Newsmakers

Members of Brothers@, the initiative dedicated to building a community supportive of Black students and students of color, celebrated the group’s 10th anniversary with a gala in New York City this April. Attendees reflected on and celebrated a decade of transforming the lives of young men across the country, and the event was marked by powerful stories and heartfelt speeches. “By sharing my experiences and knowledge, I can help these young men navigate challenges, develop life skills, and build confidence,” said Williams Hernandez ’27, current coleader with Jalen Smiley ‘27 of Bard’s chapter. “I grew up not having some of the opportunities that these high schoolers have and I always wished that I would have had a program like Brothers@.”

In 2015, group founders Dariel Vasquez ‘17 and Harry Johnson ‘17 created an on-campus support group for men of color which offered a safe space for healing circles, near-peer group mentorship, and cultural-event planning for men of color on Bard’s campus. With the assistance of the Bard Center for Civic Engagement’s Trustee Leader Scholar program, Brothers@ later launched a youth outreach program designed to assist students from low-income high schools as they prepare for college or a career. The group's efforts have a demonstrable impact on students at Bard. Currently, the four-year graduation rate for Black students at Bard is just over 70%, while the four-year graduation rate for members of Brothers@Bard members is 90%.

Pauline Chalamet ’14, actress, producer, and Bard alumna, writes for the Hollywood Reporter about the vital importance of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and how eliminating it would be devastating to small and rural arts organizations. Chalamet, who recently lobbied Congress on behalf of arts funding, discusses how it supports initiatives such as local jazz festivals, museums exhibitions, arts education, and community theater, which enrich cultural identity and stimulate local economies that would otherwise lack access to major donors or sponsorships. If it weren’t for the NEA, she says, she may not have pursued life as an actor herself. “Arts funding is often the first thing to be cut by governments, when in fact it should be protected as essential,” Chalamet writes. “Creativity gives us purpose. Imagination advances humanity. The arts foster empathy, understanding, and connection. Access to creative expression—whether through dance, music, painting, theater, or film—helps us communicate on a deeper level and provides a bridge into the shared experience of what it means to be human.”

The Mastermind, a new film by S. William Senfeld Artist in Residence Kelly Reichardt, will premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival this month. The Mastermind is about an art thief in 1970s Massachusetts who plans his first heist. It stars Josh O’Connor and Alana Haim, as well as alumna Gaby Hoffmann ’04 as part of the film’s stellar ensemble cast.

Reichardt has taught in the Film and Electronic Arts program at Bard since 2006. Her last film, Showing Up, also premiered at Cannes and was named one of the top ten indie films of 2023 by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.

Sonita Alizadeh ’23, Bard College alumna and human rights activist, has been announced as the 2025 Cannes LionHeart by the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The honor is awarded to a recipient who harnesses their position to make a positive difference to the world, and Alizadeh has used her platforms as the first professional Afghan rapper, an activist, and an author to fight child marriage and gender injustice and be a global voice for women’s rights. “Sonita’s journey is an inspirational story of resilience and courage,” said Philip Thomas, chair of Cannes Lions. “Through her music and her activism, she has used her voice and her platform to challenge oppression and inspire the next generation.” 

Born under Taliban rule, Alizadeh faced the threat of child marriage twice, at ages 10 and 16, before finding her voice through music. She has since performed on global stages and collaborated with artists and organisations that share her mission, and has addressed world leaders and worked with NGOs such as the UN, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International to push for change. “Being awarded the Cannes LionHeart is more than an honor—it’s a powerful affirmation that using my voice to fight for girls' rights and freedom matters,” said Alizadeh. “This award reflects the journey from silence to sound, from being sold to standing on the world stage. It reminds me that no dream is too wild when it’s rooted in truth, courage, and purpose.”

Dr. Darif Krasnow ’09 has been honored by the Kent County Memorial Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, with a 2025 Doctor of the Year Award as a hospitalist. After graduating with a degree in music at Bard, Dr. Krasnow completed his medical education at Touro University California College of Osteopathic Medicine and is a core faculty member of the Kent Hospital/Brown University Internal Medicine Residency Program. 

Many Bard graduates like Krasnow go on to pursue careers in health professions. Bard Health Professions Advising (HPA) provides advice, support, and networking opportunities for students as well as alumni/ae who are interested in pursuing careers in the health professions. Students and alumni/ae can meet one-on-one with Bard’s Pre-Professional Health Career Adviser Lisa Kooperman is available to discuss their individual goals and plans, including course selection to fulfill professional school requirements, career path and alternative career path exploration, relevant research and practical experience related to the profession of interest, and guidance throughout the professional school application process. 

Rolling Stone interviewed actor, songwriter, and Bard alumna Lola Kirke ’12 about her recent country album Trailblazers. The album is about her experiences with failure, she says, “but also the growing ability to change the way you talk to yourself: ‘What if I’m actually not as horrible as I think I am? What if, instead of a failure, I’m a trailblazer?” Rolling Stone called Trailblazers “one of the sleeper country albums of the year” that “shows off Kirke’s gift for lyrical flair and performance art.”

While Kirke was recording the album, she also wrote her memoir Wild West Village about her childhood in New York and getting involved with country music. During the same period she acted in the recent film Sinners. Asked how she balanced all these projects, Kirke said “the book was kind of my compass of what stories I wanted to tell, [and then] I was like, ‘Some of those stories would make great songs’.”

Faculty, staff, and students gathered at Blithewood Manor for this year’s Undergraduate Awards Ceremony, which was held on Monday, April 28. The annual ceremony is a celebration of the incredible talent and dedication showcased by Bard students, as well as the unwavering support and guidance from esteemed faculty and staff at the College. The evening's awardees, who were nominated by faculty from across the four divisions of the College, represent excellence in the arts; social studies; languages and literature; and science, mathematics, and computing. Among the awardees were students in the Bard Baccalaureate, a program for older students returning to college to finish their undergraduate degrees. 

The event featured remarks and award presentations from key figures, including President of the College Leon Botstein, Dean of the College Deirdre d'Albertis, Dean of Studies and Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs David Shein, and Bard Alumna Cara Parks ’05. A special highlight of the evening was the announcement of a newly established award in memory of a beloved Bardian, Betsaida Alcantara ’05, by the Class of 2005, family, friends, and loved ones who knew her. The inaugural Betsaida Alcantara ’05 Pioneers for Progress Award, in memory of Betsaida Alcantara '05 (1983–2022), who exemplified the best of Bard's hope to inspire people to be passionate agents of change, pioneers for progress, and advocates for justice for those most in need was given to Sierra Ford ’26 who has demonstrated strong leadership skills, a commitment to public service, and support for open societies.
 
The presentation of awards was a moment to acknowledge and celebrate the exceptional academic achievement, leadership, and commitment demonstrated by Bard students. It was a testament to their hard work and perseverance, which defines the spirit of Bard College and serves as an inspiration to us all.

Many of the undergraduate awards are made possible by generous contributions from Bard donors. Thank you to all our supporters for believing in the value of a college education, and for investing in the future of Bard students.

Tyler Zowaski ’18, head men’s volleyball coach at Bard College, has been announced as one of the 2025 Thirty Under 30 award honorees by the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA). Zowaski returned to Bard in September of 2022 as coach of the program and is in his third season at the helm. This season, he led the Raptors to 12 wins, the most since 2011, which sent them to the New England Volleyball Conference playoffs for the first time in program history. “I’ve been around the volleyball coaching community for nearly 20 years and can say with absolute confidence that Tyler is one of the best young coaches I've had the pleasure of working with,” said Stefanie Carrington, director of athletics at Bard. “He is both a strong technical coach and a thoughtful strategist and he does a great job of balancing the needs of the group with the needs of each individual student athlete. Our men's volleyball program is in really capable hands and I'm excited to see how it continues to flourish under his leadership."

“I’m honored to be recognized as one of the AVCA Thirty Under 30 College award recipients,” said Zowaski. “This distinction is deeply meaningful to me not only as a coach, but someone invested in building a men’s volleyball program ingrained in collaboration, purpose, and progress. I’ve had the privilege of leading a group of student athletes whose curiosity, passion, and hard work continually challenge me to grow as a coach and educator.” Prior to becoming coach, Zowaski was the top assistant at nearby Vassar in 2021 and 2022, helping the Brewers to No. 5 final national ranking in 2021, and No. 14 in 2022.

Bard alumni Matthew Wing ’06 and Adam Janos ’06 spoke with City & State New York about Hack_NY, an Instagram account they cofounded with their friend and colleague Julian Klepper to promote awareness about government programs and benefits that can improve the lives of the public. The videos produced for the account are reminiscent of Saturday Night Live skits, designed to be a lighthearted and humorous way to educate viewers about lesser known programs. “We're trying to get people to be civically engaged with public servants, public service and their government which works for them and exists to serve their needs and make their lives better,” said Wing. “At a time when the very nature and existence of government is being questioned and to some degree persecuted, I think it's good and nice to hold up beautiful pieces of art that just say, this is a nice thing that people should enjoy, that makes lives better.”

Vanity Fair senior editor and Bard alumna Keziah Weir ’13 wrote about a lawsuit from authors including Richard Kadrey and Ta-Nehisi Coates that challenges Meta’s use of their books to train AI, arguing that torrenting their books constituted “unlawful conduct.” Over the past two years, Meta has trained their AI, Llama, on a database of over 7 million pirated books. Newly revealed files show that Meta believes these books “are individually worthless,” and therefore fall under fair use, Weir writes. She argues that Meta reduced the books into “a pure asset, devoid of meaning” when they torrented 81.7 terabytes of data through websites like LibGen. “The cases raise existential questions about art and literature—their inherent worth and what it means to commodify them,” Weir says.

In an article for YES Magazine, Bo Ruberg ’07, Bard alum and professor of film and media studies at UC Irvine, reflects on the role that video games hold in building worlds for marginalized people and communities. For Ruberg, the relationship between the physical world and the virtual space accessed within video games is complex, and the latter is no less real for being speculative, given that it offers players a chance to inhabit and interact with realities that are different from our own. “Through video games, I theorize a practice that I term queer worldbuilding,” Ruberg writes. “Queer worldbuilding is not the same thing as building worlds that feature queer stories or communities, though such worlds themselves have immense value. Instead, queer worldbuilding describes the practice of constructing new worlds through methods, frameworks, and tools that can themselves be understood as queer.”

Sasha Skochilenko ’17, artist, musician, and former political prisoner, talks about her experience studying anthropology at Smolny College of Saint Petersburg State University and how her liberal arts education strengthened her antiwar position, which was reflected in her courtroom speech “Oh yes, life!” on the value of life and reconciliation amidst war and conflict, and helped her to survive her imprisonment. The conversation, held on April 7 at Bard College Berlin, was moderated by Ilya Kalinin, Skochilenko’s former professor and supervisor at Smolny College, currently a Smolny Beyond Borders fellow and Einstein fellow at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Skochilenko, who was born in Leningrad, openly opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and was subsequently detained by riot police and later arrested in 2022 for spreading pacifist leaflets under the accusation of “spreading knowingly false information about Russian Armed Forces.” During her imprisonment, she started an “Imprisoned for Peace” performance and participated in exhibitions of prison art. Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years in a penal colony. On August 1, 2024, Skochilenko was released in Ankara as part of a complex international prisoner exchange, having spent more than two years in prison. She currently lives in Germany.

Beyond her activism, she published the educational comic A Book About Depression (2014), which quickly became a Russian internet sensation and helped to destigmatize mental health issues in Russia. She also founded the antihierarchical musical collective “Free Random Jam.” Skochilenko will receive Bard’s Laszlo Z. Bito Award for Humanitarian Service in 2025 for her activism and bravery in the face of repression, imprisonment, and adversity.

Further reading:
“Case Study on Sasha Skochilenko: Anti-War Russian Political Prisoner,” prepared by Bard Human Rights major (and former student at Smolny College) Sofia Semenova

Bard and Smolny College Graduate Released from Russia in Historic Prisoner Swap

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded 2025 Guggenheim Fellowships to Bard College Assistant Professor of Photography Lucas Blalock ’02 and Bard College Visiting Artist in Residence Gwen Laster. Chosen through a rigorous application and peer review process from a pool of nearly 3,500 applicants, Blalock, who teaches in the Photography Program, and Laster, who teaches in the Music Program, were tapped based on both prior career achievement and exceptional promise. Bard MFA alum Jordan Strafer ’20 was also named Guggenheim Fellow for 2025. As established in 1925 by founder Senator Simon Guggenheim, each fellow receives a monetary stipend to pursue independent work at the highest level under “the freest possible conditions.” Blalock, Laster, and Strafer are among 198 distinguished individuals working across 53 disciplines appointed to the 100th class of Guggenheim Fellows.

“At a time when intellectual life is under attack, the Guggenheim Fellowship celebrates a century of support for the lives and work of visionary scientists, scholars, writers, and artists,” said Edward Hirsch, award-winning poet and president of the Guggenheim Foundation. “We believe that these creative thinkers can take on the challenges we all face today and guide our society towards a better and more hopeful future.”

In all, 53 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 83 academic institutions, 32 US states and the District of Columbia, and two Canadian provinces are represented in the 2025 class, who range in age from 32 to 79. More than a third of the 100th class of fellows do not hold a full-time affiliation with a college or university. Many fellows’ projects directly respond to timely themes and issues such as climate change, Indigenous studies, identity, democracy and politics, incarceration, and the evolving purpose of community. Since its founding in 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has awarded over $400 million in fellowships to more than 19,000 fellows. The 100th class of Fellows is part of the Guggenheim Foundation’s yearlong celebration marking a century of transformative impact on American intellectual and cultural life.

Lucas Blalock is a Brooklyn-based photographer whose work is in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Hammer Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Portland Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others. Recent solo exhibitions include Florida, 1989, at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, New York; Insoluble Pancakes, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels; and An Enormous Oar, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; recent group exhibitions include venues in Oslo, Miami, Moscow, Berlin, Beirut, Minneapolis, and New York, where his work was selected for the Whitney Biennial 2019. He and his art have been profiled in publications including Arforum, the New York Times, New Yorker, Art in America, Brooklyn Rail, BOMB Magazine, W Magazine, British Journal of Photography, and Time. He has published essays and interviews as author in the journal Objectiv, IMA Magazine, BOMB, Foam, and Mousse, among others. He previously taught at the School of Visual Arts; Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University; Sarah Lawrence College; and the MFA Program at Ithaca College. He also served as visiting lecturer on visual and environmental studies at Harvard University. He received his BA from Bard College and MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Gwen Laster is a nationally acclaimed musician who has been the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Jubilation Foundation, Puffin Foundation, Arts Mid Hudson, Lila Wallace, and the Cognac Hennessey 1st place Jazz Search. A native Detroiter, her creative influences come from the Motor City’s exciting urban and classical music culture. Laster started improvising and composing because of her parents’ love of jazz, blues, soul, and classical music, and her inspiring music teachers from Detroit’s public schools. Laster relocated to New York City after earning two music degrees from the University of Michigan. Laster is many things: A virtuoso violinist with exquisite taste. An adventurous composer, arranger and orchestrator. A classically-trained artist with a deep appreciation for America's musical history, and a scholar of African-American musical heritage. A socially conscious activist and educator who understands the power of music to reach and touch everyday people.

Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley (CFHV) has appointed Malia Du Mont ’95, vice president for strategy and policy and chief of staff at Bard, along with two other new members to its board of trustees. “We are entering an exciting period of growth at CFHV, and the insights and experience of our new trustees will be invaluable as we strengthen our role as a philanthropic leader in the Hudson Valley,” said CFHV Board Chairman, Robert Cotter. “Their collective expertise will help guide our efforts to expand our reach, increase our impact and ensure that we continue to be a trusted resource for donors, nonprofits, and the communities we serve.”

A national security expert, Du Mont previously served as Co-President of Amur Equipment Finance and as Director of Strategy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where she led key initiatives, including the National Defense Strategy implementation. She has held roles at the Atlantic Council, CNA Corporation, and Harvard Kennedy School, specializing in Chinese military strategy and security analysis. An Army Reserve officer and Afghanistan veteran, she holds a BA in Chinese from Bard College and an MPP from Harvard Kennedy School.

Filmmaker and Bard MFA alumnus Todd Haynes will receive the 2025 Carrosse d'Or prize at Cannes Film Festival this May. The Carrosse d'Or awards a director who has made a lasting mark on filmmaking. Past awardees include David Cronenberg, Agnès Varda, and John Carpenter. The French Directors’ Guild praised Haynes’s work: "[he has] challenged the norms and structures of cinematic representation to better question our social, racial and gender representations. It's as if all the love and violence in the world converge in [his] cinema to sweep us away in a torrent of emotions."

Haynes’s films include Velvet Goldmine, Carol, and Dark Waters. He has also executive directed several films by Kelly Reichardt, who won the Carrosse d'Or award in 2022. His first film, Poison, won the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize in 1991.

When her grandmother died at the age of 99, artist Mae Colburn ’10 and her parents were left with the question of what to do with the matriarch’s massive collection of vintage wool skirts. Sorting through the collection—spanning decades and ranging in colors, plaids, and styles—they were inspired to archive it. “Because I studied art history,” says Colburn, who majored in art history and visual culture at Bard, “research, writing, and archiving [have] always been a really big part of what I do, with a focus on textiles in both art and fashion.” Colburn’s mother is a clothing historian and her dad is a photographer so the project spoke to their collective skills. Together the family has catalogued and photographed 632 vintage wool skirts. The physical archive is in Colburn’s Brooklyn studio—which is occasionally open to the public for viewing—and the digital archive is online.

A new book of poetry by alumna Juliana Spahr ’88 was featured in the Washington Post. Christopher Kondrich included Spahr’s most recent collection, Ars Poeticas, in a list of four books of poetry that “help restore nuance to our chaotic world.” Kondrich describes Ars Poeticas as a collection about poetry’s ability to respond to social and environmental crises. “We can’t help but wonder what poetry could ever add to the efforts to address [issues like] climate change and right-wing populism. With Ars Poeticas, the answer, despite Spahr’s reservations, is a tremendous amount.” Spahr has published nine books of poetry, the first in 1994. She was the recipient of the OB Hardison Poetry Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library in 2009.

Denise Markonish CCS ’99, chief curator of Mass MoCA, has been named the new chief curator of the Madison Square Park Conservancy, the nonprofit entrusted by the City of New York to operate Madison Square Park, which functions as a public garden, urban forest, wildlife habitat, and public art exhibition space. In June she will begin her new job stewarding the art program for the 6.2-acre park, which is used by 60,000 people daily, reports the New York Times. As a leader of Mass MoCA’s curatorial program since 2007, Markonish has worked with artists including Nick Cave, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Glenn Kaino, Teresita Fernandez and Jeffrey Gibson (Bard artist in residence) on commissions often the size of a football field, experience that is invaluable in approaching the large-scale work of the park. “I’ve built my career on doing large-scale commissions,” Markonish said. “And to do so now in such a public place and thinking outside the box of the walls of a museum will be an amazing challenge.”

When the recent Los Angeles wildfires burned down the Altadena home of artist Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio ’12, his brick fireplace and chimney were the only structures left standing. “I began thinking about the resilience of these chimneys,” Aparicio told Hyperallergic. “I’m always looking at symbols that can hold both sides of an emotion: resilience and trauma.” In his first painting since the fires, Aparicio collaborated with Bay Area artist and activist David Solnit and a group of about two dozen volunteers to create a protest painting made with paint that was mixed by Solnit using pigments made from ash and charcoal collected at Altadena burn sites. Aparicio’s black-and-white painting depicts his chimney and fireplace standing among charred ruins and belching dark black smoke. The words “Invest in Communities, Not Fossil Fuels” are printed in both English and Spanish. Environmental activists assert that oil and gas companies have directly contributed to climate change–fueled disasters, like wildfires, that are devastating communities. Aparicio’s painting was unveiled at a Pasadena rally calling for CalPERS, the nation’s largest public pension fund, to fully divest from fossil fuels. An identical painting was unveiled the same day at another rally in front of the Chevron oil refinery in Richmond in northern California.

Alexandra “Sasha” Skochilenko ’17, Bard and Smolny College alumna and Russian artist who was imprisoned in 2022 for opposing the war in Ukraine, will speak at Bard College Berlin on Monday, April 7. Her talk, How a Bachelor’s Degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences Helped Me in Jail, which will take place from noon to 3 pm EDT and be accessible via Zoom, will be moderated by her academic advisor, Ilya Kalinin, of Smolny Beyond Borders and visiting scholar at Bard College Berlin and Humboldt University. Skochilenko had been imprisoned in March 2022 for the act of placing anti-war leaflets, disguised as price tags, on goods in a grocery store in Saint Petersburg. In 2024, she was released along with other political prisoners as part of a larger prisoner swap between Russia, the United States, and several European countries. She is a 2025 recipient of the Bard College Award.

In her talk, Skochilenko will discuss her studies in anthropology at Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and how this experience shaped and strengthened her anti-war stance. She will also reflect on her courtroom speech which explored the value of life and reconciliation in times of war and conflict, and how these ideas helped her survive imprisonment. 

Read more about Sasha Skochilenko ’17:

https://opensocietyuniversitynetwork.org/resources/video-collection/case-studies/sasha-skochilenko/

Bard alumnus Benjamin Barron ’15 was interviewed in W Magazine about All-in, the fashion brand he founded with Bror August Vestbø. All-in is a design studio, magazine, and women’s brand influenced by vintage fashion. “We’re always looking for things that attract us and that we find a bit challenging in some way,” Barron said of the label.

All-In started as a magazine, which Barron and Vestbø continue to publish. Past issues explored themes like fast fashion and the decline of print magazines, and feature photoshoots with mostly thrifted clothes styled by the designers. Their own collections, which are released once a year, are each based on a storyline featuring a female character. For example, their 2023 line was based on a fictional pop star and was inspired by the film Showgirls. “Growth is happening … organically, driven by a fan base of insiders who recognize and prize originality,” writes Alice Cavanaugh for W Magazine.

Hancy Maxis ’15, Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) alumnus, spoke with the Hechinger Report about the role that learning math played in his life upon his release. He recalls considering the question of, “Once I am back in New York City, once I am back in the economy, how will I be marketable? For me, math was that pathway.” Maxis completed a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, where he wrote his senior project about how to use game theory to advance health care equity. Maxis later completed a master’s program at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and is now the assistant director of operations at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, where he worked to guide the hospital’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
 

Filmmaker and Bard alumna Gia Coppola ’09, director and producer of The Last Showgirl starring Pamela Anderson, was honored at the 2025 Kodak Film Awards, which celebrate the artistry of cinematography. Coppola received the Auteur Award—which is bestowed in recognition of extraordinary talent, discernment, and perspective in cinematic arts—for her directorial achievements. The annual Kodak Film Awards, now in its seventh year, recognize acclaimed visual artists who are unyielding in their artistic process and celebrate industry partners who contribute to the support of analog film.

Visiting Artist in Residence and alumna Tschabalala Self ’12 was commissioned to create portraits of the Washington family—father Denzel and sons John David and Malcolm—who were behind the recent movie adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play The Piano Lesson. Denzel, John David, and Malcolm respectively produced (with his daughter Katia), starred in, and directed the film. Rochelle Steiner writes for TheWrap, “In Self’s hands, images of the Washingtons are intertwined with the film’s characters, such that the real and fictional commingle as references that exemplify Black America.” Inspired by and named after a 1984 Romare Bearden lithograph, The Piano Lesson is one of Self’s favorite August Wilson plays. “When looking at the play’s origin within the context of American slavery, the significance of home for the characters in the play and the figures depicted in Bearden’s piece becomes all the more poignant when you realize the legacy of separation, loss and displacement inflicted on their ancestors,” says Self. 

Her newly installed exhibition Tschabalala Self: Dream Girl is on view February 15–April 26, 2025 at Jeffrey Dietch in Los Angeles. 

Suzanne Kite MFA ’18, aka Kite, distinguished artist in residence, assistant professor of American and Indigenous Studies, and director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI at Bard, was profiled in ArtForum’s Spotlight series. The profile focuses on Kite’s performance art and use of technology, particularly the piece “Pȟehíŋ kiŋ líla akhíšoke. (Her hair was heavy.)”, referred to as one of Kite’s “braid performances.” Writer Christopher Green calls Kite one of the “foremost Indigenous artists exploring the capacity of music, video, installation, and [technology] in combination with performance to examine the embodiment and visualization of contemporary Lakȟóta ways of knowing.”

The profile also explains Kite’s goal of making art for Native, Lakȟóta audiences. “Her refusal to legibly encode or concretize her scores for the mainstream destabilizes the ethnographic gaze and its desire to document, categorize, and control Indigenous culture, language, and bodies,” Green writes. Her upcoming Wičhíŋčala Šakówiŋ (Seven Little Girls), a scored performance which will be accompanied by a full orchestra, will be presented at MIT later this year.

Award-winning writers Kelly Link and Jedediah Berry ’99 will give a reading on Monday, March 3, at 4:00 pm in Weis Cinema in the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College.  The event, which is presented as part of Bradford Morrow’s Bard course on innovative contemporary fiction and is cosponsored by the literary magazine Conjunctions, will include a Q&A with the authors and is free and open to the public.

Kelly Link is known for her novel The Book of Love, and for her multitude of short stories, including the acclaimed collection Get in Trouble, which spans genres including fantasy, horror, and magic realism. Jebediah Berry ’99 is the author of The Naming Song, The Manual of Detection, and The Family Arcana, a story told in the form of cards.

“What a special joy to welcome back my former Bard student, Jedediah Berry, to speak with my students and give a public reading alongside one of my favorite writers and longtime Conjunctions contributors, Kelly Link,” said Morrow, professor of literature at Bard College and the founder and editor of Conjunctions. “As I wrap up my own years at Bard and my Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading series, I think of how many students have gone on to successful careers in the literary world, and I hope my current students will be inspired by Jed’s triumphs as a writer. Both Kelly Link’s The Book of Love and Jedediah Berry’s The Naming Song were just named two of the five finalists for the prestigious Los Angeles Times Book Award in Sci-Fi/Fantasy for 2025. It will be wonderful to congratulate them both in person at Bard.”

Kelly Link is the author of the collections Stranger Things Happen (Small Beer Press), Magic for Beginners (Random House), Pretty Monsters (Speak), Get in Trouble, and White Cat, Black Dog, and the novel The Book of Love (all Random House). Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She has been a MacArthur Fellow, a recipient of a World Fantasy Award, Nebula Award, and Hugo Award, and a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. She is the cofounder of Small Beer Press and coedits the zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and owns Book Moon, an independent bookshop in Easthampton, MA.
 
Jedediah Berry ’99 is the author of The Naming Song (Tor Books), his most recent novel which is a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His first novel, The Manual of Detection (Penguin Press), won the Crawford Award and the Hammett Prize and was adapted for broadcast by BBC Radio 4. His story in cards, The Family Arcana (Ninepin Press), was a finalist for a World Fantasy Award. With Andrew McAlpine, he cowrote the Ennie Award-winning tabletop adventure game setting, The Valley of Flowers (Phantom Mill Games). Together with his partner, writer Emily Houk, he runs Ninepin Press, an independent publisher of fiction, poetry, and games in unusual shapes.

Bard alums Josephine Sacabo ’67 and Dalt Wonk ’65 talk to The Reading Life host Susan Larson about their new book New Orleans 1970–2020: A Portrait of the City. Sacabo and Wonk, who are married, reminisce about their first arrival in New Orleans from France 55 years ago and life in the French Quarter during the 1970s. For their first collaboration in nearly 15 years, writer Wonk and photographer Sacabo assemble a selection of their best journalist work to create an indelible chronicle—in words and images—of the Crescent City during its past half century of quiet instances and cultural watershed moments.

Christine Sun Kim MFA ’13, artist and music/sound faculty member in Bard’s MFA program, was profiled in the New York Times, which covered her new survey show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibition, All Day All Night, encompasses her entire artistic output to date, featuring works that range from early 2010s performance documentation to her 2024 mural Ghost(ed) Notes, which has been recreated across multiple walls at the Whitney. Using musical notation, infographics, and language—both in her native American Sign Language (ASL) and written English—Kim’s work takes the form of drawings, videos, sculptures, and installations that often explore non-auditory, political dimensions of sound. Kim, who was born deaf, knows “how sound works, and what the expectations around it are,” she told the New York Times. “So why wouldn’t I use that in my work instead of rejecting it outright? Sound isn’t part of my life, but when I found sound art, it became really interesting to me as a medium.”

For Further Reading:

https://www.vulture.com/article/the-exhilarating-anger-of-christine-sun-kim.html

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/fine-art/christine-sun-kim-all-day-all-night-review-lines-of-communication-at-the-whitney-airdigital-77dacfeb

https://robbreport.com/shelter/art-collectibles/in-the-studio-with-christine-sun-kim-1236164748/
 

Visual artist and director Martine Syms MFA ’17 spoke with The Believer about her art practice, excerpted in McSweeney’s. She discusses her creative process, prioritizing, and how projects change as they move from an idea to their final form. “In art, I love an unknown; it’s great,” Syms says. “That’s the whole point to me: I don’t know what it’s gonna look like, I don’t know what it’s gonna be, I just have this weird idea in my head: let’s see where it takes me.”

Introducing the interview, Claire L. Evans describes Syms as “mov[ing] through mediums and ideas like a freeway moves through neighborhoods.” After graduating from the Art Institute of Chicago, Syms founded Dominica Publishing, earned her graduate degree at Bard, and was a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow. Her first movie, The African Desperate, was shot at Bard and satirizes art school. 

At the 68th annual Obie Awards, the American Theatre Wing presented Assistant Dean of Students Corey Sullivan ’03 and other members of his arts collective, Theater Mitu, the Ross Wetzsteon Award for sustained innovation in the field. Theater Mitu was originally formed through Sullivan’s collaborations as an undergraduate at Bard.

In 2001, then an undergraduate, Sullivan began collaborating with visiting artists on a production for Bard’s Theater and Performance Program. Their work together continued beyond the show’s run, and soon after, Sullivan joined the group in forming an interdisciplinary arts collective called Theater Mitu. Since then they have worked together to push the boundaries of theater through innovative productions, global research and education initiatives, programs supporting emerging artists, and the creation of their Brooklyn-based performance and technology center, MITU580.

Theater Mitu will be in residence at the Boston Museum of Science and Arts Emerson in spring 2025 to present Utopian Hotline, a project developed in partnership with the SETI Institute and Arizona State University’s Interplanetary Initiative. Part telephone hotline, part vinyl record, and part live performance, Utopian Hotline uses real voicemails left on a public hotline to create a moment of community—inviting audience members to re-imagine our shared future. Inspired by the 1977 NASA Voyager mission, which launched a vinyl-style recording of sounds found on Earth into space, as well as the uncertainty surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, this immersive performance begs the question: “If we were to send another message into the distant future, what message would we send?”

Last summer, Theater Mitu premiered (HOLY) BLOOD! at their Brooklyn space, MITU580. Part live-scored silent film, part irreverent midnight movie, the piece created an original live soundscape merged with manipulated fragments of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s cult-classic film Santa Sangre. Projected across a shattered landscape of screens and sculpture, accompanied by explosive blood choreography enclosed in glass booths, the work remapped a story of circuses, blood cults, madness, and forgiveness. 

For more information on the company’s work, visit www.theatermitu.org

A Lien, directed by brothers David and Sam Cutler-Kruetz ’13, has been nominated for an Academy Award in the category of best live-action short. The 15-minute fictional film centers on the oppressive and harrowing experience of one New York City family’s immigration process as it follows Oscar and Sophia Gomez and their young daughter who show up for Oscar’s green card interview. The film’s festival run garnered prizes including the Special Jury Award from Salute Your Shorts 2024 and the Grand Prize Narrative Awards from the Washington Film Festival 2024. Bard alums Tara Sheffer '13 (producer), and Blair Maxwell ’13 (costume designer) also worked on the film.

Ephraim Asili MFA ’11, associate professor and director of film and electronic arts, has been selected as one of 50 artists to receive a 2025 United States Artists (USA) Fellowship. Each year, individual artists and collaboratives are anonymously nominated to apply by a geographically diverse and rotating group of artists, scholars, critics, producers, curators, and other arts professionals. USA Fellowships are annual $50,000 unrestricted awards recognizing the most compelling artists working and living in the United States, in all disciplines, at every stage of their career. 

“My approach to filmmaking is both hybrid and experimental. My films often alternate between essayistic or observational documentary form, narrative fiction, and self-reflexive gestures which foreground how the film medium itself, and the filmmaker using it, frame lived experience,” says Asili.

Ephraim Asili is an African American artist and educator whose work focuses on the African diaspora as a cultural force. Often inspired by his quotidian wanderings, Asili creates art that situates itself as a series of meditations on the everyday. He received his BA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University and his MFA in Film and Interdisciplinary Art at Bard College. Asili’s films have screened in festivals and venues all over the world, including the New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, The Berlinale, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Asili’s 2020 feature debut The Inheritance premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival and was recently the focus of an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art where it is a part of their permanent collection. In 2021 Asili was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. During the summer of 2022 Asili directed a short film Strange Math along with the 2023 Men’s Spring/Summer fashion show for Louis Vuitton. In 2023, Asili was the recipient of a Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship, and in 2024 Asili was awarded a grant from Creative Capital. 

Sancia Miala Shiba Nash '19 and Drew K. Broderick MA ’19 of kekahi wahi also won a 2025 United States Artists fellowship. kekahi wahi was instigated in 2020 by filmmaker Sancia Miala Shiba Nash and artist Drew K. Broderick. The grassroots film initiative is committed to documenting transformations across the Hawaiian archipelago and sharing stories of the greater Pacific through time-based media. 

Nikkya Hargrove ’05, a member of the Bard College Alumni/ae Association Board of Governors and Lambda Literary Nonfiction Fellow, was interviewed by Bomb magazine about her memoir, Mama. In the book, Hargrove tells the story of her decision to adopt her newborn baby brother Jonathan after their incarcerated mother died, and how she set out, with her wife Dinushka, to create the kind of family she never had. “I think the calling to be Jonathan’s mother was nothing short of spiritual,” Hargrove said. “The drive to take Jonathan was to keep him out of a broken system and try to protect him as much as I could from my mother’s mistakes. I wanted to be his constant. I didn’t want him to worry about who would be there for him. And, knock on wood, at 18, he just figured it out. And it feels amazing, you know, to have him reflect back at us what we’ve been trying to do as his parents.”

Bard Distinguished Artist in Residence and Assistant Professor of American and Indigenous Studies Kite MFA ’18 was profiled in the multimedia hub I Care If You Listen. The piece focuses on Kite’s two-day residency at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer (EMPAC) where she led seven students through a workshop on dreaming, then let them create and perform their own visual scores based on their dreams. ​​“It’s great to get to work with the students here,” Kite said. “Wrangling crazy ideas, organizing them into something sensible, being sensitive to your audience’s needs, and being careful with time, being self aware—those are all skills I can share.”

Kite joined Bard in 2023 and has worked in the field of machine learning since 2017. She develops wearable technology and full-body software systems to interrogate past, present, and future Lakȟóta philosophies. She is also the director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI at Bard. I Care If You Listen describes her work as “[uniting] scientific and artistic disciplines through custom worn electronic instruments, research, visual scores, and more… rooted in Lakota ways of making knowledge, in which body and mind are always intimately intertwined.”