Newsmakers

Poet and art critic John Yau ’72 talks with LA Review of Books Radio Hour hosts Kate Wolf and Eric Newman about his process and experiences writing about artists and art in New York City. He discusses the complexities of how biracial, multiracial, and transcultural identities influence artists’ work within American art, and the ways those identities have been traditionally and historically ignored by the art world. “It enlarges the notion of identity to have at least two identities or in [artist] Wifredo Lam’s case three identities, Afro, Cuban, and Chinese,” says Yau. “In my essay, I talk about how he’s read as a white artist that is derivative. So his whole identity gets ignored.” The deeper Yau dives into these questions, the more he realizes how this monocultural lens pervades the art world. Drawn from decades of writing, Yau’s first collection of essays, Please Wait by the Coatroom: Reconsidering Race and Identity in American Art, reflects on the work of Black, Asian, Latinx, and Native American artists who have been overlooked and misrepresented. 

Jack Smith ’16, who majored in film and was a captain of the squash team for two seasons at Bard, returns to the College in his new role as head men’s and women’s squash coach. Bard’s Director of Athletics and Recreation David Lindholm says that Smith “distinguished himself in our search as a coach with the knowledge and ability to help our program grow and develop in the coming years.” Smith comes to Bard from CitySquash in the Bronx, a Squash and Education Alliance nonprofit after-school enrichment program for elementary, middle, and high school–aged students. “It’s truly an honor to be able to return to the program that shaped the player, coach, and person I am today,” said Smith. “I’m looking forward to joining the department, meeting the student-athletes, and getting started with the teams.”

Art historian and curator Darienne Turner BGC ’17, an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe of California, speaks with Terence Trouillot, senior editor of Frieze, about her curatorial practice, what it means to “Indigenize” museums, her studies of material culture at the Bard Graduate Center, and her upcoming role at the Brooklyn Museum of Art as its first full-time curator of Indigenous art. Turner, who is currently assistant curator of Indigenous art of the Americas at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), grapples with the term “decolonization” in the context of museums because of what that language centers. “But what really works against the colonial armature that encyclopaedic museums rest upon? For me that work happens through Indigenizing, through bringing in Indigenous artists and actually listening to what they have to say,” she says. 

Her first show at the BMA in 2020, Stripes and Stars: Reclaiming Lakota Independence, was inspired by objects she found in the museum’s vault—children’s clothing with American flags in their Lakota beadwork designs. “These objects were conundrums for me. I asked myself, ‘Why would the Lakota people, at this moment of intense conflict with the US government, use the symbol of their oppressor on these objects?’ The question catapulted me into deep research into the history of the Lakota people, and the moment of their transition to the reservation in the late 19th century.” What she found was that the Lakota people leveraged patriotic images like the flag in order to make space for themselves to enact cultural practices that had been banned, such as giveaways and puberty ceremonies, all taking place under the cover of the American flag during “patriotic” celebrations like the Fourth of July. “Listening to the stories of the objects is a big part of my practice, as is engaging with community,” says Turner.

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein interviewed Leslie Kean ’73, an investigative journalist and the author of UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record, on his podcast The Ezra Klein Show. Since 1999, Kean’s reporting has delved into the topic of UFOs or unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP) and most recently she broke the story of United States Air Force officer, former intelligence official, and whistle-blower David Grusch who claims the US government is covertly in possession of “intact and partially intact vehicles” of nonhuman origin. Kean discusses the implications of the story, her decades of reporting on the beat, and how Congress is responding to Grusch’s testimony. 

For Kean, Grusch’s claims follow the accumulation of years of conversations she’s had with other highly regarded sources with top security clearances telling her essentially the same thing: the government is harboring objects which are not of human origin. “I’m willing to put it out as a story. I think the point of it is that Congress needs to investigate and find out if what he is saying is true or not, and I think it’s up to Congress to take the next step," said Kean.
 

Brothers@, an organization founded at Bard College by alumni Dariel Vasquez ’17 and Harry Johnson ’17 to support young men of color in high school and through college, has successfully launched its next mentorship satellite program at Vassar College. Vassar student Devyn Benson, Johnson’s brother and Brothers@ ambassador, led the launch with help from Vasquez, now CEO of Brothers@, and Wesley Dixon, Vassar’s deputy to the president and secretary of the board of trustees. "When Dariel Vasquez and I launched Brothers@ in 2014, Devyn was one of my key motivations,” said Johnson. “With a nine-year age gap between us and growing up in a single-parent household, it hurt to leave for college knowing there was so much I could give at home.... 10 years later, Devyn has embarked on that same journey, but with a clear understanding that young men of color don't have to wait to make an impact in the lives of others; instead, he knows he is uniquely positioned to create generational impacts in the lives of other young men of color and communities of color at a scale, today." Since 2014, Brothers@ has grown from a student-led pilot program, Brothers@Bard, and institutional initiative, to a scalable model focused on expanding to college campuses and local communities across the country.