Newsmakers

The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced the 16 recipients of this year’s awards in music. Among the winners, Bard College Conservatory and Bard Film and Electronic Arts alumnus Luke Haaksma BA/BM ’21 was awarded a Charles Ives Scholarship. Charles Ives Scholarships are $7,500 each and awarded to composers for continued study in composition, either at institutions of their choice or privately with distinguished composers. Harmony Ives, the widow of Charles Ives, bequeathed to the Academy the royalties of Charles Ives’s music, which has enabled the Academy to give awards in composition since 1970. The award winners were selected by a committee of Academy members: Julia Wolfe (chair), Annea Lockwood, David Sanford, Christopher Theofanidis, Augusta Read Thomas, Chinary Ung, and Melinda Wagner. The awards will be presented at the Academy’s Ceremonial on May 24, 2023. Candidates for music awards are nominated by the 300 members of the Academy.

Luke Haaksma is a composer and filmmaker currently based in New Haven, Connecticut. His work has been performed at various festivals, universities, and venues throughout the United States and abroad. Haaksma is a past winner of both the Diana Wortham Emerging Artist Scholarship and the Ione M. Allen scholarship for the performing arts. His piano etude “Crystal Murk” was selected by Jihye Chang to be toured internationally as part of her multi-year solo recital project, “Continuum 88.” While an undergraduate at Bard College and the Conservatory, Haaksma studied composition with Joan Tower, George Tsontakis, and Lera Auerbach, piano with Blair McMillen, and Hammered Dulcimer with David Degge. He was the Conservatory’s  Joan Tower Composition Scholar. He was awarded the Sidney Peterson prize in experimental film, “Best Original Score” by the Dreamachine international film festival, and Official Selections from other Montreal and Los Angeles based festivals. Luke was honored as a 2021 National Hammered Dulcimer Championship finalist at the Walnut Valley music festival in Winfield, Kansas. His most recent string quartet, “talking” piece, was premiered in New York by The Rhythm Method as part of the Lake George Composers Institute. This past summer he was a fellow at the Brandeis Composers Conference. Luke began graduate studies at the Yale School of Music this past fall.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 as an honor society of the country’s leading architects, artists, composers, and writers. Early members include William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Julia Ward Howe, Henry James, Edward MacDowell, Theodore Roosevelt, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John Singer Sargent, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton. The Academy’s 300 members are elected for life and pay no dues. In addition to electing new members as vacancies occur, the Academy seeks to foster and sustain an interest in Literature, Music, and the Fine Arts by administering over 70 awards and prizes totaling more than $1 million, exhibiting art and manuscripts, funding performances of new works of musical theater, purchasing artwork for donation to museums across the country, and presenting talks and concerts.

For Anat Ebgi CCS ’08, the arts culture in Los Angeles encourages a feeling of comradery in an environment where people are more open to taking risks. “Last year, I opened my third gallery in Los Angeles on Fountain Ave in East Hollywood,” Ebgi writes for Artnet News. “At the time, the dealers I’d been surrounded by for years were expanding to New York, Tokyo, Seoul—faraway cities with entirely different vibes and histories. But for me, it’s still all about L.A. There’s something special about this place—about the way it fosters talent and encourages creativity and exploration.” In her view, there is a sense of grassroots collaboration that distinguishes the local art scene, and the collectors themselves are often in film or music, which “informs their approach to the art world and collecting,” she continues. “They’re looking less for trophies than for artworks that can generate an imaginative spark, something that can get ideas flowing.”

Since first partnering with Brothers@ and Bard College in 2015, students at Kingston High who participated in the program have “achieved an overall graduation rate of over 90%,” writes the Daily Freeman. Brothers@, founded at Bard by Dariel Vasquez ’17 and Harry Johnson ’17, partners with institutions to improve the educational outcomes of young men of color through their “Our Space” methodology. At Kingston High, high school students are matched with current Bard students as mentees “to foster academic persistence as well as positive identity and character development.” With the success of the program, Brothers@ and Kingston High hope to expand their offerings to create a “brotherhood-bridge-program” for seventh and eighth graders “to receive support, mentoring, and guidance before they enter high school.”

Opus 40 has reached an agreement to purchase the historic home of Bard professor, alumnus, and artist Harvey Fite ’30. Bard College was a partner in the process, and will provide programming support in the house going forward, to include educational programs, workshops, and faculty residencies. Harvey Fite created Opus 40, the 6.5-acre bluestone sculpture park in Saugerties, New York, and built the house. The purchase was made possible in part by major support from the Thompson Family Foundation, the New York State Assembly, and the town of Saugerties.

Bard College President Leon Botstein said, “It’s an honor to participate in the preservation of this unique sculpture and land art made by an alumnus and long-time faculty member of Bard and our neighbor in the Hudson Valley. We look forward to expanding joint programming with Opus 40 in the future and are thankful to the Richards family for their efforts preserving Harvey Fite’s legacy.”

Harvey Fite was a member of the faculty at Bard College for 36 years and founded the College’s art department before his retirement in 1969.

Photographer Lisa Kereszi ’95 has won a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation biennial competition award for $20,000 granted to dedicated artists whose work shows promise of further development. Kereszi is among 20 artists selected by the foundation for the 2022 biennial competition. The monetary grant is intended to give artists the opportunity to produce new work and to push the boundaries of their creativity. By doing so, it seeks to make a difference in the lives of the recipients at a moment in their career when they need it most. The awards, accompanied with the prestigious recognition, enhance the visibility and stature of artists in the art world.

Artists who work in painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, video, and craft media are eligible for the award. Approximately 50 designated nominators from throughout the United States recommend candidates to be considered. Nominees are then reviewed and vetted by a jury of seven individuals. Nominators and jury members are artists, critics, museum professionals, and members of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees.  

Lisa Kereszi was born in 1973 in Pennsylvania and grew up outside Philadelphia with a father who ran the family auto junkyard and a mother who owned an antique shop. In 1995, she graduated from Bard College with a BA in photography and literature/creative writing. In 2000, Kereszi went on to earn an M.F.A. in photography from the Yale School of Art, where she has taught since 2004 and is now Senior Critic in Photography and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Art. She recently was a MacDowell Fellow and a Gardner Fellowship Finalist. Her work is in many private and public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Study Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Berkeley Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery. Her publications include: The More I Learn About Women (2014), Joe’s Junk Yard (2012), Fun and Games (2009), Fantasies (2008), Governor’s Island (2004), and Lisa Kereszi: Photographs (2003). She has two books coming out later this year, including one published by Minor Matters, the photobook imprint run by fellow Bardian, Michelle Dunn Marsh ‘95.

About the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation
Established in 1918 by L.C. Tiffany, son of Charles Lewis Tiffany who founded the New York jewelry store Tiffany & Co., the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation is the earliest artist-endowed foundation in the United States, and is the first created by an artist during his or her lifetime. In 1946 the Foundation changed its program from the operation of an artists’ retreat to the bestowing of grants to artists. These grants were awarded annually through a competition in painting, sculpture, graphics, and textile design; a range of categories reflecting Tiffany’s manifold talents and interests. Each year applicants sent examples of their work to the National Academy of Design, where it was exhibited and judged. The Foundation also supported a plan by which artworks were purchased and donated to institutions, an apprenticeship program enabling young craftspeople to work with masters, and a program of direct grants to young painters and sculptors. In 1980, the grant programs were consolidated into a biennial competition. Today, the competition grants $20,000 awards to artists selected for their talent and individual artistic strength. Since 1980, the competition has granted $9,534,000 in awards to 491 artists nationwide.

Arthur Holland Michel ’13, Bard alumnus and a senior fellow at Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, writes for the Washington Post that the Chinese balloon spotted over the United States—just one of the many instruments observing the Earth from the sky—is an important lesson in the increasing prevalence of surveillance technology. “If the Chinese stratospheric balloon spotted floating about a dozen miles above the northern United States is indeed a spy craft, as the Pentagon claims, it’s hard to believe that it was meant to chart its course in secrecy,” Michel writes. “If anything, it was more likely dispatched precisely for the purpose of being seen.” In Michel’s view, the psychological impact of the balloon may hold more weight than its actual presence, as the sky is already filled with aerial equipment designed to collect information, from satellites to spy planes to drones. It is not “solely the prying digital eyes of nefarious foreign balloons and spy sats that the public ought to be concerned about,” he continues. “In the past decade, aerial surveillance has quietly become a common practice among domestic police agencies at every level of government.”

Tanya Marcuse SR ’81, artist in residence in the Photography Program at Bard, has received a MacDowell Artist Residency Fellowship for spring/summer 2023. Marcuse’s fellowship will support work toward the completion of her project, Book of Miracles, to be published by Nazraeli Press. This project, in direct conversation with the 16th-century Book of Miracles, a compendium of biblical, astronomical, and apocalyptic miracles, aims to visualize phenomena that seems to defy the laws of nature, using fire, paint, and the staging of fantastical scenes. Photography often walks a thin line between fact and fiction, or dwells in a realm where the two cannot be distinguished; the proposed work takes part in this pendulum swing between belief and doubt.

MacDowell Fellows’ applications are reviewed by a panel of esteemed professionals in each discipline. These panelists make their selections based on applicants’ vision and talent as reflected by a work sample and project description. Once at MacDowell, selected Fellows are provided a private studio, three meals a day, and accommodations for a period of up to six weeks. Marcuse was previously a MacDowell Fellow in 2018.