rarely able to have time exist as such,” he says. “The character Spawn is a Black man who has died, and in death found the time that I lack here while among the living.”
Read More on LitHub
Read More on LitHub
03-15-2022
After leaving his job at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Gabriel Kilongo ’15 wanted not only to open a gallery, but to start a scene. His new gallery, Jupiter, which opened on March 5 in the North Beach community of Miami Beach, Florida, is meant to challenge not only where art galleries are supposed to open, but what they are designed to do. “I wanted to find a space that was not in a place that is already too trendy, already overdeveloped,” Kilongo said to the New York Times. The gallery, currently showing works by Marcus Leslie Singleton, will emphasize “emerging artists who are adding new perspectives to canonized art historical conversation,” Kilongo says.
Read More in the New York Times
Read More in the New York Times
03-08-2022
Katy Schneider ’14, features editor for New York magazine, won the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) Next Award for journalists under 30. ASME Next Award winners are judged by their portfolio of work and are chosen each year for “their potential to make significant contributions to magazine journalism.” Schneider and the rest of this year’s winners will be honored at ASME’s annual award presentation on April 5, 2022.
Read More in New York
Read More on the Verge, as Reported by Aude White ’12
Read More in New York
Read More on the Verge, as Reported by Aude White ’12
03-01-2022
Ahead of their first solo exhibition at the Walker Art Center, Carolyn Lazard ’10 spoke with Frieze about their work and how they incorporate Blackness, queerness, disability, and collectivity into their aesthetic. A cofounder of the art collective Canaries, “a network of women and gender non-conforming people living and working with autoimmune conditions and other chronic illnesses,” Lazard sometimes feels uncomfortable with the idea of individuation, of focusing on one artist over another. “The truth is that my work comes out of a long lineage of Black, disabled, and queer people making art,” they say. “My practice doesn’t exist in a vacuum: it is made in relation to the work of other artists who have come before me, and those whose work I learn about day to day.”
Lazard’s work, which spans different mediums, progressed from a love of avant-garde cinema, which they first came into contact with at Bard. Recently, Lazard has experimented with providing multiple ways of presenting a single artwork, both visual and non-visual. “Access has this capacity to break through the boundaries of medium, because of the way it makes art necessarily iterative,” they say. “Through access, a single artwork might exist as a description, as a notation, as sign language, as a transcript or as a tactile object—depending on what people need.” Still, though these categories inform their work, they are resistant to the market trends which seek to define artists, especially Black artists, by a singular trait or identity. “Most museums seem committed to receiving Black art, Black aesthetics, and Black politics—provided it’s on the museum’s terms,” they say. “It’s a complex time to be a Black artist, but when has it not been?”
Read More in Frieze
Learn More about Carolyn Lazard: Long Take
Lazard’s work, which spans different mediums, progressed from a love of avant-garde cinema, which they first came into contact with at Bard. Recently, Lazard has experimented with providing multiple ways of presenting a single artwork, both visual and non-visual. “Access has this capacity to break through the boundaries of medium, because of the way it makes art necessarily iterative,” they say. “Through access, a single artwork might exist as a description, as a notation, as sign language, as a transcript or as a tactile object—depending on what people need.” Still, though these categories inform their work, they are resistant to the market trends which seek to define artists, especially Black artists, by a singular trait or identity. “Most museums seem committed to receiving Black art, Black aesthetics, and Black politics—provided it’s on the museum’s terms,” they say. “It’s a complex time to be a Black artist, but when has it not been?”
Read More in Frieze
Learn More about Carolyn Lazard: Long Take
February 2022
02-08-2022
Translating Caroline Shaw’s “Partita for 8 Voices” for the stage, Justin Peck collaborated with Shaw and Eva LeWitt ’07 to create Partita, a new ballet for the New York City Ballet. While developing Partita, Peck discovered Sol LeWitt, Eva’s father, was an inspiration for the original score, which led him to her work, which he described as having “a dimensionality and theatricality” integral to this new adaptation. For LeWitt, the ballet spoke to her sense of her own work, especially her use of gravity. “That’s so linked to dance, to humans moving through space, and to the voice too,” LeWitt says. “Those gravitational universes are important to all our art forms.” Partita, performed by eight dancers in sneakers, featured set design by LeWitt, whose “vibrantly colored hanging fabric sets” served as the backdrop for the ballet when it premiered January 27, 2022.
Full Story in the New York Times
Full Story in the New York Times
02-01-2022
After posting a weekly food plan for low-income families to Instagram in connection with her work to ease food insecurity, Claire Phelan ’11 connected with fellow chef Shana Maldonado. The two have gone on to create Sobremesa, a pop-up community table that serves seasonal six-course dinners in Buffalo, New York, as reported in Buffalo Spree. The concept for Sobremesa was to encourage connection, says Phelan, an alumna of the Human Rights Program at Bard. “Sobremesa has two goals—serve up beautiful, delicious, and unusual small plates and help people connect,” Phelan says. “People open up over shared meals in a different, intimate way, and we’re very invested in encouraging these conversations.” Alongside Maldonado, Phelan hopes to continue to offer community-focused meals and events, with plans for a pay-what-you-can brunch and cooking lessons in the works.
Full Story on Buffalo Spree
Full Story on Buffalo Spree
02-01-2022
Multiple Bard faculty members, both former and present, as well as several alumni/ae will be featured in the 2022 Whitney Biennial. Works by Rindon Johnson MFA ’18, Duane Linklater MFA ’13, and Jon Wang MFA ’19 will be featured alongside those by current and former faculty Nayland Blake ’82, Raven Chacon, Dave McKenzie, Adam Pendleton, and Lucy Raven MFA ’08. David Breslin, co-organizer of this edition of the Biennial, spoke with the New York Times about the curation of work that spoke to the social and political conflict that has taken place since the last Biennial in 2019. “Our hope is that this show permits a taking stock, a way of seeing what we’re maybe not at the end of, but in the middle of,” Breslin says, “and how art can help make sense of our times.” Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept will open on April 6, 2022 and will run through September 5, 2022. This year marks the 80th edition of the exhibition, the longest-running of its kind.
Full Story in the New York Times
Read More on whitney.org
Full Story in the New York Times
Read More on whitney.org
January 2022
01-26-2022
Photojournalist, documentarian, and activist Steve Schapiro ’55, who died on January 15, 2022, leaves behind a body of work that began with his capturing of the civil rights movement and continued through the current political era. “Over a six-decade career, Mr. Schapiro trained his camera’s eye on an astonishing array of people across the American landscape as he sought to capture the emotional heart of his subjects,” writes Katharine Q. Seelye in a remembrance of Schapiro for the New York Times. His work, which has been featured in magazines and museums alike, focused on a diversity of subjects, from movie stars to migrant workers. His photographs of James Baldwin’s 1963 tour of the South illustrated later editions of The Fire Next Time. After his death was announced, tributes to Shapiro poured out online, including remembrances from Barbra Streisand and Ava DuVernay. He graduated from Bard in 1955 with a degree in literature. He was a transfer student to Bard, which he found “more suitable for free spirits like himself.”
Full Story in the New York Times
Full Story in the New York Times
01-11-2022
Opus 40, the 57-acre sculpture park created by the late Harvey Fite ’30, former Bard professor and alumnus, will begin 2022 with a combined $650,000 in grant awards. With these new grants, Caroline Crumpacker, executive director of Opus 40, has prioritized preserving the park and ensuring its success. The upkeep of Opus 40 would not be possible without this grant money, says Jonathan Becker, Opus 40 board president and Bard executive vice president, vice president for academic affairs, and director of the Center for Civic Engagement. "The (Mellon) Foundation’s grant, combined with the National Parks Service/Save America’s Treasures grant announced in September, will allow for a truly historic conservation effort and will secure the preservation of Fite’s sculpture for generations to come,” Becker said in a statement.
Full Story in the Times Herald-Record
Full Story in the Times Herald-Record
01-11-2022
Selected by actress Tilda Swinton, artist Cao Fei, and architect David Adjaye, Marie Schleef ’14 was named one of 10 recipients of the first Chanel Next Prize. The biennial prize awards Schleef with €100,000, devoted to a project of her choosing. Schleef’s work as a theater director and multimedia artist centers the female experience and challenges notions of the male gaze. Yana Peel, Chanel’s global head of arts and culture, said in a statement: “We extend Chanel’s deep history of cultural commitment—empowering big ideas and creating opportunities for an emerging generation of artists to imagine the next.” Also included with the prize is access to a network of mentors over the course of the next 20 months.
Full Story on ARTnews
Full Story on ARTnews
01-04-2022
Bard alumnus Bartek Starodaj ’12 MS ’12 was tapped by the city of Kingston, New York, as the new director of housing initiatives, as reported in the Daily Freeman. Starodaj, who lives in Kingston, will be tasked with implementing the Tiny Home Project and a citywide rezoning project, among other responsibilities. “As the new housing director,” Starodaj says, “I look forward to leading a collaborative coalition of residents, activists, and government officials to synergize short- and long-term housing efforts across our great city.”
Full Story in the Daily Freeman
Full Story in the Daily Freeman