Newsmakers

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, MAT Alva Rogers ’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.
 

The New York Times published a retrospective on the restoration premiere of No Picnic, a film written and directed by Bard alumnus Phil Hartman ’79. The film, which was originally released in 1987, follows a musician living in the East Village as he searches for a mysterious woman. The restoration of No Picnic premiered at the Museum of Modern Art’s annual To Save and Project series and was shown at Film Forum in New York City for a week this April. “The East Village’s seedy glamour has never been more lovingly presented,” the Times writes.

No Picnic won the Best Cinematography Award in 1987 for filming by the late Peter Hutton, former Bard professor. Cast members include Bard alumni/ae Andy Aaron ’76, Tim Allen ’84, Martha Atwell ’85, Margaret DeWys, Sharon Garbe ’83, Leon Hartman ’08, Manon Hutton-DeWys ’06, Josefa Mulaire ’79, Paul Marcus ’76, Jeff Preiss ’79, Rebecca Quaytman ’83, Emily Rubin ’78, and Lewis Schaffer ’79. The film is screening at Time & Space Limited in Hudson NY on May 2 through 4, 2026.

Abigail Wilson ’23, Bard College alumna and graduate student in chemical synthesis at UCLA, has been announced as a recipient of a 2026 Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, a federal agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the nonmedical fields of science and engineering. Since 1952, the Graduate Research Fellowship Program has recognized and supported outstanding graduate students who are pursuing full-time research-based master’s and doctoral degrees in STEM fields, including STEM education. Each fellowship provides three years of support over a five-year fellowship period. 

The Chemistry and Biochemistry Program at Bard is geared toward meeting the needs of students planning to do graduate and/or professional work in a variety of chemistry, biochemistry, and engineering subfields. During their course of study, students receive research training in modern methods in chemistry, including extensive hands-on experience with contemporary instruments and equipment. 

Bard alumna Lindsey Aldrich Jordan ’24 and Bard students Tessa Ni ’28, Anna Gaylord ’27, and Myla Allen ’27 each wrote about their experiences attending a three day reading event in Vienna, coordinated by the Hannah Arendt Center. The Hannah Arendt Lesen event focused on the “Irreversibility and the Power to Forgive” chapter of Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition and its counterpart “die Unwiderruflichkeit des Getanen und die Macht zu verzeihen” in Arendt’s German translation, titled Vita Activa. “What moved me most during the weekend, was not only the intellectual content of our discussion, but the way the event itself enacted what the text describes,” writes Ni. “We were not gathered merely to analyze forgiveness as a concept. We were speaking, responding, risking our thoughts in front of others. In Arendt’s sense, we were acting.”

The event was hosted by the translation collective Versatorium, in partnership with Transletting, a translation project formed by a group of students from Leipzig, Germany. Over the course of three days, the participants examined Arendt’s metaphors and imagery, her linguistic networks, and how the differences and similarities between the two translations could expand their reading of Arendt’s work. “There are words or whole sentences in the German that don’t appear in the English version,” writes Jordan. “This is a big reason reading the two chapters side by side was of interest to Transletting and, I would learn in the course of the weekend, to the Versatorium, too. It offered an opportunity to discuss not only what Arendt meant when she wrote about forgiveness but to compare the language, metaphors, and images in English versus German. How did they differ and how did they resemble one another across the two versions? What did English allow her to say, and how did the German language require her to say it differently, and vice versa?” 

The mission of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College is to create and nurture an institutional space for bold, risky, and provocative thinking about our political world in the spirit of Hannah Arendt. Its vision is to empower people to discover their unique opinions and political agency and also find common ground to build together a shared world through thinking, listening, and talking with one another.
 

Bard alumna Kate McNamara MA-CCS ’07 has been named director of the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University. The Carpenter Center develops programming like artist talks, curator Q&As, and workshops that involve the community in artistic practice. Previously, McNamara curated cross-genre art exhibitions and served as interim director of Providence College Galleries. “What excites me most about this moment is the opportunity to deepen the Carpenter Center’s role as a leading contemporary art space,” said McNamara. “We are building an ecosystem where artists, students, scholars, and local residents encounter art as a living, shared practice.”

The Center for Curatorial Studies is an incubator for experimentation in exhibition-making and the leading institution dedicated exclusively to curatorial studies. It includes the Graduate Program for Curatorial Studies, an intensive course of study in the history of contemporary art, the institutions and practices of exhibition making, and the theory and criticism of contemporary art since the 1960s.

Sculptor and painter Tschabalala Self '12, Bard alumna and visiting artist in residence in studio arts, was profiled in the New York Times and Elle Decor to commemorate her piece “Art Lovers” being included on the facade of the New Museum in NYC. “Art Lovers” was unveiled at the museum’s reopening earlier this year, at which Cultural Affairs Commissioner Diya Vij '08 spoke. This follows her 2024 London’s Fourth Plinth Commission win, when her sculpture “Lady in Blue” was displayed in Trafalgar Square.

Speaking to Gazelle Mba for the New York Times series Solo Show, Self says she imagines the couple in "Art Lovers" as “museum patrons, possibly admiring one of their favorite works.” To Elle, she expressed that public art “allows everyone to have some transcendent second with the artwork, even when they’re not anticipating it.”

Bard alumna Sonita Alizadeh ’23, a Rhodes Scholar and human rights activist, was profiled in Forbes magazine. Born under Taliban rule, Alizadeh faced the threat of child marriage at the ages of 10 and 16 before finding her voice through music. She has since performed on global stages and collaborated with artists and organizations that share her mission, and she has also addressed world leaders and worked with NGOs such as the UN, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International to push for change. “Today, Sonita’s message is simple but profound: never underestimate the power of your voice,” writes Mandeep Rai for Forbes. “Dreams, she insists, are the ultimate weapon. Her journey is more than a story—it is a committed call to action, urging women to support one another and the world to take responsibility for girls in Iran, Afghanistan, and beyond.”
 

Works by two Bard College alumni/ae, Ei Arakawa-Nash MFA '07 and Lotus L. Kang MFA ’15, will be featured in the 2026 Venice Biennale, which will run from May 9 to November 22. Arakawa-Nash, a performance artist and member of Fac Xtra Retreat (FXR), a collective of seven LA–based Asian American artists, will represent Japan at the Biennale. He is collaborating with other FXR members on a performance project coproduced by the Getty Center and the Japanese Foundation for the Biennale’s Japan Pavilion. “Ei Arakawa-Nash and FXR bring together irreverence, generosity, and collective experimentation in ways that feel both intimate and expansive,” said Sarah Cooper, performance programs specialist at the J. Paul Getty Museum. “These performances contribute to the wider story of Asian diasporas in Greater Los Angeles … while embodying his distinctive alchemy of humor and truth that unsettles fixed roles, challenges social and institutional norms and honors the multiplicities we all hold.” Additionally, alumna Talullah Pratt ’24 was chosen as one of five electronic musicians under 30 for a residency at the Venice Biennale Musica College 2026 by curator Caterina Barbieri.

Sculptor Lotus L. Kang MFA ’15 has been commissioned to produce a major new installation for the inaugural Bulgari Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Kang’s artistic practice utilizes sculpture, photography and site-responsive installation to communicate themes drawn from industrial and architectural forms, familial and social histories, poetry, and non-human figures. “Known for her complexly layered environments that meld organic, structural and metabolic languages, Lotus L. Kang’s works give poetic form to reflections on themes spanning inheritance, impermanence, memory, and translation,” writes ArtDaily. “Working fluidly between sculpture, photography and site-responsive installation, she frequently draws on unfixed, unstable materials and forms in her practice, giving evocative, often expansive shape to questions of ‘becoming.’” 

Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts is a graduate program for interdisciplinary study in the visual and creative arts. Bard MFA takes place over two years and two months, with students in residence on campus during three consecutive summers, and two winter sessions of independent study completed off campus.  

Actress and Bard alumna Lola Kirke ’12 was profiled in the New York Times following her role in the 2025 film Sinners and the release of her book Wild West Village: Not a Memoir. Kirke discussed her childhood in New York City and her family relationships, as well as her work since moving to Nashville in 2020 including her country album Trailblazer. Kirke says all of her work is about embracing the imperfect. “‘Should I conform? Or is what makes me special the ways in which I don’t conform? I am much more interested in the latter,” she says.

Kirke studied in the Film and Electronic Arts Program at Bard, which encourages interest in a wide range of expressive modes in film and electronic arts including animation, narrative and non-narrative filmmaking, documentary, performance, and installation practices. The program emphasizes imaginative engagement and the cultivation of an individual voice that has command over the entire creative process.

Diya Vij ’08, Bard alumna and a vice president at Powerhouse Arts, has been named as the Mamdani administration’s leader of New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Vij, who was profiled in the New York Times, is a veteran of creative communities throughout the city and was praised by Mamdani as a “visionary and deeply thoughtful leader who understands that art is not ornamental to this city—it is essential to it.” The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs is the largest municipal funder of culture in the country, supporting 1,000 nonprofit cultural organizations and providing $245 million in funding in the last fiscal year to give access to art and culture for all New Yorkers. “I’m excited to apply my political lens to strengthening the systems that make open, accessible, and sometimes radical cultural activities possible,” Vij said. 

Mira Dancy ’01, painter and Bard College alumna, was featured in the Financial Times in an article about how artists are still navigating the effects of the Los Angeles fires a year later. Dancy spoke about how for her, the devastation of the fires is an artistic dividing line. The paintings in her studio were damaged permanently, and she vividly remembers the hills glowing red around her house, which was left uninhabitable after the disaster. “There is just no way I can go back to work on a painting that I was making before the fire,” Dancy told the Times. “My whole world changed.” Her latest exhibit, Mourning’s Orbit, opens at Night Gallery during Frieze week, and takes emotional stock of the last year while her family had to relocate between hotels and homes for nearly a year. The paintings reference places that had been damaged in the fires which she has visited in the aftermath, yet relay an element of hope despite the devastation. “I feel that these paintings are a little bit of an antidote to those images of burned houses,” Dancy says.  

Cecilia Alemani MA-CCS ’05 has been announced as the curator of the first nomadic iteration of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women, taking place through 2027, reports Artsy. The prize, founded in 2005, supports women artists at pivotal points in their careers. In its new nomadic model, artists will travel to a different country for each edition, during which the winning artist will present the work at a partner institution. Alemani, who previously served as the curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 and curated the New York City High Line, said the award is “evolving into a full-fledged tool of cultural diplomacy and international dialogue.” She noted that the nomadic iteration of the prize comes at a “time of fragmentation,” and this new model signifies the award’s commitment “to building the kind of solid, lasting ties that are essential not only for the blossoming of individual careers, but for the growth and reinvention of the entire ecosystem of contemporary art.”

Henry Mielarczyk ’25 contributed to the winter issue of the Stennis Center for Public Service’s Public Service Review. He interviewed Ben Rich, chief of staff to Congressional Representative Nellie Pou, about the legacy of his former employer Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., a lifelong resident of New Jersey who established the first federal program to deliver grant money directly to firefighters. Rich said working for his hometown representative meant, “I was able to better understand the needs of the district because I knew it intimately.” He says his approach as chief of staff is still to execute good policies and “make sure [they] help people.”

Mielarczyk was recently elected to the New Jersey Democratic State Committee as its youngest member. He currently works with the New York State Assembly as a graduate scholar, and is a student in the Levy Master of Science program. Last summer, he joined the Stennis Program for Congressional Interns.

The Open Society Foundations today welcome Bard College’s successful completion of a landmark endowment challenge first issued in 2021 by Open Society Founder George Soros. By meeting the challenge, Bard has established the first endowment in its history, positioning the College to sustain and expand its mission as an independent institution of higher education centered on the liberal arts and sciences and dedicated to the public interest for generations to come.

The challenge invited Bard to match a $500 million commitment from Open Society by raising an additional $500 million from other donors, securing a $1 billion endowment to support the college’s undergraduate and graduate programs, faculty, student scholarships, the arts, and international engagement. Bard’s success marks a significant moment for an institution long recognized for its commitment to educational access, academic rigor, and public service. It also reflects Open Society’s historical support for higher education and the role of critical thinking in public life.

At a time when American democracy is under strain and colleges and universities face growing political and financial pressure, Bard’s endowment underscores the importance of investing in independent higher education as a cornerstone of democratic life.

“Higher education is essential to the future of American democracy,” said Alex Soros, chair of the Open Society Foundations. “Bard will continue to be a place where critical thinking flourishes and students learn why the liberal arts are more important to freedom and the rule of law than ever in today’s embattled moment.”

Located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, Bard College has played a leading role in advancing liberal arts and sciences education and expanding access to higher education. Its programs include the Bard Prison Initiative, which provides college education to incarcerated students; Bard Early Colleges, which enable public high school students to earn college degrees tuition free in supportive environments; and a wide range of international partnerships focused on expanding educational opportunity for underserved communities.

“Bard is profoundly grateful to George Soros, Alex Soros, and the Open Society Foundations,” said Leon Botstein, president of Bard College. “The response of our donor community, which has given and pledged over $500 million to meet the OSF challenge, affirms George Soros’s belief in Bard and its mission. This outpouring of support endorses Bard’s excellence and innovation and bodes well for the future of the College.”

The Ask, a podcast by Bard alumnus Waise Azimi ’05, brought Bard Chief of Staff Malia Du Mont ’95, Vice President for Student Affairs Dumaine Williams ’03, and Associate Director of the Human Rights Project Danielle Riou to discuss the ongoing detention of Bard student Ali Faqirzada ’28. Alongside Anwen Hughes, director of legal strategy for refugee programs at Human Rights First, the five discussed the ongoing efforts to advocate for Faqirzada’s return to his studies at Bard, the current legal and political environment for asylum seekers, and more. Speaking to the College’s support of Faqirzada, Du Mont said, “Nobody here at Bard thought twice about any of it. There was no question in my mind.”

To learn more about Faqirzada’s case and to share media coverage of his story, visit go.bard.edu/take-action. With initiatives like the Human Rights Program, the Center for Human Rights and the Arts, and the launch of GHEA21, Bard has a storied history of supporting academic freedom and human rights around the world. To learn more about how Bard supports displaced students and students in need, please visit cce.bard.edu/engaged-learning/the-sanctuary-fund.

Three Bard College alumni/ae will be among the 56 artists and collectives selected to participate in this year’s Whitney Biennial, the 82nd installment of the longest-running survey of contemporary art in the United States. Works by multimedia artist Sula Bermudez-Silverman ’15, sculptural artist Cooper Jacoby ’11, and artist and filmmaker Jordan Strafer MFA ’20 will be featured in the exhibition series. The Whitney Biennial 2026, which opens on March 8, offers a vivid atmospheric survey of contemporary American art shaped by a moment of profound transition by inviting visitors into environments that evoke tension, tenderness, humor, and unease. Together, the works capture the complexity of the present and propose imaginative and unexpected forms of coexistence. “We are giving platforms to artists that we felt were making major contributions to the field,” curator Drew Sawyer told the New York Times.