Newsmakers

Four Bard College graduates have won 2026–27 Fulbright Awards for individually designed research projects, English teaching assistantships, and the pursuit of a master’s degree. The Fulbright program facilitates cultural exchange through direct interaction on an individual basis in the classroom, field, home, and in routine tasks, allowing the grantee to gain an appreciation of others’ viewpoints and beliefs, the way they do things, and the way they think. During their grants, Fulbrighters meet, work, live with, and learn from the people of the host country, sharing daily experiences. Bard College is a Fulbright top producing institution.

Danika Dortch ’26, a Literature major at the College and a French Horn Performance major at the Bard Conservatory, will conduct an independent project on the composer Leoš Janácek and his influence on the writer Milan Kundera.  She will reside in Brno, Czech Republic, and conduct archival research on Janácek, Kundera, and Moravian folk music in order to examine their influence on Czech national identity.

Peter Fields ’26, a Classical Studies major who has served as a Latin and Greek tutor at Bard, has been awarded an English Teaching Assistantship to Romania. While at Bard, he participated in an archaeological dig of an ancient Roman villa in Transylvania, an experience which sparked his interest in Romania and its culture, both ancient and modern.

Annaliese Simons ’26, a Written Arts major, was awarded a Fulbright study-research grant to pursue a master's degree in public policy, with a focus on disability studies, at the Hertie School in Berlin, Germany. Annaliese has been captain of the Bard Debate Team, as well as copresident of the Bard Disabled Students Association. They aspire to a career in disability advocacy.

Shosha Wheeler ’26, a Mathematical Sciences major, has been awarded the Fulbright Austria Community-Combined Award.  For her project, Shosha plans to lead math-based community project for immigrant youth in Vienna, while also taking courses in mathematics at Universität Wien. At Bard, Shosha has served as a math tutor and volunteer for MAGPIES, the math outreach program for girls.

Bridget White ’25, an Anthropology and German Studies double major, has been awarded an English Teaching Assistantship to Germany. While at Bard, Bridget was codirector of EMS and sang in the Georgian Choir.  

Sun-Ly Pierce VAP ’19, alumna of the Bard Conservatory Vocal Arts Program, has been announced as the recipient of the Music Academy of the West's 2026 Alumni Performance Award. Pierce, a mezzo-soprano, will make her recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall on April 15th, 2027, featuring the world premiere of a new commission by composer Carlos Simon. “The Music Academy is proud to champion our alumni by creating performance opportunities that are vital to their artistic growth and career development,” said academy president and CEO Shauna Quill. “Sun-Ly’s artistry has quickly been recognized by the country’s great opera houses, and we are proud to support the next chapter of her growth through this award and recital.”

The mission of the Bard College Conservatory of Music is to provide the best possible preparation for a person dedicated to a life immersed in the creation and performance of music.

The Wonderful World That Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek, a new book by Bard alumnus Andrew Durbin ’12, was reviewed in the Atlantic and the Guardian. As Peter Hujar’s photography enters the mainstream, Durbin’s new biography reconsiders the artistic couple’s legacy. Thek and Hujar were a couple for two decades, and their photography and sculpture was admired by artists like Andy Warhol and Susan Sontag. The Guardian calls the biography “intimate and vibrant” and “a tender yet unflinching view of their choices, thoughts, feelings, what made them lovable, and what made them difficult to be with.” “Durbin’s careful analysis, especially of Thek’s work, is essential,” the Atlantic writes.

M. Gessen, distinguished visiting writer at Bard College, and Bard alumna Juliana Spahr ’88 have been awarded Pulitzer Prizes. The Pulitzer committee awarded Gessen a prize in Opinion Writing for their “illuminating collection of reported essays on rising authoritarian regimes that draw on history and personal experience to probe timely themes of oppression, belonging and exile.” Spahr was awarded a prize in Poetry for Ars Poeticas, a poetry collection examining her relationship to her art form, community, and politics. This year’s Pulitzer Prize recipients will constitute the 109th class of Pulitzer Prize winners.

The Pulitzer Prize in Opinion Writing is awarded for distinguished editorials, columns or other written commentary containing well-reasoned and compelling arguments on topics of public interest, whether originally researched and reported or informed by personal experience. Gessen’s series of New York Times Opinion articles, including “This Is the Feeling of Losing a Country. I Know It Well,” “How to be a Good Citizen When Your Country Does Bad Things,” and “The Chilling Consequences of Going Along With Trump,” demonstrate clarity, moral purpose, sound logic, engaging prose, and power to influence public opinion.

The Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, conferred for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, recognizes Spahr’s collection of lyric meditations on writing poetry in a time of ecological crisis and right wing populism. “In both her poetry and her academic work, Spahr takes as her central concern the relationship between literature and the state,” writes the New York Times about Ars Poeticas. “Accordingly, in this book, her sixth collection of poems, she writes about everything from climate change to the rise of the alt-right.”

M. Gessen is a distinguished visiting writer at Bard College and an Opinion columnist for the New York Times. They won a George Polk Award for opinion writing in 2024, and are the author of 11 non-fiction books, including most recently Surviving Autocracy (Riverhead Books, June 2020); The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, which won the 2017 National Book Award for Nonfiction; The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy, a 2015 award-winning account of the Boston Marathon bombers; and The Man without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, a 2012 portrait of the Russian leader that Foreign Affairs said, “shines a piercing light into every dark corner of Putin’s story.” They are the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, a Nieman Fellowship, the John Chancellor Award, the Hitchens Prize, and the Overseas Press Club Award for Best Commentary. After more than twenty years as a journalist and editor in Moscow, Gessen has been living in New York since 2013.

The 2026 Venice Biennale, the renowned international cultural exhibition, will feature works by Bard faculty members and Center for Curatorial Studies alumnae. Walid Raad, professor of photography at Bard, is featured in the main exhibition, In Minor Keys, and will also participate in two mixed media installations in the Arsenale and in the Giardini, Postscript to the Arabic Edition and Far from quieting. Tom Eccles, executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies and the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard, and Ruba Katrib CCS ’07 are cocurators of the show Untitled (a gathering of remarkable people) in the National Pavilion of Qatar in the Giardini. Additionally, Josefina Barcia CCS ’24 is curating the Argentine Pavilion, Do Tuong Linh CCS ’25 is curating the Vietnamese Pavilion, and Dermis León CCS ’01 is cocurating the Chilean Pavilion.

The Venice Biennale is an international arts and cultural exhibition which has been hosted every two years in Venice, Italy, since 1895. Its 61st International Art Exhibition, Biennale Arte 2026, runs from May 9 to November 22, 2026.

Two Bard College seniors, Celeste Connell ’26 and Peter Fields ’26, and Bard alum Coulson Matto ’25, have received full scholarships to the Classics graduate program at University of Colorado Boulder. All three scholarships include full tuition, as well as stipends for teaching assistantships. “As well as being academically successful, all three have been fantastic student leaders in the Classics program,” said Lauren Curtis, associate professor of Classics at Bard. “Between them they have worked as tutors, organized program events, participated in faculty searches, and more. I couldn't imagine better ambassadors for Bard.” 

Connell’s area of interest lies in ancient literature's portrayals of social interaction, particularly in subjects like friendship, performance, education, exile, and alienation, with a focus on connecting Greco-Roman literature with other literary traditions. “Fully funded MA programs in the humanities are incredibly rare. Especially at a time like this, when many programs are drastically cutting funding due to federal pressure, I'm grateful beyond words to study at the exceptional program offered by CU Boulder, where Classics is thriving,” said Connell. 

Fields’ historical work on the notion of “Romanness” takes him into modern European intellectual history. He is pursuing his masters in Classics in the Latin language track, but is interested in studying ancient ethnography and the Roman imperial period. “I’m grateful to all of Bard’s Classics faculty for getting me to where I am today and excited to continue studying what I am so passionate about,” said Fields. 

Matto, who currently works as a Latin teacher in New York City, focuses on ancient gender and sexuality studies, and looks forward to learning more archaeology-influenced methodology at Boulder to inform the strong literary training received from Bard. “It's deeply meaningful to me to be accepted into this program,” said Matto. “Last year I also attempted to go through the graduate school admissions process, but hit a number of roadblocks because of federal budget cuts and program closures. It is immensely satisfying—and exciting!—to see two years of work pay off. I'm also very grateful to all of my advisors at Bard who helped me work within these circumstances and truly put so much effort into my success.” 

Bard’s Classical Studies Program seeks to understand the languages, literatures, histories, and visual and material cultures of the premodern Mediterranean world. The program approaches these ancient societies from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including linguistics, art history, archaeology, anthropology, and philosophy, while also considering the long and complex legacies of ancient Greece and Rome in art, language, politics, and culture from antiquity to the present day.

Two Bard College alumnae, Alva Rogers MAT ’12 and Sadie Wechsler ’07, have been awarded 2026 Guggenheim Fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Rogers was awarded as a fellow in Drama and Performance Art, and Wechsler was awarded as a fellow in the field of Photography. Chosen through a rigorous application and peer review process from a pool of nearly 5,000 applicants, 2026 Guggenheim fellows were tapped based on both prior career achievement and exceptional promise, and each receives a monetary stipend to pursue independent work at the highest level under the freest possible conditions. Edward Hirsch, president of the Guggenheim Foundation, wrote that this “new class of Guggenheim Fellows is representative of the world’s best thinkers, innovators, and creators in art, science, and scholarship,” adding that the Foundation is “honored to support their visionary contributions.” 

MAT Alva Rogers ’12 is a dramatist, vocalist, puppeteer, and founder of Alva Puppet Theater. She creates theatrical work that fearlessly addresses the often hidden, unacknowledged emotional and physical labor of people of color, particularly women. Rogers’ work has been presented on stages including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Joseph Papp Public Theater, Here Arts Center, Dixon Place, Seattle Repertory Theater, Actor’s Express Theater, The O’ Neill Puppetry Conference and others; exhibited in selected museums and festivals including the Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum, Walker Art Center, The New Museum and the Spoleto Festival, USA. She has been the recipient of grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jim Henson Foundation, Meet the Composer, and received fellowships in performance and playwriting from The New York Foundation for the Arts and a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award.
  
Sadie Wechsler ’07 is an artist working primarily with photography. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally and was included in Format Festival England and Beijing and Out of Sight Seattle. She has been included in group shows at SAD gallery, Johalla Gallery, Aperture Gallery, Belfast School of Art, Photoville, and Newspace Center for Photography, and has had solo shows at DeSoto Gallery and Gallery 4Culture. Wechsler has received the smArt Ventures Grant from the City of Seattle, Arts3C, and Make Learn Build Grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council. She has been an artist in residence at PLAYA at Summer Lake, Anderson Ranch Art Center, the Arctic Circle Expedition, and the USCG Healy. Her work can be found in the collections of the Yale University Library, the Hammer Art Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Frye Art Museum, and the King County Portable Collection.