Bard’s extraordinary faculty are dedicated to the philosophy of teaching. Today and throughout Bard’s history, members of the faculty have effected change in medicine, the arts and letters, international affairs, journalism, scientific research, and education, among other endeavors. These distinguished scholars are advisers as well as instructors: Bard has no graduate teaching assistants. And the average class size of 16 in the Lower College and 12 in the Upper College allows for intimate discussions and one-on-one interaction.
David Bloom ’13 MM ’15. Photo by Bruce Kung
“What brought me to Bard, in a word, was the faculty.”
“To work with Joan Tower, George Tsontakis, and James Bagwell was an opportunity I couldn’t miss. I had long followed and admired their work, and then I found out that each of them taught here. It’s easy for musicians to focus only on music, whereas I wanted to have a broader education that would prepare me for a world that requires a more well-rounded base of knowledge and experience.”
—David Bloom ’13 MM ’15
—David Bloom ’13 MM ’15
Faculty News
Bard College Professor Roosevelt Montás Awarded $100,000 Prize for Work in the Humanities
“I receive this honor not as a culmination but as a promissory note—a vote of confidence in work that is still unfolding.”
Bard College Professor Roosevelt Montás Awarded $100,000 Prize for Work in the Humanities
The Heitt Prize was established in 2005 to support emerging leaders in the humanities who are actively contributing to ideas around what it means to be human.
Montás, a specialist in American literature and culture with a particular interest in American national identity, joined Bard’s faculty in 2025 as part of the Chang Chavkin Center for Liberal Education and Civic Life. He also teaches in Bard’s literature program. Through his research and teaching, Montás has focused on the importance of liberal education and the future of the humanities.
“I am deeply honored to receive the Hiett Prize in the Humanities,” says Montás. “I have devoted my career to the conviction that the humanities are not a luxury but the most powerful means we have for cultivating free minds, enlarging our moral imagination, and preparing us for lives of purpose and responsible citizenship.”
Programming honoring Montás will take place at Southern Methodist University on October 15–16.
The Chang Chavkin Center for Liberal Arts and Civic Life is focused on the connection between liberal education and civic life. It hosts discussion-based classes and supports faculty in building general education programs for students in all disciplines.
Post Date: 09-10-2026
Visiting Artist Tschabalala Self’s ’12 Lady In Blue Unveiled in London’s Trafalgar Square and Featured in the Guardian
The sculpture is “a beacon that could shed light into a possible future,” Self says.
Visiting Artist Tschabalala Self’s ’12 Lady In Blue Unveiled in London’s Trafalgar Square and Featured in the Guardian
Tschabalala Self’s sculpture Lady In Blue.
The Guardian also featured Self in advance of Lady in Blue’s unveiling. Speaking about the sculpture, which the artist describes as an image of an everywoman striding forward into the future, and “a beacon that could shed light into a possible future,” she says, “it’s about there being space for all in places that were formerly weighted down by antiquated gestures, belief systems and impossibilities." The Guardian describes her work as “a lurid, vivid, super-colourful, mega-joyful celebration of everyday bodies” embodying “simplicity, joy, and above all freedom.” Lady in Blue will remain on the plinth for two years.
Self is a visiting artist in Bard’s Studio Arts Program, which provides a breadth of expanded offerings while retaining a strong core of courses that provide a firm grounding in basic techniques and principles, in an era when much contemporary art cannot be contained within the traditional categories and technology is transforming the production of visual images.
Post Date: 09-09-2026
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Pavlina Tcherneva, President of Bard’s Levy Economics Institute, Interviewed by Marketplace
Pavlina Tcherneva, President of Bard’s Levy Economics Institute, Interviewed by Marketplace
Pavlina Tcherneva, president of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, was interviewed by the Minnesota Public Radio program Marketplace. The segment addressed forthcoming economic data and their implications on inflation and daily life for average Americans. Tcherneva pointed to the impact of energy prices on the problem of inflation, especially amidst ongoing war in the Middle East. “There are no indications at this moment that inflation expectations are slowing down,” she said. Tscherneva previously spoke with Marketplace, also about inflation, in June.Pavlina Tcherneva, president of Bard’s Levy Economics Institute, was interviewed by Marketplace about the state of the US economy.
The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public policy research organization that encourages diversity of opinion in the examination of economic policy issues while striving to transform ideological arguments into informed debate.
Post Date: 09-09-2026
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Betty Parsons Exhibition at Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art Receives Multiple Positive Reviews
Betty Parsons Exhibition at Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art Receives Multiple Positive Reviews
The Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies has received a new round of reviews for the exhibition, “Betty Parsons: An Expanded World.” Hyperallergic, Brooklyn Rail, and Cultured all recently published glowing reviews of the exhibition. Parsons was a gallerist who championed abstract expressionist painters such as Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, and Barnett Newman, though her own artistic work has largely gone unknown to the general public. The exhibition, which opened in June and runs through October 18, 2026, is the first major exhibition of Parsons’s work. It features over eighty pieces, including sculptures and paintings spanning sixty years, along with two commissioned films exploring Parsons’s career. “Taken as a whole, An Expanded World offers a timely and detailed view into the world of Betty Parsons and her artmaking,” writes the Brooklyn Rail.The Betty Parsons Exhibition at Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art has received praise in numerous outlets.
“For the magnificent exhibition,” writes Cultured, “curator Kelly Taxter and artist Amy Sillman focus on the artistic aspects of [Parsons’s] legacy, gathering 81 of the paintings, works on paper, and sculptural assemblages that she created on the days she had off from being a dealer. Across these objects, her confident use of color and her assured gestural marks demonstrate that she was driven to make art, and did so in abundance, despite the time constraints of running a business promoting others.”
Parsons’s work will be discussed as part of an upcoming event, “A Conversation on Agnes Martin, Betty Parsons, and Coenties Slip,” on September 26 at Dia Beacon in Beacon, NY.
The Center for Curatorial Studies is an incubator for experimentation in exhibition-making and the leading institution dedicated exclusively to curatorial studies. The Hessel Museum of Art, built in 2006, presents experimental group exhibitions and monographic shows and also draws from the Marieluise Hessel Collection of Contemporary Art for exhibitions.
Further reading:
CCS Hessel Museum’s Betty Parsons Exhibit Reviewed in Art News and the New York Times
Post Date: 09-09-2026
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Exhibit Curated by Professor Susan Aberth Opens at Andrew Edlin Gallery
Exhibit Curated by Professor Susan Aberth Opens at Andrew Edlin Gallery
Conduits of the Unseen: Women Artists Imagine Other Worlds, a new exhibit curated by Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History Susan Aberth, has opened at Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York City. Centering the work of Paulina Peavy, a visionary artist known for her paintings, drawings, and ornamented masks, the exhibit also includes artists Leonora Carrington and Agnes Pelton, among others, alongside mediums like Madge Gill and Emma Kunz. In a press release, the gallery said the exhibition presents artists who “gave visual form to alternate realities, spirits, cosmic forces, and other planes of consciousness . . . united by a shared desire to give form to their inner visions, expressed across landscapes, portraits, narratives, and pure abstraction.” The exhibit opened on September 9 and runs through October 31, 2026.Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History Susan Aberth.
Aberth teaches in the Art History and Visual Culture Program, which introduces students to visual material across a broad range of periods and societies.
Post Date: 09-09-2026
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Bard’s New Chang Chavkin Center Director Roosevelt Montás Featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education
Bard’s New Chang Chavkin Center Director Roosevelt Montás Featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education
Bard’s new Chang Chavkin Center was featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The feature profiles Roosevelt Montás, the center’s director and Laura Y. Chang and Arnold Chavkin Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life, and explores his philosophy of a broad, less departmentally siloed form of liberal education. As the former director of Columbia University’s Core Curriculum, Montás has an established track record of advocating for a model of undergraduate learning based on foundational texts and discussion-based courses. He teaches in the undergraduate college, leading research into the advancement of liberal education. His focus is on the importance of liberal education and the study of texts with major cultural significance related to fundamental human questions, emphasizing lives of purpose and deep civic engagement.Bard’s new Chang Chavkin Center and Laura Y. Chang and Arnold Chavkin Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life Roosevelt Montás were featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Photo by Inbal Sivan
“Montás may seem like he’s tilting at windmills,” writes Beth McMurtrie, senior writer for the Chronicle. “But a lot of other people and groups are galloping alongside him. They include foundations, longtime champions of Great Books curricula, and the many faculty members who have transformed their classrooms by adopting this approach.”
Montás teaches in the Literature Program at Bard, which emphasizes cultural, linguistic, and geographic diversity, challenging national, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries.
Post Date: 09-03-2026
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Bard Vice President Malia Du Mont ’95 and Professor Chris Gibson Discuss How Students Think About Civic Responsibility and Public Service on Radio Kingston
Bard Vice President Malia Du Mont ’95 and Professor Chris Gibson Discuss How Students Think About Civic Responsibility and Public Service on Radio Kingston
On Radio Kingston, Malia Du Mont '95, senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center (HAC) and Bard’s vice president for strategy and policy, was joined by former New York Congressman Chris Gibson, HAC senior fellow and a professor of political practice, to discuss the HAC’s new initiative, “A Republic, If You Can Keep It.” Appearing on Afternoons with Jami, they discussed the initiative’s mission to help students think deeply about citizenship, civic responsibility, public service, and productive engagement at a time of intense polarization.Launching in the 2027 Spring semester, “A Republic, If You Can Keep It” will introduce new curricula, foster partnerships with other colleges and universities, and encourage public service. Photo by Kay Bell ’26
Launching in the 2027 Spring semester, “A Republic, If You Can Keep It” will introduce new curricula, foster partnerships with other colleges and universities, and encourage public service. At a particularly challenging moment in American history, the new initiative was described as reflecting the optimism inherent in teaching and learning, and the work of changing both oneself and society for the better.
“We want to help students have a sense of what the possibilities for the future are,” said Du Mont. “We believe we can keep [the republic]. It’s hard work, we don’t think we’re about to lose it, we’re concerned, but we fundamentally believe and are dedicating ourselves to moving forward together.”
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.
Post Date: 09-03-2026
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Bard Acting President Jonathan Becker Speaks About Student Voting Rights on the SpeechMatters Podcast
Bard Acting President Jonathan Becker Speaks About Student Voting Rights on the SpeechMatters Podcast
Bard College’s Acting President Jonathan Becker appeared on the SpeechMatters podcast to discuss the ongoing struggle for youth voting rights in the United States. SpeechMatters is a project of the University of California’s National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, and features guests who are tackling the issues of free speech and democracy on college campuses. Becker was joined by host Michelle Deutchman, as well as Yael Bromburg, adjunct professor of law at the American University Washington College of Law. They addressed a range of issues, including the history of youth voting and on-campus voting, the civic impacts of student voting, and the structural and psychological challenges to broader enfranchisement of young people. Becker argued that institutions of learning should not be neutral, but explicitly and forcefully in favor of student voting. “Young people are the future of our democracy, and would we rather have engaged citizens, or passive citizens who are not involved in our democracy?" he said. "I think if you believe in civic participation, then you believe in young people voting.”Bard College Acting President Jonathan Becker argues that institutions of higher learning should explicitly support youth voting.
Becker, who coedited a recent book about youth voting rights, also spoke of his volunteer teaching experience in Kiev, Ukraine, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and his dismay upon returning to New York's Hudson Valley to discover efforts by local officials to limit youth voting. “Having promoted democracy abroad, I discovered that our students here were systematically denied the right to vote locally,” he said. “As someone who spent half of their life abroad, the idea that we should be promoting democracy abroad, and coming home and some local official in Dutchess county is systematically denying students the right to vote is…outrageous.”
Post Date: 08-27-2026
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