Newsmakers

“Jon Batiste is not afraid of a jazzy suit,” writes André-Naquian Wheeler for Vogue. Photography by Visiting Artist in Residence Jasmine Clarke ’18 accompanies Wheeler’s article, showing Batiste preparing for his first performance at the White House. Batiste, who performed “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and France’s national anthem “La Marseillaise,” requested that his family be in attendance, and especially his wife, the writer Suleika Jaouad, who has written about her diagnosis of an aggressive form of leukemia. “Seeing Suleika step out for her first public outing in a year after her cancer treatment meant a lot,” Batiste said. Batiste’s 89-year-old grandfather, an activist, also in attendance, commented on the symbolism of Batiste’s inclusion in the state dinner. “Discussing with [him] how the original builders of the White House were enslaved Americans whilst walking into the State Dinner as honored guests was quite a moment,” Batiste said. Clarke’s photography captures Batiste and guests preparing for the event, the musician’s excitement clear from Clarke’s vulnerable candids and striking portraits.

A “flurry of news” from COP27, the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference, meant that a policy change in the United States has gone largely unnoticed, writes Peter Howard ’03 in an opinion piece coauthored with Max Sarinsky for the Hill. It involves a change to the way the government measures the “social cost of carbon,” which “places a dollar value on greenhouse gas emissions and enables government decision-makers to weigh the costs and benefits of policies that affect climate pollution,” they write. First established under the Bush administration in 2008, the previous social cost of carbon was widely considered a “conservative underestimate.” Based in part on work done by Howard, the EPA revised the official social cost of carbon in 2020, from $51 to $190 for each ton of carbon-dioxide emissions. Now, because of action by the Biden administration, “decision-makers weighing critical policy choices will be equipped with a much more accurate tool for understanding climate impacts.”

American classical singer Julia Bullock VAP ’11 released Walking in the Dark, her debut solo album, on December 9, 2022, on Nonesuch Records. NPR named the album one of the “10 Best Classical Albums of 2022" and listed it as number 14 on the “Top 50 Albums of 2022.” “Soprano Julia Bullock's affecting solo debut, with its breathtaking spin on a deep cut by the enigmatic Connie Converse and a sublime rendition of Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915, traces the tenuous connections individuals share with one another and their own senses of purpose on earth,” writes NPR Music producer Tom Huizenga.

“Here’s how a popcorn company ended up buying a roller rink,” writes Alexandra Zissu for the Times Union. BjornQorn, the popular popcorn company coowned by Jamie O’Shea ’03, Bjorn Quenemoen ’03, and Stephanie Bauman ’05 needed a new facility as they expanded their business. Quenemoen and Bauman, who are married, spoke with the Times Union about their recent purchase of Skate Time 209 in Accord, New York, for just that purpose. “We were looking at a lot of the standard factory buildings. They weren’t particularly appealing to us,” said Bauman. Around the same time, a local real estate broker learned BjornQorn was in the market for a new facility. “He was like, you guys are the right people for this building,” Bauman said. Alongside converting part of the space for production, BjornQorn plans to continue operating the skate rink, including possibly adding a “sort of indoor beer garden situation.” “As long as we’re expanding, bring some joy into it. Have a laugh, drink a beer,” Bauman said. “And why not put on roller skates?”

At the 66th Evening Standard Theatre Awards celebration in London, Daniel Fish’s UK iteration of his Tony Award–winning re-orchestrated revival of Oklahoma! was named Best Musical, and Patrick Vaill ’07 took home the Best Musical Performance Award for his role as Jud Fry in the play. Vaill originated the role 15 years ago as a theater and performance senior in Fish’s 2007 Bard staging, which had been commissioned by the then Director of Bard’s Theater Program JoAnne Akalaitis. When Fish adapted the production for Bard’s 2015 SummerScape season, Vaill was cast again as Jud Fry and stayed in this role as the production went from off-Broadway to Broadway. The only remaining original cast member, Vaill joins a mixed British and American cast for the London production. “To be received by the audience and the city in this way is beyond anybody’s reasonable expectation of life,” Vaill said.

“I’m relieved this bill passed, but I don’t feel any safer or protected than we were last week,” writes Nikkya Hargrove ’05 for Parents magazine in response to the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA) in the Senate. The act would require states to recognize same-sex and interracial marriage licenses no matter the issuing state, but Hargrove ultimately questions the RFMA’s reach and ramifications. “The bill forces us to think about what ‘protection’ means for the LGBTQIA+ community,” she writes. “It's not a one-size-fits-all kind of bill.” Hargrove remains thankful for the passage of the RFMA, but says the work continues. “We celebrate, but our fight goes on for true equality for all.”

Print magazine profiles animator Jeff Scher ’76 and looks at his most recent work: a video for Tom Petty’s “Call Me the Breeze,” from the late musician’s recently released Live at the Fillmore compilation. “All Scher needs to make his movie magic is some live-action film, a chromatic supply of watercolor and pastels and a rotoscope to get his cinematic juices boiling,” writes Steven Heller. “His films can be joyful, unforgettable and heartbreaking.”

Eliminating bail for low-level offenses has proved that you can maximize freedom while not endangering public safety, write Dyjuan Tatro ’18 and Scott Hechinger. Cash bail and the pretrial detention system disproportionately penalize poorer defendants; eliminating the requirement allows people to continue to work and support their families while fighting their charges. Yet in spite of bail reform successes, including in New York State, some Democrats have allowed Republicans to control the narrative around the policy and have even blamed bail reform efforts for midterm losses.

Bard Conservatory Orchestra, Conducted by Leon Botstein, Performs Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker for In-Person and Remote Audiences, December 3

Fisher Center Premieres SITI Company’s Production of Dickens’
A Christmas Carol, Co-Directed by Anne Bogart ’74 and Darron L West,
Concluding SITI Company’s “Finale Season,” December 16–18

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON —The Fisher Center at Bard celebrates the holidays with two seasonal classics given fresh interpretations by world-renowned artists with deep connections to the college. Leon Botstein leads the Bard Conservatory Orchestra in a symphonic concert performance of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker on December 3, and the Fisher Center presents the world premiere of SITI Company’s reimagining of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, co-directed by Anne Bogart ‘74 and Tony Award winner Darron L West. The work, commissioned by the Fisher Center, is the final production in SITI Company’s 30th anniversary “Finale Season,” and runs for three performances, December 16-18.

In its special holiday performance on December 3, the 80-piece Bard Conservatory Orchestra, with a 24-member children’s chorus, takes on Tchaikovsky’s score for perhaps the most widely performed holiday classic, the two-act ballet The Nutcracker. The concert showcases the skill of the exceptional young players comprising the orchestra. It gives Fisher Center audiences a world-class rendering of the music, which Bard visiting associate professor of music Peter Laki, in a program note, contends is “the only thing critics liked about the piece from the start,” and is “what has ensured The Nutcracker’s place in the repertoire for 130 years, and is likely to keep it there.”

After fruitful work-in-progress performances in December 2021, SITI Company returns to the Fisher Center to premiere a uniquely SITI A Christmas Carol. They conjure the ghosts of the past, present, and future to speak to our society’s immediate need for gratitude, charity, fairness, justice, and equity. The cast includes Akiko Aizawa, Will Bond, Gian-Murray Gianino, Leon Inguslrud, Ellen Lauren, Kelly Maurer, Barney O’Hanlon, Stephen Duff Webber, and special guests Violeta Picayo and Donnell E. Smith. The production features costumes and scenery by James Schuette, lighting by Brian H Scott, and sound by Darron L West.

Gideon Lester, Artistic Director of the Fisher Center, says, “For 30 years, the legendary SITI Company has been one of the most inspiring and influential American theater ensembles. It’s an honor for the Fisher Center at Bard to collaborate with the company to create their ‘finale’ production—a wholly original adaptation of A Christmas Carol that brings Dickens’ words to new life through the theatrical power of imagination—in SITI’s inimitable style. Anne Bogart is a Bard alum, so this is a fitting homecoming. We’re delighted to continue our collaboration with her at her alma mater and to welcome her superb collaborators back to the Sosnoff Theater.”

Anne Bogart has said, “SITI Company and I are thrilled to return to Bard to share our encounter with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I graduated from Bard in 1974, and my trajectory was deeply affected by all of my experiences there. Bard instilled in me a sense of adventure and an enduring curiosity.”

Performance Schedule and Tickets

Bard Conservatory Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, performs The Nutcracker on Saturday, December 3, at 8 pm EST, in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. In-person tickets are available for a suggested donation of $15–20, and livestream access is pay-what-you-wish.

Fisher Center presents SITI Company’s A Christmas Carol Friday, December 16, at 8 pm; Saturday, December 17, at 6 pm; and Sunday, December 18, at 2 pm. Tickets are $25–65, with $5 tickets for Bard students made possible by the Passloff Pass and a 20% discount for groups of six or more.

Tickets for both events can be reserved at fishercenter.bard.edu, by phone at 845-758-7900 (Monday–Friday, 10 am–5 pm EST), or by email at [email protected].

Speaking with the Council on Foreign Relations, Rebecca Granato ’99, vice president for global initiatives for Bard College and director of OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives, spoke to the need for systematized enrollment of refugee students into institutions of higher education. Noting that “primary and secondary education for refugees is most frequently treated as an emergency response,” Granato outlined the impact that a more inclusive educational approach would have for displaced students. “Between interrupted education and poor-quality opportunities in host countries, even the brightest youth often lack the necessary skills,” she says. Support structures like those offered through the Open Society University Network are necessary to support these students, not only in moments of crisis, but throughout their educational journeys. “We really need to create pathways and pipelines between different higher education institutions and programs,” Granato says. “We need to include connected opportunities, scholarships in countries of first asylum, and also third-country opportunities so that students can move between degree possibilities, like any of us would, who want to get a higher education.”

“Everybody loves a Toni Morrison, an Audre Lorde, a James Baldwin,” Bard alumna Xaviera Simmons ’05 said to the New York Times. “Books are fabulous, but you can’t stay in a book club or a reading circle or a listening stance and expect things to miraculously change.” Simmons’s new exhibition, Crisis Makes a Book Club, puts the question of the efficacy of reading groups as a means of accomplishing systemic change at the fore. At the center of the exhibition is “Align” (2022), a “40-foot-long wooden shedlike structure with phrases gradually coming into focus: ‘unlearning and undoing,’ ‘white-structured disasters,’ ‘commitment to transformation.’” The work, “both humorous and wholly serious,” was created in response to “a group of very wealthy, very influential and very seasoned white women in the arts, philanthropy, and academia” whom Simmons knew. Presented alongside “Align” are other works by Simmons, as well as the first solo museum show by Charisse Pearlina Weston, whose work also engages in themes of racial justice. Crisis Makes a Book Club is on display now through March 5, 2023, at Queens Museum.

On January 7, 2021, Venezuela’s Special Action Forces raided the La Vega neighborhood of Caracas, leaving 23 people dead in what the community calls the “La Vega massacre.” The special police unit has been accused of targeting working-class neighborhoods, criminalizing young men for where they live as it attempts to root out gang activity. As part of an ongoing project supported by the Pulitzer Center and a Getty Images Inclusion Grant, Bard alumna Lexi Parra ’18 gets to know the women of La Vega who are maintaining their community and pushing back against state and gang violence. 

Lexi Parra majored in human rights and photography at Bard College.

Further Reading

• As gang, police violence rages, a neighborhood tries to connect (Washington Post)
• Venezuelan-American Photographer Lexi Parra ’18 Named Recipient of a 2022 Getty Images Annual Inclusion Grant
• Bard College Student Wins Davis Projects for Peace Prize

Bard College will host a book launch and colloquium to honor the novel Eden Revisited, written by the late, distinguished alumnus László Z. Bitó ’60. Bitó, granted asylum from his native Hungary in 1956, went on to develop the gold standard drug for glaucoma as he pursued a celebrated scientific career at Columbia University. In later life, he devoted himself to writing and became a force in Hungarian intellectual life and philanthropy, and published numerous works. Eden Revisited is his first book to be published in English in more than a decade.

The colloquium brings together preeminent scholars of religion who will speak to the novel’s themes: Bruce Chilton ’71, director of the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard, which is copublishing the book with Natus Books, Alan Avery-Peck, Kraft-Hiatt Professor in Judaic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, and Claudia Setzer, professor of religion at Manhattan College. Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, will introduce the panel. A discussion with audience members will follow the talks.

The book launch and colloquium take place on Saturday, October 22 from 1:45 pm-3:15 pm in the Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space. It will also be livestreamed.

This event is part of Family and Alumni/ae Weekend at Bard College. Visit families.bard.edu for more information.

Alan Avery-Peck is Kraft-Hiatt Professor in Judaic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Massachusetts. At Holy Cross, he teaches courses on all aspects of Judaism, ranging from an introduction to Judaism to an upper-level seminar on theological responses to the Holocaust. A specialist in early rabbinic Judaism, Avery-Peck’s research focuses on early Rabbinic Judaism and the relationship between early Judaism and emergent Christianity, especially in the context of contemporary interfaith relations. Among other projects, he is part of a team of scholars and clergy producing a new presentation of the Revised Common Lectionary (http://readingsfromtheroots.bard.edu), that is, the list of Hebrew Bible and New Testament readings used in church worship. He is also a series editor and author for The New Testament Gospels in Their Judaic Context (Brill Publishers), and his commentary on Second Corinthians appears in The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford University Press).

Claudia Setzer (Ph. D. Columbia) is Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College in Riverdale, NY. Her books include, The Bible in the American Experience (Society of Biblical Literature, 2020 with David Shefferman), The Bible and American Culture: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 2011, with David Shefferman), Resurrection of the Body in Early Judaism and Early Christianity (Brill, 2004), and Jewish Responses to Early Christians (Augsburg Fortress, 1994). She studies early Jewish-Christian relations, the development of belief in resurrection, women in the Greco-Roman era, nineteenth-century women interpreters of Scripture, and the Bible in American culture. She currently chairs the SBL group “The Bible in America” and is an associate editor for a forthcoming Study Bible from Westminster John Knox Press. In 2006, she founded the Columbia University Seminar on the New Testament. She is currently writing a book on the use of the Bible in progressive movements (abolitionism, women’s suffrage, civil rights, environmentalism, anti-trafficking).

Bruce Chilton ’71 is the Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Director of the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard College. He received his B.A. from Bard College; M.Div. and ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood from General Theological Seminary; and Ph.D. from Cambridge University. His books include Abraham’s Curse; Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography; God in Strength; Rabbi Paul: An Intellectual Biography; Judaic Approaches to the Gospels; Mary Magdalene: A Biography; Revelation; Trading Places; Jesus’ Prayer and Jesus’ Eucharist; Forging a Common Future; Jesus’ Baptism and Jesus’ Healing; Visions of the Apocalypse; and Christianity: The Basics. He was editor in chief of Bulletin for Biblical Research and founding editor of Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Studying the Historical Jesus series (E. J. Brill and Eerdmans).

Artist, publisher, and Bard College alumnus Paul Chan MFA ’03 has been named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow. "He draws on a wealth of cultural touchstones—from classical philosophy to modern literature, critical theory, and hip-hop culture—to produce works that respond to our current political and social realities,” the MacArthur Foundation says, “making those realities more immediately available to the mind for contemplation and critical reflection.” Chan’s work, which “[strives] to express humanity’s complexities and contradictions through an artistic practice that moves across media,” has been exhibited in the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, the Guggenheim Museum, and others. Chan received the Bard College Alumni/ae Association’s Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters in 2021.

The MacArthur Fellowship is a no-strings-attached award to 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.

Paul Chan received a BFA (1996) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA (2003) from Bard College. His work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at such national and international venues as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Drawing Center, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Schaulager, Basel. He is also the founder and publisher of Badlands Unlimited (established 2010). He received the Bard College Alumni/ae Association’s Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters in 2021.

Further Reading

Bard Professor Sky Hopinka Named 2022 MacArthur Fellow
More about Paul Chan's Award from the MacArthur Foundation

The Lecture Series, “Second Chances: Shakespeare and Freud,” Will Be Held in November

This November, Bard College presents renowned scholars Stephen Greenblatt and Adam Phillips delivering the Anthony Hecht Lectures in the Humanities in honor of preeminent poet, alumnus, and former Bard faculty member Anthony Hecht ’44. Greenblatt, who is the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, and Phillips, who is a visiting professor in the Department of English at the University of York, will present the lecture series, “Second Chances: Shakespeare and Freud.” Yale University Press will publish the lectures.

The lecture series includes “Shakespeare’s First Chance” by Stephen Greenblatt and “Freud’s First Chance,” by Adam Phillips on Thursday, November 10, at 5 pm; “Second Chances: For and Against” by Adam Phillips on Friday, November 11, at 10 am. Free and open to the public, these lectures will take place in Weis Cinema of the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College. A reception precedes each lecture. For more information about this lecture series, please call (845) 758-7405.

The final lecture in the series, “Shakespeare's Second Chances” by Stephen Greenblatt will be held on Wednesday, November 16 at 6:30pm at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. Tickets for the Morgan Library lecture are $25; $20 for Morgan Members and Bard College affiliates; and free for students with a valid ID. Reserve tickets here or call (212) 685-0008, ext. 560.

Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean scholar, literary historian, and author, is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is the author of 14 books, including Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics; The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve; The Swerve: How the World Became Modern; Shakespeare’s Freedom; Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare; Hamlet in Purgatory; Marvelous Possessions; and Renaissance Self-Fashioning. He is General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and of The Norton Shakespeare, has edited seven collections of criticism, and is a founding editor of the journal Representations. His honors include the 2016 Holberg Prize from the Norwegian Parliament, the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and the 2011 National Book Award for The Swerve, MLA’s James Russell Lowell Prize (twice), among many others.

Adam Phillips, psychoanalyst and writer, was formerly Principal Child Psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital in London. He is a Visiting Professor in the Department of English at the University of York, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the author of many books of psychoanalysis and literary criticism, most recently On Wanting To Change and On Getting Better.

The Anthony Hecht Lectures in the Humanities at Bard College were established in 2007 to honor the memory of this preeminent poet by reflecting his lifelong interest in literature, music, the visual arts, and our cultural history. Anthony Hecht graduated from Bard in 1944 and taught at the College from 1952–55 and 1962–66. Every two years a distinguished scholar delivers a series of lectures at Bard College and in New York City that addresses works close to Hecht’s own imagination and sympathies. Each lecture series is published by Yale University Press. Previous Hecht Lecture Series speakers include literary scholar and author Christopher Ricks; historian, critic, author, and broadcaster Simon Schama; renowned historian Garry Wills; classics scholar Mary Beard; literary critic and musicologist Daniel Albright; and artist and designer Maya Lin.

“It is a great honor that Anthony Hecht chose Bard as his home, both as a student and a faculty member, and we are delighted to recognize his extraordinary achievements through this important lecture series,” says Bard College President Leon Botstein.

Associate Professor of Environmental and Urban Studies M. Elias Dueker, Associate Professor of Biology Gabriel G. Perron, and Bard biology graduates Daniella Azulai ’17 and Mary Reid ’21 have copublished a new study, “Bacteria communities and water quality parameters in riverine water and sediments near wastewater discharges,” in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Data. ​​Over five months, they monitored microbial contaminants relating to the treated water outflow of the wastewater treatment plant operated by Bard, which releases into the Saw Kill, a tributary of the Hudson River and also the source of fresh water for the campus. This is the first of many datasets and research papers that they hope to publish on Bard’s water system. Preliminary data analyses provide insight into the impacts of watershed-wide usage of the Saw Kill as both drinking water source and treated sewage receiver. Future use of this dataset will include a focus on endotoxins and antibiotic resistant bacterial genes, water contaminants only now gaining broader attention in water quality and microbiological sciences.

All of the sampling was conducted as a joint Bard Summer Research Institute project between Dueker’s lab and Perron's lab in summer 2015. Lab members included: Marco Spodek ’17, Beckett Lansbury ’16, Yuejiao Wan ’17, Pola Kuhn ’17, Haley Goss-Holmes ’17. Coauthors Azulai and Reid worked on this project both as undergraduate and post-baccalaureate students.

“This project demonstrates the power of community asking scientific questions, and academia–students, faculty, and staff–being able to help answer those questions through careful observational and applied research,” said Dueker. “Our hope is that this database serves as a tool for researchers and communities around the world trying to respond to stewardship challenges in a science-based and community-accessible way.”

The Chicago-based Floating Museum, an art collective codirected by Bard alumnus Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford ’07, will serve as the artistic team leading the fifth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, or CAB 5. Titled This is a Rehearsal, CAB 5 “will build on and expand the collective’s ongoing work,” writes Matt Hickman for the Architect’s Newspaper. “Floating Museum is organized to work at the intersection of disciplines, where civic participation inspires and shapes our process. It’s both a thrill and challenge to collaborate with the CAB as the artistic team of the 2023 edition,” said the members of Floating Museum. With This is a Rehearsal, the collective hopes to showcase work that demonstrates the ways in which “contemporary environmental, political, and economic issues are shared across national boundaries but are addressed differently around the world through art, architecture, infrastructure, and civic participation.” CAB 5, This is a Rehearsal, is scheduled to open September 2023.

As the world watches the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant suffer “weeks of shelling,” the potential for “another nuclear disaster on the scale of the Chernobyl explosion” looms large, writes Bard alum C Mandler ’19 for CBS news. The similarities between Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia are as much organizational as they are structural, says Jonathan Becker, executive vice president and vice president for academic affairs for Bard College. Both share “an environment… in which people are disincentivized from communicating genuine problems to higher-ups,” Becker says, which could result in a “series of mistakes, which are reinforced by a system which doesn't encourage transparent communication.” A nuclear disaster in Ukraine would be catastrophic on “both human and geopolitical” levels, Becker says. Should a nuclear disaster occur, “it will be difficult to imagine the path forward after that,” he said.

 

This month, New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a state disaster emergency following evidence of the spread of poliovirus in wastewater. Nsikan Akpan ’06, who runs the health and science desk at WNYC/Gothamist, spoke with NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe to explain what this executive order means. “Health officials say the poliovirus that's in Long Island sewage right now—it's genetically linked to the paralytic case that was recorded in Rockland County earlier this summer, which was the first such case in nearly a decade in the United States,” says Akpan.

Countertenor Chuanyuan Liu, who graduated from the Bard Conservatory of Music’s Vocal Arts Program in 2021, has been named a grantee of the Met’s Education Fund. Education Fund grants are available to semifinalists, finalists, and Grand Finals winners of the Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition, following an audition with the Met artistic staff. The grants are intended to support the development of these young artists and are made possible by the generosity of donors. Since the 2021 Laffont semifinals, Chuanyuan Liu has been involved in three world premiere projects: Pittsburgh Opera’s production of In a Grove, with music by Christopher Cerrone and libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann; Philadelphia Orchestra’s concert version of Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s The Hours; and Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang's highly anticipated new opera M. Butterfly 蝴蝶君 at Santa Fe Opera. Liu has committed himself to an Asian-focused project each year stating, “as someone who grew up in China and spent all of my adulthood in the US, I have seen firsthand the differences but also the common ground. I want to use as much power as I have to build a bridge.”

LSA Family Health Service, a leading community nonprofit supporting thousands of low-income and immigrant families in East Harlem, announced that Jonah Gensler ’92 will lead the organization as its new chief executive officer (CEO). Gensler brings deep experience in nonprofit executive leadership, social services, and community engagement.

Profiled in the New York Times, the artist Martine Syms MFA ’17 “is the sort of ‘new media’ artist who antiquates the term. Since her days as a film programmer at clubs like the Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles, she has turned the various lenses of media around to interrogate what society expects of Black women, and Black artists in particular,” writes Travis Diehl. This fall, Syms has an independent feature film showing in theaters with worldwide distribution, as well as exihibtions on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and CCS Bard. "Grio College," the title of Syms’ retrospective show at CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum, is also the fictional school in Syms’s feature film The African Desperate (2022). “The curriculum that she presents is larger than what a college typically covers,” said Lauren Cornell, the chief curator at the Hessel. “It encompasses one’s whole life, friends, thinkers, culture.”

Martine Syms: Grio College, curated by Lauren Cornell, Chief Curator and Director of the Graduate Program, is on view at the CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art through November 27, 2022.

Museum Collecting Lessons: Acquisition Stories from the Inside by Steven Miller ’70 is “the first book of its kind,” writes Antiques and the Arts Weekly. In a Q&A with the publication, Miller spoke about his curatorial career, the range of his acquisitions, and the role collectors play in furthering a museum’s mission. Miller hopes his book will demystify the acquisition process for readers. “I hope readers will understand that what they see in museums did not enter in some mysterious manner,” Miller says, but instead “have been acquired for public benefit with considerable thought.” Museum Collecting Lessons: Acquisition Stories from the Inside was published May 26, 2022.

As part of the 2022 Whitney Biennial, Nayland Blake ’82, “bearish, Merlin-bearded, soft-spoken in the manner of a blacksmith teaching kindergartners,” offers advice to artists as part of their performance series “Got an Art Problem?” Writing for the New Yorker, Hannah Seidlitz outlines Blake’s contributions to this year’s Biennial, including “Rear Entry” and “Gender Discard Party,” in which “guests were invited to ‘bring your own baggage’ and dance away the woes of classification.” With “Got an Art Problem?,” Blake schedules meetings with guests who are asked to “illustrate their art problems,” which Blake then talks through with the guest until their time is up. Offering advice to one guest, an artist who goes by Zaun whose work attempts “to visualize the living grid,” Blake asked a very simple question: “What is a game?” “A game is a system of rules that organize behavior,” Blake said. “What’s delightful is seeing somebody operate within those rules and yet do this unexpected thing.” 

Pete Mauney ’93 MFA ’00 says his photographs of fireflies can range from “a spa for the eyes” to “almost pure chaos.” For NPR, Lara Pellegrinelli spoke with Mauney, who has spent almost a decade photographing fireflies in the Hudson Valley, using Photoshop to painstakingly compile hundreds of timed exposures into a single image. The images, Pellegrinelli writes, are catching the eye of artists and scientists alike, sparking the interest of researchers pursuing “new evidence that firefly swarms can synchronize their flashes.” Mauney is now a part of a group of volunteers helping collect data for computer scientist and biophysicist Dr. Orit Peleg of the BioFrontiers Institute of the University of Colorado, Boulder. Still, for Mauney, the images, and the process of composing them, are the primary thing. “I never get tired of it,” Mauney says. “And I never get tired of the challenge and the puzzle of trying to construct the images — and trying to construct a good image, because it’s not enough for me to let the bugs do the heavy lifting.”

What’s the secret to Food and Wine’s best ice cream in New York State? Keeping it local, says Brian Ackley ’02 and Lisa Farjam ’00, owners of Fortunes, the award-winning ice cream shop in Tivoli, New York. Speaking with Chronogram, Ackley said: “We wanted to take advantage of not only the upstate dairy, but the upstate fruit, which has this really short moment, but when it comes it’s really amazing and very special.” Drawing from local sources, including Montgomery Place Orchards, clearly helps Fortunes stay in the news, but ultimately, for the two Bard alums, it’s always been about the local experience. “We just decided that Tivoli really needed an ice cream shop. So we started the shop four years ago and it’s just been going ever since,” Ackley says.

For her “lyrical and haunting” Senior Project, I Went Back to Sit in the Sun, Alice Fall ’22 won second place in Lenscratch’s 2022 Student Prize Awards. “In Alice Falls’s I Went Back to Sit in the Sun, images are alive, the still photographs aren’t still,” writes Alexa Dilworth. Fall will receive $750 as well as a mini exhibition on the Curated Fridge as part of the prize package. In an interview with Lenscratch, Fall described her process and artistic philosophy. “When I am in tune with my body and emotion and the way I physically respond to an image—whether I am making work or engaging with images I’ve already made, my vision is sharpest,” she said.

Asleep on the job? Dr. Sara Mednick ’95, Bard alumna and professor of cognitive science at the University of California, says that could be a good thing for productivity. Speaking with Discover magazine, Mednick shared insights into the cognitive benefits of naps, which “benefit everything that nighttime sleep helps, including emotional regulation, attention, alertness, motor function and memory.” The length and timing of a nap also impacts its effects on our well-being, with higher benefits from naps before 1 pm, leading many companies and universities to create “designated sleeping pods to allow students and employees to nap whenever they need to.” Building off of findings from a 2018 paper coauthored by Mednick, Discover outlines that while “the benefits of napping may vary across different individuals,” given their many cognitive benefits, it might be time to reconsider how naps fit into our personal and professional lives.

Micah Gleason GCP ’21, VAP ’22 is currently the music director and conductor on a project in residency at the cell theatre in Manhattan. The Final Veil is a new movement chamber opera based on the true story of Franceska Mann, a Polish-Jewish ballet and burlesque dancer who was captured by the Nazis and used her skills as a dancer to attempt to escape. It was composed by JL Marlor and co-conceived with dancer/director Cassandra Rosebeetle. The show also includes two current VAP students, Abby Cheng and Katherine Lerner-Lee.

Performances are July 14–31, on Thursday Friday, Saturday at 8pm, and Sunday at 5pm at the cell theatre. Book tickets and learn more here.
 

“How can we find such camaraderie in the very thing that so often slights us?” asks Joe Vallese ’04 MAT ’05, editor of It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror. Publisher’s Weekly, in a starred review, calls the anthology “full of surprises.” Comprised of 25 essays on horror from contemporary queer authors, including 2018 Bard Fiction Prize winner Carmen Maria Machado, “the pieces are a brilliant display of expert criticism, wry humor, and original thinking.” Awarding it a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly says “there’s not a weak piece in the pack.” It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror will be published October 4, 2022, by Feminist Press and is available for preorder now.

“Sophocles had no trouble with structure,” writes Mary Norris for the New Yorker, struggling to find a way into her own tale. Taking a page from the late John Bennet, her friend and longtime editor for the New Yorker, Norris started at the beginning, telling the story of her trip to see Antigone with Bennet before his recent death. The Senior Project of Francis Karagodins ’22, Antigone, based on an original translation by Karagodins, was staged outdoors at Opus 40 in Saugerties, New York, the sculpture park and museum created by the late Bard professor and alumnus Harvey Fite ’30. “The setting was evocative: birdsong and scudding clouds at twilight, with the mountains for a backdrop,” Norris writes. While Bennet was studied in the play, Norris found herself more unfamiliar, and as such found Tiresias’s entrance to be the play’s most startling development. “While the other performers all seemed afraid of stumbling on the paving stones (Fite actually died of a fall in his own quarry), Tiresias alone, blind and urgent, had a motive to place each foot squarely on the earth.” Shortly after the two saw Antigone, Bennet was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. “Two weeks later, on July 9, he died, at home,” Norris writes, “releasing a great commingling of sadness and gratitude among family and friends, our lives graven where his plow had gone.”

Ahead of the release of his new documentary, Endangered, Ronan Farrow ’04 spoke with Stephen Colbert on the Late Show about the threats facing journalists worldwide. In the United States, journalists are facing threats of violence for their reporting, spurred by authoritarian figures framing them as the enemy of the people—a tactic that, while not new, as Farrow notes, is nonetheless troubling when it comes to the health of our democracy. “We need more and better reporting in communities around this country. We need to support our journalists,” he said. “Otherwise, we're going to have people who are in this state of rage, who are very manipulable by these political leaders, who want to deploy these authoritarian arguments.” Endangered, which follows four journalists and the dangers they face in their work, is streaming now on HBO Max.

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“Universities have a role to play in humanizing refugees and helping them establish new lives in new countries,” writes Rebecca Granato ’99, associate vice president for global initiatives at Bard College and the director of the Open Society University Network (OSUN) Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives. In an essay for Times Higher Education, Granato offers four simple ways universities can support displaced persons and students, using OSUN as an example of the efficacy of collaboration across networks. Alongside collective advocacy for expanded visa access, university networks like OSUN can “share best practices and develop new approaches to admitting and supporting refugee students, leverage their collective strength to advocate with governments for safe and durable solutions, and share both financial and human resources.” “There is strength in numbers,” Granato writes, “and university collaborations demonstrate this when it comes to supporting displaced youth in accessing higher education.”

The detective, as a figure, looms large in the “American mythology,” says Theo Wenner ’09, speaking to Interview about his new book of photography, Homicide. “It’s like a Western, or baseball,” Wenner says. “I wanted to see what it looks like now. Does it actually exist like you think it does? The way they dress, the way they talk?” In creating Homicide, which visually documents a year spent alongside the NYPD’s North Brooklyn Homicide squad, Wenner says his studies with Stephen Shore at Bard informed his approach to this work of photojournalism. “It’s not one single thing that Shore imparts on you. You start to realize the importance of objects,” Wenner says. Objects, Wenner says, can be more true than a portrait, which captures a projection of how someone wishes to be seen. Objects, by contrast, are “unbiased,” especially when it comes to the grim subject matter of Homicide. “You’re staring at the person’s face and it’s like they got caught mid-sentence, the eyes open and looking off into wherever, there’s like a yellow M&Ms wrapper next to the victim,” Wenner says. “Those little details take on so much significance.”

“Lil’ Deb’s is a sensory explosion of queer exuberance and kitsch . . . ” writes Von Diaz for the Washington Post. “Deb’s is not a gay bar; it’s a restaurant. Food is the focus, and the menu is innovative, experimental and incredibly memorable. And as its name suggests, Deb’s is a place where people from all walks of life convene, where the only thing that’s illicit is how sinfully sumptuous the food is, where the staffers can take pride in preparing meals that are as unique as they are and where deliciousness becomes an extension of queer resistance.” In the article, Bard alum and restaurant editor at Bon Appétit Elazar Sontag says, “It is an explicitly queer space in every single way. But they also are turning out some of the best food in this country. And they're doing it with such intention. Every single dish is telling a story.”
 
Please Wait to Be Tasted: The Lil' Deb's Oasis Cookbook by Carla Perez-Gallardo ’10, Hannah Black, and Wheeler (Princeton Architectural Press, June 2022) will transport you, according to Diaz, “Much like the restaurant is more than a restaurant, the cookbook is more than a cookbook.”

Best known for Opus 40, “a massive hand-built sculpture, with ramps, walls, and pedestals, covering 6.5 acres in Saugerties” and “one of the first American ‘earthworks,’” the life and work of Harvey Fite ’30 will be presented in a retrospective running June 3–July 10, 2022, at the at Emerge Gallery and Lamb Center. Ahead of the exhibition, Chronogram covered the span of Fite’s life, including the influence dyslexia had on his life and his “fierce passion” and “geniality.” “Every life is a journey, but some people voyage farther than others,” writes Sparrow, noting Fite’s ultimate goal of “[reducing] the human body to its essential form, almost the way driftwood is smoothed by the action of water.” Let the Stone Tell the Story: An Inside Look at Sculptor Harvey Fite’s Studio Work runs June 3–July 10, 2022, at Emerge Gallery and the Lamb Center in Saugerties, New York.

Iconic jazz pianist and composer Ran Blake ’60 received the 2022 Louis Armstrong SATCHMO™ Award. Blake was honored with the award at the 2022 Louis Armstrong International Continuum: Armstrong & Company, a virtual symposium and concert presented by Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies, in conjunction with the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation. The award honors great, living jazz artists who have a history of sharing their love of music through a lifetime of performance and jazz education. Recipients are selected for their important and lasting contributions in the world of jazz education and reflect the spirit of Louis Armstrong and his inspiring belief in the power of the language of jazz.

Bard College’s Division of Arts is pleased to announce the appointment of Lucas Blalock ’02 as assistant professor of photography. His tenure-track appointment begins in the 2022–23 academic year. 

Lucas Blalock ’02 is a photographer and writer whose work explores the potentials of mannerism in photography. He has been included in exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Walker Art Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Malmo Kunsthall. He has also staged solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Museum Kurhaus in Kleve, Germany as well as in galleries in the US and in Europe, including Ramiken Crucible, White Cube, Eva Presenhuber, and Rodolphe Janssen.
 
Blalock’s books include, Towards a Warm Math (Hassla, 2011), Windows Mirrors Tabletops (Morel, 2013), Making Memeries (SPBH, 2016), A Grocer’s Orgy (Primary Information, 2018), Figures (Zolo Press, 2022), and Why Must the Mounted Messenger Be Mounted? (Objectiv, 2022). Oar Or Ore, an expansive survey of the artist’s work since 2013 as seen through the lens of recent exhibitions will be published by Museum Kurhaus later this year.
 
Blalock, originally from Asheville, North Carolina, holds a BA from Bard College (Class of ’02), attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and received his MFA from UCLA. He is represented by Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich and New York and by Rodolphe Janssen in Brussels.

In an intimate, six-part webcomic for McSweeney’s, Nguyên Khôi Nguyễn ’04 depicted the fertility journey his wife and he took during the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout “In Our Own Time: One Couple’s Fertility Journey,” written and illustrated by Nguyễn, the couple is depicted at all stages of their journey to pregnancy via IVF and IUI. The series, which concluded on May 31, documents the experience and emotions of Nguyễn’s wife, the couple’s initial inability to go together to a doctor during the pandemic, and the hopeful, happy conclusion of their journey together.

“My relationship with Morrison lasted a third of my life and was not wholly intimate and not fully professional,” writes A.J. Verdelle MFA ’93 in Miss Chloe: A Memoir of a Literary Friendship with Toni Morrison. The Los Angeles Review of Books says Verdelle’s new book “creates an echo chamber that deftly evokes the voice of Toni Morrison,” and, for the reviewer, it served as an introduction to Verdelle’s work more broadly. “The book had grabbed me from the first page,” writes Wayne Catan. “Not only because Verdelle pulls back the curtain to display the duo’s intimate life together, but because of Verdelle’s engaging prose.” Miss Chloe not only chronicles Verdelle’s friendship with Morrison, whose birth name, Chloe A. Wofford, gives the book its title, but is threaded with reflections on Verdelle’s own childhood, her racist experiences in Catholic school, and “discussions of craft as seen through Morrison’s eyes.” Verdelle draws lessons, both personal and professional, from Morrison, including how to live in the world as a Black author. “Rather than succumb to the distraction of responding to what others thought she, or we, could not be, Toni Morrison refused to race-splain,” Verdelle writes.

For formerly incarcerated individuals returning to their communities, “clean, safe, and stable” housing is crucial, says Shawn Young ’19, upstate reentry resident for the Bard Prison Initiative. Speaking to his experience as a Bard alumnus through the Bard Prison Initiative, Young told the Good Work Hour on Radio Kingston that a housing-first reentry model can make the difference for people attempting to reestablish themselves in the communities they lived in before their incarceration. “When our folks, when our alumni/ae, when our students come back to their community, they have places that they can go to live,” Young says. In-prison education programs like BPI are transformative for incarcerated men and women, but in order for alumni/ae to “rise to whatever potential they can achieve,” Young says care and concern, especially from those who have had similar experiences, is often a deciding factor in a successful transition. “I didn’t get to this place simply because,” Young said. Now, through his work with BPI and the All Of Us community action group, Young is focused on giving back.

In conversation with Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa, Bard alumna Tiffany Sia ’10 and Assistant Professor Sky Hopinka imagined “anticolonial futures for the moving image” for Art in America. Sia spoke to her current interests in the proliferation of moving images on social media and “the idea of film as witness.” “Film is potentially incriminating, if someone is documented doing something that may be considered a criminal act,” Sia said. Hopinka spoke to filmic intentionality, both with respect to its production and its audience. “I’m interested in focusing on very specific things within my own beliefs, family, tribe, or region,” Hopinka said, “not in catering to a white audience or white gaze.”

“Rachel Careau’s meticulous and agile translation of this pair of novels [Chéri and its sequel, The End of Chéri] brings to Anglophone readers some of Colette’s finest writing, rich in the sensuality for which she is widely known — but also in the sharpness of her social observations, so ahead of her time that they come across as radical even by contemporary standards,” writes Tash Aw in the New York Times Book Review.

What do AccuWeather and bottled tap water have in common? To find out, you’ll have to watch The G Word by Adam Conover ’04, a Netflix series on the workings and failings of government. Nell Minow, writing for RogerEbert.com, calls Conover’s new show a lively examination of the “one out of every 16 people” who work for the government—and how their labor touches every aspect of American life. Each episode begins with a positive story about the work of governance before shifting into an examination of its challenges and failures. “The government is better at setting up systems that work than protecting them from predation by businesses who want to profit from what has already been paid for with tax dollars,” Minow writes. Coproduced by Barack and Michelle Obama, The G Word is streaming now on Netflix.

“Something this common needs to be normalized and talked about,” says Hannah Bronfman ’11 in an interview with Ebony. Bronfman chronicled her three-year fertility journey, including a painful miscarriage, on YouTube and Instagram, an experience she says helped her feel less alone. “So many of us suffer in silence and this kind of just felt like the appropriate thing to be discussing and emphasizing that there’s no shame in this journey,” she says. With the help of a doula and an OB she trusted, Bronfman had a safe vaginal birth at a private facility, an experience, she emphasized, she did not take for granted. “Obviously, that’s not what most Black women experience, and I want to do everything I can to speak out, bring awareness to the lack of access, and share resources to people who need them.”

Bard alumni Adam ’11 and Zack Khalil ’14, cofounders of the Indigenous art collective New Red Order, worked with Counterpublic on their upcoming triennial, which will run May 15 to August 15, 2023, “pulling double duty as both participating artists and curators,” writes Taylor Dafoe for Artnet. The triennial will be installed along a six-mile stretch of Jefferson Avenue in St. Louis, Missouri. New Red Order will produce work focusing on “what is locally referred to as Mound City, partnering with the Osage Nation to make a film documenting the tribe’s efforts to repatriate the landmark.” Alumna Diya Vij ’08 will also curate the exhibition.

Teaching without an agenda is not something that concerns Kate Belin BA ’04, MAT ’05. “I do have an agenda. I want to see a national shift in how we teach math, what math is, and who has access to it,” Belin said in an interview with Chalkbeat. In their role at the Bronx’s Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, they continue to teach the mathematics of gerrymandering, “an especially relevant topic” today, and one that “will likely continue to be.” A winner of the 2021 Math for America (MƒA) Muller Award for Professional Influence in Education, Belin says their belief in the power of education was developed while at Bard, both as an undergraduate and graduate student. “I learned in college that mathematics was about creativity, patterns, problem-solving, and many more things that aren’t necessarily taught in K-12 school,” they said. “The master’s program at Bard College gave me hope that it was possible to bring more real mathematics into schools and that more students might fall in love with it, too.”
 
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As part of its 2022 “Culture” issue, T, the New York Times Style Magazine, interviewed Tschabalala Self ’12, Bard alumna and visiting artist in residence, on the creative life and the connection between her practice of sewing and familial identity. Her mother collected fabric, Self says, something that comes to mind as she incorporates sewing into her artistic repertoire. Her mother could make a dress from scratch—something Self says is beyond her. “For me, sewing’s a kind of collaging,” Self said. “And it does have this association with my mom, who’s one of the most important people to me. Working this way feels like honoring her.” A part of “24 Hours in the Creative Life,” Self’s interview is part of an issue that Hanya Yanagihara, editor in chief of T, says “is dedicated to living a creative life, which is something that all of us, whether self-proclaimed artists or not, have available to us.” The issue also features advice for early- and mid-career artists from Bard faculty member Nayland Blake ’82.
 
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Jennifer H. Madans ’73, former National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) associate director for science and acting director, cowrites an op-ed for The Hill about how a lack of government funding for the NCHS was a “weak link in the administration’s data-driven COVID-19 response.” The NCHS is the Department of Health and Human Services’ equivalent of the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. It collects and disseminates core public health information on births, deaths, chronic and acute disease, disability and health care access and utilization. “Just as the timeliness and granularity of employment data, with information by state, if not county, and by sector or product category, help bolster our economy and job growth, more timely and granular health statistics would improve public health.”
 
Madans asserts: “Had investments been made in maintaining and modernizing the health data infrastructure we would have had information on COVID-related deaths, hospitalizations, ambulatory care visits and symptoms along with information on the impacts of the pandemic on wellbeing. This would have allowed for immediate tracking of the pandemic at its earliest stages and the continuing monitoring of response capabilities as it changed course. Without this investment, the data that were produced were delayed and in many cases they were of limited quality, which hampered our ability to control the pandemic and meet the health and health care needs of the population.”

The spyware technology Pegasus “can extract the contents of a phone, giving access to its texts and photographs, or activate its camera and microphone to provide real-time surveillance,” writes Ronan Farrow ’04 for the New Yorker. In a wide-ranging profile of NSO Group, the Israeli firm that developed Pegasus, Farrow pressed current and former employees of the firm on the sales and usage of their software, which has been linked to repressive regimes and is purportedly utilized by governments worldwide for espionage.

Read More in the New Yorker