Newsmakers

Sara J. Winston, associate director of the photography program and artist in residence, has been awarded the inaugural Helena Svetla Fund Grant, administered through the Patient Caregiver Artist Coalition (PCAC). PCAC, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit founded by Bard alum Jordan Rathkopf ’02, is dedicated to elevating the voices of patients and caregivers through art and storytelling, fostering empathy and inclusion in healthcare culture. This first grant from the fund supports artists working at the intersection of art and healthcare, and will support the production of Sara's forthcoming monograph, Infusion, to be published by Saint Lucy Books of Baltimore, MD. The book showcases over a decade of self-portraits made during monthly and biannual intravenous medical treatments for Multiple Sclerosis, alongside episodic creative nonfiction writing and an interview between the author and the artist Moyra Davey. Infusion will launch on January 30, 2027, in conjunction with a solo exhibition at CPW Kingston in Kingston, NY.

The Photography Program at Bard College offers instruction in the medium while providing a historical and aesthetic framework for student development within the context of a broad-based liberal arts education.

An article by Grayson Morley ’13 was published in the New York Times. Morley compared Titanium Court, which won the Seamus Mcnally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game at the 2026 Independent Gaming Festival, against Franz Kafka’s short story “The Trial.” In “The Trial,” a man named Josef K. is prosecuted for a crime he has no knowledge of. Titanium Court, on the other hand, is a match-3 narrative game loosely referencing Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In both cases, Morley argues, the reader (or player) has questions about their situation that remain unanswered. “Titanium Court is not reaching for the narrative heights of ‘The Trial,’” Morley writes, “but it does [...] ask a new question: How would you proceed if you, like K., found yourself ensnared in a system that refuses to explain itself?”

The Written Arts Program at Bard encourages students to experiment with their writing in a context sensitive to intellectual, historical, and social realities. Students are encouraged to consider writing as an act of critical and creative engagement, a way of interrogating and translating the world.

Music photography by the late Steve Schapiro ’55, Bard alumnus and civil rights photographer, was featured in Vanity Fair. Schapiro’s career spanned fifty years, during which he captured historical events like the March on Washington and photographed on the set of movies including The Godfather. Vanity Fair featured his jazz photography, taken in the 1960s in Manhattan, including of musicians like Nina Simone, Miles Davis, and Bill Evans. The photos were featured alongside an homage to Schapiro by Sonny Rollins, a legendary jazz musician who passed away in May. “The photos that Steve Schapiro took of me at the Apollo have special meaning for me,” Rollins wrote. “The Apollo was like my high school, or I should say my college. I was there every week.”
The Photography Program at Bard College offers instruction in the medium while providing a historical and aesthetic framework for student development within the context of a broad-based liberal arts education.