CCS Bard | The Graduate Program

Faculty

The faculty of the graduate program includes curators and other arts professionals, scholars in the humanities and social sciences, critics, and artists. Most faculty members are working professionals or hold permanent academic appointments at institutions other than Bard.

Tom Eccles

Maria Lind

Marcia Acita

Norton Batkin

Johanna Burton

Liam Gillick

Ingrid Schaffner

Franklin Sirmans

Tirdad Zolghadr

Tom Eccles

Executive Director, CCS Bard; Graduate Committee
M.A., University of Glasgow. Former public art consultant and project manager, Art in Partnership, Edinburgh, Scotland. Director, Public Art Fund, New York (1996–2005); has organized innovative contemporary art exhibitions for Rockefeller Center, Battery Park City, Park Avenue, Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park, and other city venues; established partnerships with major New York City museums; initiated the In the Public Realm program for emerging artists, and Tuesday Night Talks, a lecture series promoting dialogues between artists, curators, art critics, students, and the public. Has written extensively about contemporary art and lectured at colleges and universities throughout the United States.
Phone: 845.758.7596
eccles@bard.edu

Maria Lind

Director, CCS Bard Graduate Program
M.A., University of Stockholm; Whitney Independent Studies Program. Director, International Artist Studio Program (IASPIS), Sweden (2005–07); organized exhibitions of Ibon Aranberri, Andrea Geyer, and other artists and cocurated series of symposia including “Citizenship: Changing Conditions,” “Why Archives?” and “Tendencies in Time,” seminars on topical tendencies in the production, presentation, mediation and preservation of contemporary art. Director, Kunstverein München, Munich (2002–04); ran experimental program involving artists such as Annika Eriksson, Deimantas Narkevicius, Marion von Osten, Philippe Parreno, and others, which included yearlong retrospective with Christine Borland (2002–03), showing one piece at a time, and retrospective project in the form of a seven-day workshop with Rirkrit Tiravanija (2004). Curator, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1997-01); organized Moderna Museet Projekts, series of 29 artist commissions in spaces inside and outside the museum. Founder
(with Rebecca Gordon Nesbit and Hans Ulrich Obrist), Salon 3, independent art platform (London, 1998–2000); cocurator, Manifesta 2, Luxembourg (1998). Publications include Fresh Cream (2000), Curating with Light Luggage (Revolver Archiv für aktuelle Kunst), Taking the Matter into Common Hands: Collaborative Practices in Contemporary Art (Blackdog Publishing), and numerous exhibition catalogue essays. Critic, Svenska Dagbladet (1993–97); coeditor, Nordic Review Index (1995–98).
Phone: 845.758.7588
lind@bard.edu

Marcia Acita

Assistant Director of the Museum; Faculty, Center for Curatorial Studies
B.F.A., University of Colorado, Boulder; M.F.A., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Guest lecturer, School of Contemporary Arts, Ramapo College of New Jersey. Registrar and exhibition coordinator, Edith C. Blum Institute, Bard College (1988–92); registrar (1992– ) and acting director of the museum (1997–98), Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture. Curator, Alighiero e Boetti (1998), Gabriel Orozco: Selections from the Marieluise Hessel Collection (2000), Works through the Windows (2004); numerous artists’ book exhibitions and video presentations.
acita@bard.edu
Phone: 845.758.7576
For more information: http://acita@bard.edu

Norton Batkin

Dean of Graduate Studies, Bard College; Associate Professor of Philosophy and Art History
B.A., Stanford University; M.A., Ph.D., Harvard University. Director (1991–94, 2002–05) and director of the graduate program (1994–2007), Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture. Assistant professor, Department of Philosophy, Yale University (1981–88); associate professor of humanities, Scripps College (1988–90). Assistant director, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University (1982–84); director, Scripps College Humanities Institute (1988–90). Publications include Photography and Philosophy (1990); “The Museum Exposed,” in Exhibited (Center for Curatorial Studies Museum, 1994); “Conceptualizing the History of the Contemporary Museum: On Foucault and Benjamin,” Philosophical Topics (1997); and other articles and reviews in the areas of philosophical aesthetics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of psychology. Art editor, Conjunctions. (1994– ) Associate Professor of Philosophy and Art History
Phone: 845-758-7598
E-mail: batkin@bard.edu

Johanna Burton

Graduate Committee
B.A., University of Nevada, Reno; M.A., SUNY Stony Brook; critical studies, Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program; M. Phil., New York University; Ph.D. candidate, Princeton University. Cocurator, Videodrome II (2002) and Super-ficial: The Surfaces of Architecture in a Digital Age (2003), New Museum of Contemporary Art; curator, For Presentation and Display: Some Art of the ’80s, Princeton University Art Gallery (2005). Editor of Cindy Sherman (MIT Press, 2006). Other publications include essays and articles on Mary Heilmann, Lee Lozano, Guyton/Walker, and Rachel Harrison, among others, and numerous reviews and articles for Artforum, Parkett, and Texte zur Kunst. Graduate Committee (2007– ).

Liam Gillick

Graduate Committee
Liam Gillick is an artist based in London and New York. Solo exhibitions include The Wood Way, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2002; A short text on the possibility of creating an economy of equivalence, Palais de Tokyo, 2005 and the retrospective project Three Perspectives and a short scenario, Witte de With, Rotterdam, Kunsthalle Zurich and MCA Chicago 2008-2010. In 2006 he co-founded the free art school project “unitednationsplaza” in Berlin. Liam Gillick has published a number of texts that function in parallel to his artwork. Proxemics (Selected writing 1988-2006) JRP-Ringier was published in 2007. The monograph Factories in the Snow by Lilian Haberer, JRP-Ringier, 2007 will soon be joined by an extensive retrospective publication and critical reader. In addition he has contributed to many art magazines and journals including Parkett, Frieze, Art Monthly, October and Art Forum. Liam Gillick has been selected as the artist for the German Pavilion in the Venice Biennale, 2009. Graduate Committee (2008– )

Ingrid Schaffner

Graduate Committee
Ingrid Schaffner is Senior Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where past exhibitions include: The Puppet Show 2008, Karen Kilimnik 2007, Accumulated Vision, Barry Le Va 2005, The Big Nothing 2004, Sarah McEneaney 2004, Trials and Turbulence: Pepón Osorio, an artist’s residence at DHS 2004, Polly Apfelbaum 2003, The Photogenic: Photography through its metaphors in contemporary art 2002, and Richard Tuttle, In Parts, 1998-2001 2001. Working independently, she is the curator of: Jess: To and From the Printed Page 2007, Gloria: Another Look at Feminist Art of the 1970s 2002, About the Bayberry Bush 2001, Hannelore Baron: Works 1967-1987 2001, Pictures, Patents, Monkeys, More…on collecting 2001, Secret Victorians 1999, The Cultured Tourist 1998, Richard Artschwager: Photo/Works 1945-96 1996; Chocolate! 1995.

Schaffner’s work often involves a historic premise or subject within contemporary culture. Her exhibition Deep Storage 1997 featured work by fifty artists (Beuys, Duchamp, Lawler, Kilimnik, Rauschenberg, Rhoades, Warhol, among them, with manuscript material from the Aby Warburg Institute, London) to explore collecting, storing and archiving as imagery and process in contemporary art. Julien Levy: Portrait of an Art Gallery 1998 looked at the New York dealer and collector who championed experimental photography and film, and whose gallery presented a first American exhibition of Surrealism in 1932. Her interest in Surrealism stems from The Return of the Cadavre Exquis 1993 an exhibition with The Drawing Center that involved contemporary artists in the collaborative game of Exquisite Corpse. She has written extensively on modern and contemporary art with essays on Richard Artschwager, Marlene Dumas, Arturo Herrera, Yoshitomo Nara, Isamu Noguchi, among others. Her book Salvador Dalí's Dream of Venus: The Surrealist Funhouse at the 1939 World's Fair was published by Princeton Architectural Press. Graduate Committee (2008– )

Franklin Sirmans

Graduate Committee
Franklin Sirmans is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Menil Collection in Houston, where he has recently organized NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith. He has also curated Everyday People: 20^th Century Photography from The Menil Collection, The David Whitney Bequest, Otabenga Jones: Lessons from Below and Robert Ryman, 1976. Since 2005 he has been a Curatorial Advisor at PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, where he has organized shows including work by Louis Cameron, SunTek Chung, Molly Larkey, Curtis Mitchell, Senam Okudzeto, Milton Rosa-Ortiz and Cory Wagner.

He was curator of For the Love of the Game: Race and Sport in America at the Amistad Center/Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, Hartford (2007); Basquiat (Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2005-2006), Make it Now: New Sculpture in New York (Sculpture Center, NY, 2005) and One Planet Under A Groove: Contemporary Art and Hip Hop (Bronx Museum of the Arts, Walker Art Center, Spelman College Art Gallery and Villa Stuck, Munich, 2001-2003). A former Editor of Flash Art and Art AsiaPacific magazines, Sirmans has written for several publications including The New York Times, Essence Magazine, Art in America, Artnews and Grand Street. He has taught art history at Maryland Institute College of Art, Princeton University and SVA, the School of the Visual Arts. He is also a contributing and advisory editor for the journals Callaloo and Gulf Coast.

Tirdad Zolghadr

Faculty; Graduate Committee
Licence ès letters (M.A.), Comparative Literature, University of Geneva. Founding member, Shahrzad art and design collective. Director of the documentaries Tehran 1380 (with Solmaz Shahbazi), which won the Young Filmmaker's Award of Duisburg, 2002, and Tropical Modernism, which premiered at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, 2006. Exhibitions include curatorial projects in a wide range of venues. Co-curator, the Sharjah Biennial, 2005. Publications include Softcore, a novel, recently published by Telegram Books, London, and articles and reviews in Bidoun, Frieze, Parkett, among others. Editor-at-large, Cabinet magazine.
zolghadr@bard.edu