Newsmakers

Bard alumna Juliana Maitenaz ’22 has received an independent study–research Fulbright Scholarship to Brazil for the 2023–24 academic year. Her project, “Rhythm and Statecraft,” seeks to identify Brazilian percussion and rhythms as a method of cultural communication. Maitenaz, a former Conservatory student, graduated from Bard last May with a BA in Global and International Studies and a BM in Classical Percussion Performance. 

Her project, which she aims to conduct in São Paulo, will focus on how percussional elements in the Brazilian traditions of Carnival and Samba School performances are instrumental to the country’s statecraft and national identity. The goal of her research is to examine international communication and collaboration through cultural and musical diplomacy. “I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to learn more about the role Brazilian percussion plays as an inspiring means of cultural communication,” Maitenaz said. 

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program expands perspectives through academic and professional advancement and cross-cultural dialogue. During their grants, Fulbrighters will meet, work, live with, and learn from the people of the host country, sharing daily experiences to facilitate cultural exchange.

Bard alumnus Dariel Vasquez ’17 appeared on the Today Show, speaking to the importance of peer mentoring and how it changed his life as a teenager. Now he’s paying it forward with Brothers@, a program he cofounded as a Bard student to support young men of color in high school and through college. In Vasquez’s experience, small acts of support and educational investment can make an outsized impact on a student’s trajectory. “It’s a story of making sure that we remember to always take chances on our young people and believe in them,” says Vasquez. “The adults in my life audaciously believed in me and took a chance on me and my future.”

Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish First Nation) CCS ’03 recently joined Bard’s faculty as part of the College’s transformative initiatives in Native American and Indigenous studies, developed in partnership with Forge Project and supported by a $50 million endowment. Hopkins, CCS Bard Fellow in Indigenous Art History and Curatorial Studies and Forge Project’s executive director, speaks with Shanna Ketchum-Heap of Birds (Diné/Navajo) for ArtReview about Indigenous self-determination and the importance of this new collaboration between the Native-led arts and cultural organization Forge and Bard College. “We realized that we could attempt to enact quite radical institutional change through a partnership between Forge and Bard,” said Hopkins. “One of those involved naming: American Studies is now American and Indigenous Studies. There are cluster hires for faculty at all different levels, and scholarships (including living expenses) for Native students. There is also support for the recruitment of Native students, because Native students do not always know what opportunities are out there for them. And if they do not know then they are not going to apply. But if they also do not see themselves represented, people are going to feel really alienated when they come to a place.” 

Hopkins notes that these College-wide initiatives, including the establishment of a Center for Indigenous Studies, were “built upon the good work that Bard was already doing with their Andrew W. Mellon grant called ‘Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck’. At the center of it was the question of ‘how do we make land acknowledgments actionable?’ because they have become often rote, performative and not based on real collaboration or community engagement.”

Announced in September 2022, these initiatives are having an immediate impact on Bard’s community and its undergraduate and graduate academic programs. “The intent was for this to be felt right away, and I am already seeing it happening. People are coming here; more Native folks are coming to teach and be engaged with postdoctoral students. It will be interesting to see what comes out of it and what students do, what impact that they make,” she said. 

Hopkins, who currently advises and teaches at CCS Bard, will curate a major exhibition Indian Theater, opening June 24, 2023 at the Hessel Museum of Art.

Speaking with Mira Jacob on Thresholds, Layli Long Soldier MFA ’14 said she will sometimes watch cute animal videos on YouTube in order to get into a mental space conducive to creativity. The method is comical, but the effect is integral to Long Soldier’s practice. “I have to be empty of all of the daily concerns and societal concerns, to a certain degree,” she said. “Then there’s a deeper Layli that’s allowed to come.” Discussing the creative life at length, Long Soldier emphasized the need to accept one’s limitations and to work within them, achieving “creative liberation,” and the need for artists to free themselves from pervasive myths about creativity. “I think there is a false belief that it’s always there,” Long Soldier said. “It is, as they say, a practice. You have to learn the ways to access it, and to use it, and to keep it vibrant and keep it alive.” Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, Long Soldier will be awarded the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters this May at Bard College’s 163rd Commencement.

Photographer Emily Allen ’22 talks with F-Stop magazine about her inspirations, creative practice, and current project “Sit Tibi Terra Levis,” which originated as her Senior Project and was recently featured in the magazine. “With this portfolio, I hope to draw attention to photography as a process and an object and its humanity–its connection to death, to life, and to memory,” said Allen, who studied photography, classics, and medieval studies at Bard. “I used the techniques we use to attempt to preserve ourselves throughout history to preserve my images.” The photographic prints in her book were created using processes humans have historically used on our bodies after death. Some were brushed with oil according to ancient Greek rites, others soaked in honey as the Babylonians did, some were processed in simulation of modern American chemical embalming, and others incompletely fixed so they continue to degrade and decompose over time. In this project, Allen was fascinated by the kinds of similarities and subversions these processes had when used on photographs versus on our bodies.
 
When looking at images, Allen doesn’t have one strict definition of what a photograph can be, rather she looks for resonance. “Literally the word photograph means ‘light drawing’–to me anything made using light sensitive materials and light is a photograph whether it is representative of our physical world or not . . . A good photograph convinces me of the reality in the world within the boundaries of the paper–I have to believe in it. I love when photographs feel like bubbles, each containing their own little universe,” she says.

American theater and opera director and cofounder of SITI Company Anne Bogart ’74, who studied drama and dance at Bard and received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the College in 2014, has won a 2023 Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement. The Obie Awards honor the highest caliber of off-Broadway and off-off Broadway theater to recognize brave work, champion new material, and advance careers in theater. Bogart accepted her honor at the 66th Obie Awards ceremony in New York City. 

“In 1974, fresh out of college, I moved to New York City. There was nowhere else in the world that made sense to me. I wanted to be where theater was happening. And I wanted to direct plays,” she said in her acceptance speech. In 1992, Bogart, along with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki and a group of like-minded artists interested in revitalizing and redefining contemporary theater in the United States, founded SITI Company. Bogart was honored by the Obie judges for her 30 years of work with SITI Company, an artistic ensemble company, which created more than 50 productions presented at venues around the world, and pushed the boundaries of contemporary theater through innovative approaches to actor training, collaboration, and cultural exchange. 

In December 2022, Bard’s Fisher Center presented the world premiere of SITI Company’s reimagining of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, codirected by Anne Bogart and Tony Award winner Darron L West. The work, commissioned by the Fisher Center, was the final production in SITI Company’s 30th anniversary “Finale Season.”