Bard Graduate Programs in the News
April 2024 |
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04-15-2024 |
Renowned Earth Scientist Naomi Oreskes to Give Commencement AddressBard College will hold its one hundred sixty-fourth commencement on Saturday, May 25, 2024. Bard President Leon Botstein will confer 395 undergraduate degrees on the Class of 2024 and 229 graduate degrees, including master of fine arts; doctor and master of philosophy and master of arts in decorative arts, design history, and material culture; master of science and master of arts in economic theory and policy; master of business administration in sustainability; master of arts in teaching; master of arts in curatorial studies; master of science in environmental policy and in climate science and policy; master of music in vocal arts and in conducting; master of music in curatorial, critical, and performance studies; and master of education in environmental education. Bard will also confer 40 associate degrees from its microcolleges. The program will begin at 2:30 pm in the commencement tent on the Seth Goldfine Memorial Rugby Field.The Commencement address will be given by internationally renowned earth scientist, science historian, and author Naomi Oreskes, who is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. Honorary degrees will be awarded to Naomi Oreskes, President of Al Quds University Imad Abu Kishek, sculptor El Anatsui, Chancellor of New York City Public Schools David C. Banks, scholar R. Howard Bloch, health economist Richard Frank ’74, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, and actor Rachel Weisz. Other events taking place during Commencement Weekend include Bard College award ceremonies. The Bard Medal will be presented to Sandy Zane ’80 and The Right Reverend Andrew M.L. Dietsche; the John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science to Daniel Fulham O’Neill ’79 and Andrew Zwicker ’86; the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters to Adam Conover ’04 and James Fuentes ’98; the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service to Paul J. Thompson ’93 and Erin J. Law ’93; the Mary McCarthy Award to Karen Russell; the László Z. Bitó ’60 Award for Humanitarian Service to Golden McCarthy ’05, Adam Khalil ’11 and Zack Khalil ’14; and Bardian Awards to Myra Young Armstead, Joel Perlmann, and Tom Wolf. ABOUT THE COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER Naomi Oreskes is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. She is an internationally renowned earth scientist, science historian, and author of both scholarly and popular books and articles on the history of earth and environmental science. Her authored or coauthored books include The Rejection of Continental Drift (1999), Plate Tectonics: An Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth (2001), Merchants of Doubt (2010), The Collapse of Western Civilization (2014), Discerning Experts (2019), Why Trust Science? (2019), and Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know about the Ocean (2021). Oreskes has been a leading voice on the science and politics of anthropogenic climate change. Her 2004 essay “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” (Science 306: 1686)—the first peer-reviewed paper to document the scientific consensus on this crucial issue—has been cited more than 2,500 times. It was featured in the landmark Royal Society publication, “A Guide to Facts and Fictions about Climate Change,” and in the Academy Award–winning film, An Inconvenient Truth. Her 2010 book, Merchants of Doubt (coauthored with Erik M. Conway), has been translated into nine languages and was made into a documentary film produced by Participant Media and distributed by SONY Pictures Classics. Her 2014 TED Talk, “Why We Should Trust Scientists,” has over 1.6 million views. In 2018 she was named a Guggenheim Fellow for a book project with Erik M. Conway, The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market. It was released by Bloomsbury Press in February 2023, and has been widely reviewed, including in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the New Yorker. # |
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04-11-2024 |
Nona Faustine: White Shoes, a series of 43 self-portraits shot throughout New York City over the course of decades, explores the city’s central but often obscured role in the history of the transatlantic slave trade, as well as examining questions about representation and perception of the Black body—and, more specifically, the Black female body—in art and other spaces. Currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum through July 7, this first solo exhibition of Nona Faustine MFA ’13 was selected as a New York Times Critic’s Pick when it opened in March and was recently reviewed on CNN. The body of work, including many striking photographs of the artist posing fully nude apart from a pair of crisp white pumps, began while Faustine was a graduate student at the International Center of Photography (ICP) program at Bard College. “All my knowledge, everything I know about photography, and everything I know about history and life is part of the work. My heart and soul is in that series,” Faustine told CNN in an email.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/02/style/nona-faustine-nude-photos-white-shoes-black-history/index.html |
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04-03-2024 |
Thousands of high school students across the United States have been studying the work of Bard Professor of Economics and Research Scholar of the Levy Economics Institute Pavlina Tcherneva in preparation for their national debate tournaments. The official resolution for the 2023–24 High School Policy Debate Topic reads: “The United States federal government should substantially increase fiscal redistribution in the United States by adopting a federal jobs guarantee, expanding Social Security, and/or providing a basic income.” Tcherneva’s book The Case for a Job Guarantee was included in the compilation of research, which the Library of Congress prepares each year, pertinent to the annually selected national debate topic. As this year’s debate season progressed, the federal jobs guarantee policy has emerged as the overwhelming favorite policy for student debate teams on the affirmative. As a result, there are at least a few thousand students across the United States who have gotten very well acquainted with Tcherneva’s work over the past three months.
According to Chris Gentry, program manager of the Policy Debate League for Chicago Public Schools, “Almost every affirmative team across the country is running a jobs guarantee case, and to do so they are pulling heavily on Tcherneva’s publications.” During one weekend tournament, Gentry realized that essentially every debate relied on Tcherneva’s work. In just one round that he was judging, 10 different articles or books that she wrote had been quoted. “At least twice this last weekend, I heard ‘well that’s not what Tcherneva is trying to get at here,’” he added. Another high school debate coach in Los Angeles confirmed that Tcherneva has likely been the most cited author in high school debate this year, and as a result the student debaters are quite familiar with her work. “Personally, I can’t think of a greater impact of my work than seeing young people engage with it, study it, and defend its principles,” says Tcherneva. After meeting with a group of high school student debaters this month, she adds, "The questions the students asked about the job guarantee were probing, well-informed, thoughtful, and inspired—with a keen focus on social justice. I hope that some of them will become policy makers.” Inspired by this nationwide student engagement, Tcherneva has also opened up spots in her summer workshop “Public Finance and Economic Policy” to select high-school debate students interested in going deeper into Modern Monetary Theory and the job guarantee. Organized and hosted by Bard College and the OSUN Economic Democracy Initiative (EDI), this five-day workshop taking place online June 17–21 is for undergraduate students interested in public policy to tackle economic instability and insecurity, and in understanding the financing capacity and policy space available to governments to pursue these aims. Applications from high school debate students will be reviewed in April and early May. Students can apply here. Tcherneva also recently developed a resource tool jobguarantee.org, created and maintained by Bard College students and alumni, with the support of OSUN, for anyone interested in learning more about the job guarantee policy innovation. Centered on the well-being of some of the most vulnerable parts of the US population, the 2023–24 national debate topic of “Economic Inequality” prevailed over “Climate Change” and represents a pressing issue at the forefront of our collective societal consciousness. |
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March 2024 |
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03-20-2024 |
Ariella Budick of the Financial Times penned a glowing review of Sonia Delaunay: Living Art at Bard Graduate Center Gallery. The “spectacular new survey … is at once exuberant and weighty,” Budick writes. “Delaunay spent most of the 20th century producing furniture, playing cards, textiles, theatre costumes, fashion, paintings, mosaics and her own persona, all of them saturated in kaleidoscopic hues.” The show follows Delaunay’s radical artistic vision through a dramatic life, across Europe and two world wars, to later recognition as a national treasure in France.
https://www.ft.com/content/283495fc-52e7-470e-856b-0256ec08071f |
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February 2024 |
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02-12-2024 |
The Bard College Conservatory of Music and Graduate Vocal Arts Program present Jacques Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld). In a production by stage director Katherine M. Carter, the opera will be performed by Bard Conservatory of Music’s Vocal Arts Program singers with the Bard Conservatory Orchestra, conducted by James Bagwell, director of music performance studies and professor of music at Bard. The opera will be sung in French with English supertitles, and dialog will be in English. The performances will be held on Friday, March 8 at 8pm and on Sunday, March 10 at 2pm in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets start at $25, with $5 tickets for Bard students made possible by the Passloff Pass. The first performance (March 8) will be livestreamed. Virtual livestream tickets are pay what you wish. All ticket sales benefit the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Scholarship Fund. To purchase or reserve tickets visit fishercenter.bard.edu, call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm), or email [email protected].
Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld) welcomes the audience to a world of humans, gods, and goddesses that seems all too familiar. This is Olympus High, a place where the tipping scales of popularity and power provide the perfect backdrop for a tale of love, jealousy, and intrigue. This is prom and circumstance for the ages, a lively, witty operetta springing from the genius of a young, aspiring Jacques Offenbach in 1858, playing out here in the year 1986, where relationships and hierarchy haven’t changed a bit. “It has been exciting to see the opera evolve under the artistic guidance of director Katherine Carter, who, along with the cast, is creating new dialogue to set the story in a 1980’s American high school,” says Associate Director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program Kayo Iwama. “If you ever thought high school was ‘hell’, you will relate to this ironic twist on the classic love story of Orpheus and Eurydice!” |
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02-06-2024 |
Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Sarah Hennies; New Red Order, an Indigenous art collective whose core contributors are Bard alumni Adam Khalil ’11 (Ojibway) and Zack Khalil ’14 (Ojibway); and Trisha Baga MFA ’10 have received 2024 United States Artist (USA) Fellowships in the disciplines of Music and Visual Arts. Hennies, New Red Order, and Baga are among this year’s 50 awardees, encompassing artists and collectives spanning multiple generations, who are dedicated to their communities and committed to building upon shared legacies through artistic innovation, cultural stewardship, and multifaceted storytelling. USA Fellowships provide $50,000 in unrestricted money to artists across 10 creative disciplines. In addition to the award, current fellows have access to financial planning, career consulting, legal advice, and other professional services as requested.
Sarah Hennies is a composer based in Upstate NY whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer and trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. New Red Order is a public secret society facilitated by core contributors Adam Khalil (Ojibway), Zack Khalil (Ojibway), and Jackson Polys (Tlingit) that collaborates with informants to create exhibitions, videos, and performances that question and rechannel subjective and material relationships to indigeneity. Trisha Baga is a Filipino-American artist working in stereoscopic 3D video installation, paint, clay, consumer grade electronics, and community performance. Compelled by an interest in what they call “the stuff that makes things stick together,” Baga recombines objects and images into scenarios that address issues related to the environment, technology, and identity. Representing a broad diversity of regions and mediums, the USA Fellows are awarded through a peer-led selection process in the disciplines of Architecture & Design, Craft, Dance, Film, Media, Music, Theater & Performance, Traditional Arts, Visual Art, and Writing. https://www.unitedstatesartists.org/2024-fellows/ |
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02-06-2024 |
At the 66th annual GRAMMY Awards ceremony, the Recording Academy honored the 2024 GRAMMY winners. Among them, Bard Composer in Residence Jessie Montgomery won Best Contemporary Classical Composition, her first GRAMMY award, for her composition “Rounds.” Bard Conservatory of Music’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program alumna Julia Bullock MM ’11 also won her first GRAMMY award, winning Best Classical Solo Vocal Album for her album Walking in the Dark. Artistic Director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program Stephanie Blythe is featured on the album Blanchard: Champion, which won for Best Opera Recording.
Jessie Montgomery’s “Rounds” is a composition for piano and string orchestra inspired by the imagery and themes from T.S. Eliot’s epic poem Four Quartets, fractals (infinite patterns found in nature that are self-similar across different scales), and the interdependency of all beings. Julia Bullock’s Walking in the Dark was recorded with her husband, conductor and pianist Christian Reif, and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. The album combines orchestral works by American composers John Adams and Samuel Barber with a traditional spiritual and songs by jazz legend Billy Taylor and singer-songwriters Oscar Brown, Jr., Connie Converse, and Sandy Denny. The Metropolitan Opera’s recording of Terence Blanchard’s Champion, an opera about young boxer Emile Griffith who rises from obscurity to become a world champion, was conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and featured a cast including mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe as Kathy Hagen. The GRAMMYs are voted on by more than 11,000 music professionals—performers, songwriters, producers, and others with credits on recordings—who are members of the Recording Academy. Further Reading: Jessie Montgomery’s “Rounds” Wins 2024 GRAMMY Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition Julia Bullock Wins First Grammy Award with Walking in the Dark, Her Solo Album Debut The Metropolitan Opera wins 2024 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for Terence Blanchard’s Champion https://www.playbill.com/article/met-operas-champion-jessie-montgomerys-rounds-more-win-at-2024-grammy-awards |
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02-01-2024 |
Artistic Director of Bard Conservatory of Music’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program and acclaimed mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe spoke to The Daily Catch ahead of her concert performance, Stephanie Blythe Sings Brahms, with The Orchestra Now at the Fisher Center on February 3–4. Renowned for the emotional depth of her performances, Blythe connects the lines of Brahm’s “Alto Rhapsody,” which uses Goethe’s poetry for lyrics, to “a feeling of a place where you can breathe. I understand the notion of breaking through and wanting to breathe. When you understand the universality of this music, you understand its essential nature,” says Blythe, who believes opera, when presented for what it actually is, can appeal to a broader, more popular audience. “Being able to illuminate and elevate opera in a new way is really important,” she said. “I find that far too often people who present opera feel like they need to repackage it. Opera doesn’t need to be excused. You don’t need to make it something else for people to appreciate it.”
https://www.thedailycatch.org/articles/opera-does-not-need-to-be-repackaged-argues-star-stephanie-blythe-as-she-takes-to-the-fisher-center-stage-singing-brahms-this-weekend/ |
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January 2024 |
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01-31-2024 |
“Since the spring of 2022, New York City has received some 165,000 migrants and asylum seekers,” writes Chris Crowley for GrubStreet. But who is helping to feed them? Beatrice Ajaero ’12 MBA ’17, who runs the takeout restaurant Nneji in Astoria, is among those who have stepped up. Ajaero told GrubStreet that, beyond meeting the need for nutritional meals, she hoped to tailor the food to reduce the stressors experienced by migrants and asylum seekers. “When we are able to make meals that are highly nutritious, we also get to help mitigate the stress people are experiencing from having traveled so far from home,” Ajaero said. “What better than a nourishing plate of food, where they have ingredients that can remind them of a positive experience? We hope to lift some spirits and also the nutrition of what people consume.”
https://www.grubstreet.com/2024/01/feeding-nyc-migrants.html |
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01-29-2024 |
Bard College faculty members and alums will be among the 71 artists and collectives selected to participate in this year’s Whitney Biennial, the 81st installment of the landmark exhibition series. Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing opens on March 20. Works by Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Sarah Hennies; Assistant Professor of American and Indigenous Studies, Distinguished Artist in Residence in Studio Arts, and Bard MFA Faculty in Music/Sound Kite MFA ’18; and Bard MFA Faculty in Sculpture Lotus Laurie Kang MFA ’15 will be featured alongside those by alums Diane Severin Nguyen MFA ’20, Carolyn Lazard ’10, and Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio ’12. The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College graduate Min Sun Jeon CCS ’22 helped to organize the exhibition.
The 2024 Whitney Biennial is organized by Chrissie Iles (Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator) and Meg Onli (Curator at Large), with Min Sun Jeon CCS ’22 and Beatriz Cifuentes. The performance program is organized by Iles and Onli, with guest curator Taja Cheek. The film program is organized by Iles and Onli, with guest curators Korakrit Arunanondchai, asinnajaq, Greg de Cuir Jr, and Zackary Drucker. “After finalizing the list of artists last summer, we have built a thematic Biennial that focuses on the ideas of ‘the real,’” write the curators. “Society is at an inflection point around this notion, in part brought on by artificial intelligence challenging what we consider to be real, as well as critical discussions about identity. Many of the artists presenting works—including via robust performance and film programs—explore the fluidity of identity and form, historical and current land stewardship, and concepts of embodiment, among other urgent throughlines, and we are inspired by the work they are creating and sharing.” |
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01-19-2024 |
Two Bard faculty members and two alumni/ae are recipients of MacDowell Fellowships. Carl Elsaesser, visiting artist in residence at Bard College in Film and Electronic Arts, has been awarded a MacDowell Fellowship to MacDowell's Residency Program in the Film/Video Artists category for fall/winter 2023. Elsaesser’s residency will support the completion of his project, Coastlines, a feature-length film that intertwines the ethnographic intricacies of Maine’s coastline with the intimate video diaries of a Portland family, inviting a reevaluation of evolving identities and artistic representation within the private and public spheres. Drawing from queer phenomenology and traditional historical narratives, the film challenges perceptions and redefines the boundaries of storytelling, revealing Maine’s dual role as a backdrop and active participant in shaping inhabitants’ sense of self.
Daaimah Mubashshir, playwright in residence at Bard, received a MacDowell Fellowship in MacDowell’s Artist Residency Program for fall 2023 in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in support of their work on a new play about their great grandmother, Begonia Williams Tate, who defied all odds in Mobile, Alabama, in the late 19th century. Chaya Czernowin, a composer and Bard MFA ’88 in Music, and Bard alumna Hannah Beerman ’15, are also 2023 MacDowell Fellowship recipients. The MacDowell Fellowships are distributed by seven discipline-specific admissions panels who make their selections based on applicants’ vision and talent as reflected by work samples and a project description. Once at MacDowell, selected Fellows are provided a private studio, three meals a day, and accommodations for a period of up to six weeks. |
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November 2023 |
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11-29-2023 |
Awardees to Be Honored at CCS Bard’s Spring 2024 GalaThe Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) announces internationally renowned art historian and curator Manuel Borja-Villel as the 2024 recipient of the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. Accompanied by a $25,000 prize, the award, which first launched in 1998, honors outstanding curatorial achievements that have brought innovative thinking, bold vision, and dedicated service to advancing the field of exhibition-making today.In addition to the 2024 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence, CCS Bard announces the inaugural Scott Lorinsky Alumni Award recognizing an outstanding graduate for sustained innovation and engagement in exhibition making, public education, research, and a commitment to the field. CCS Bard Alum Carla Acevedo-Yates (2014) will be the first recipient to receive the newly created award, which comes with a $10,000 prize. Borja-Villel and Acevedo-Yates will both be honored at CCS Bard’s spring 2024 gala celebration and dinner on April 8, 2024. The event, which is chaired by the CCS Bard Board of Governors, will be held in New York City at The Lighthouse at Pier 61. “Manuel Borja-Villel embodies the critical role of curators today in challenging accepted modes of practice to facilitate meaningful and responsive discourse on visual culture, past and present,” said Tom Eccles, Executive Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. “As we celebrate Manuel’s achievements following his departure as the transformational director of Museo Reina Sofia, we also recognize the outstanding contributions of Carla Acevedo-Yates, whose curatorial career has brought visibility to overlooked artists across the Americas. We thank Scott Lorinsky for his generosity in establishing an award that celebrates individuals from our incredible network of CCS Bard alumni whose impact is being felt throughout the field.” “Needless to say, I am very honored and grateful. I am honored because I have collaborated on different occasions with many of the past awardees and I have always respected and admired their work,” said Borja-Villel. “To be part of this group of people is a joy. I am grateful because the award is in recognition of a trajectory. Mine has developed in museums, that is, my work has always been done together with others. My award is also theirs." “I’m delighted to recognize the exceptional achievements of CCS Bard graduates with the Scott Lorinsky Alumni Award, and to celebrate the outstanding accomplishments by Carla Acevedo-Yates as its initial recipient,” said CCS Board Member Scott Lorinsky. “Carla is an innovative leader in the curatorial field with an impeccable commitment to centering artistic practices by artists from the Global South, with a focus on Caribbean, Latin American and Latinx artists.” “I am honored to be recognized by my peers as the inaugural recipient of the Scott Lorinsky Alumni Award at CCS Bard, an institution that has been deeply influential in how I approach curatorial practice and working with artists,” said Acevedo-Yates. “CCS was such a meaningful experience in so many ways. Apart from understanding exhibition-making as an intellectually driven spatial practice, I also gained a generous community of colleagues that have accompanied me through the years.” About Manuel Borja-Villel Manuel Borja-Villel (Burriana, Spain, 1957) is an art historian and curator. He previously served as Director of the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid from 2008 to 2023. During his tenure, he carried out a radical reinstallation of the collection and established the Museo en Red, a network of organizations, collectives, and institutions that question and affect the museum's ways of doing, expanding its boundaries from beyond. Prior to this role, Borja-Villel was Director at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA (1998-2007) and at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona (1989-1998). As Director of these institutions, he developed an extensive body of work that signified a turning point in contemporary curatorial practice: resignifying narratives and exhibition dispositives and their role in the governance of the institution. Most recently, Borja-Villel was one of the curators at the 35th edition of the São Paulo Biennial, where he contributed to the exhibition choreographies of the impossible. Borja-Villel has curated numerous exhibitions dedicated to some of the most important artists of our time, such as those featuring Marcel Broodthaers and Lygia Clark. Similarly, he has been instrumental in the recovery of works by lesser known and unjustly forgotten artists such as Andrzej Wróblewski, Nasreen Mohamedi, Ree Morton, Elena Asins or Ulises Carrión. He has also organized important thesis-driven exhibitions such as La Ciudad de la Gente (The City of the People) (1996), Antagonismos (Antagonisms) (2001), Un Teatro sin Teatro (A Theater without Theater) (2007), Principio Potosí (2010), Playgrounds, Reinventar la Plaza (Playground, the Reinvention of the Square) (2014), and Maquinaciones (2023). Among his most ambitious achievements is the comprehensive rehanging of the collection of the Museo Reina Sofía. Entitled Vasos Comunicantes (Communicating Vessels), the reinstallation encompassed approximately 12,000 square meters and included more than 3,000 works and documents, a significant portion of which was shown publicly for the first time. Vasos Comunicantes was organized into micro-exhibitions, proposing an open-ended rhizomatic structure, in which past events were interwoven with the present. After completing his bachelor's degree at the Universidad de Valencia (Spain) in 1980, Borja-Villel moved to the United States to study at Yale University and later at the City University of New York, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1989. His latest book, titled Campos Magnéticos. Textos sobre arte y política (Magentic Fields. Texts on art and politics) (Barcelona, 2020) was written in Spanish and recently published in expanded editions in both Italian and Portuguese. About Carla Acevedo-Yates Carla Acevedo-Yates was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico and has worked as a curator, researcher, and art critic across Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. She currently serves as the Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator at the MCA Chicago, where she recently curated the 2022 exhibition Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora 1990s – Today (touring to ICA Boston beginning in October 2023 and MCA San Diego in 2024), and the MCA Chicago presentation of Duane Linklater: mymothersside, and Entre Horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico, currently on view. Previous exhibitions at the MCA Chicago include Carolina Caycedo: From the Bottom of the River (2020) and Chicago Works: Omar Velázquez (2020). She also conceptualized and leads the museum’s Hemispheric Initiative, a pan-institutional effort that centers Caribbean, Latinx, and Latin American art and perspectives through exhibitions, programs, and international collaborations. This institution-wide initiative led to the transformation of the MCA Chicago into a fully bilingual English/Spanish museum. Previously, she was Associate Curator at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University where she curated over 15 exhibitions, including solo presentations of new work by Johanna Unzueta, Claudia Peña Salinas, Duane Linklater, and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz. She curated Fiction of a Production (2018), a major exhibition by conceptual art pioneer David Lamelas and co-curated Michigan Stories: Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw (2017). Major group exhibitions include The Edge of Things: Dissident Art Under Repressive Regimes (2019). In 2015, she was awarded The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for an article on Cuban painter Zilia Sánchez. After earning a bachelor’s degree at Barnard College, she pursued her graduate studies at CCS Bard, where she was awarded with the Ramapo Curatorial Prize for the exhibition Turn on the bright lights. About Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence Launched at CCS Bard in 1998 to recognize groundbreaking visionaries in the curatorial field, the Award for Curatorial Excellence is selected by an independent panel of leading contemporary art curators, museum directors, and artists. The award is named in recognition of patron Audrey Irmas, who bestowed the endowment for the Audrey Irmas Prize of $25,000. Irmas is an emeritus board member of CCS Bard and an active member of the Los Angeles arts and philanthropic community. The award itself is designed by artist Lawrence Weiner, and is based on his 2006 commission Bard Enter, conceived for the entrance to the Hessel Museum of Art at CCS Bard. Past recipients of the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence include Adriano Pedrosa (2023), Valerie Cassel Oliver (2022), Connie Butler (2020), Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (2019), Lia Gangitano (2018), Nicholas Serota (2017), Thelma Golden (2016), Christine Tohmé and Martha Wilson (2015), Charles Esche (2014), Elisabeth Sussman (2013), Ann Goldstein (2012), Helen Molesworth and Hans Ulrich Obrist (2011), Lucy Lippard (2010), Okwui Enwezor (2009), Catherine David (2008), Alanna Heiss (2007), Lynne Cooke and Vasif Kortun (2006), Kathy Halbreich and Mari Carmen Ramírez (2005), Walter Hopps (2004), Kynaston McShine (2003), Susanne Ghez (2002), Paul Schimmel (2001), Kasper König (2000), Marcia Tucker (1999), and Harald Szeemann (1998). About the Scott Lorinsky Alumni Award The Scott Lorinsky Alumni Award recognizes an outstanding graduate of the Center for Curatorial Studies for sustained innovation and engagement in exhibition-making, public education, research and a commitment to the field. The Award, which is designed by artist Liam Gillick, was endowed by CCS Bard board member, Scott Lorinsky, in 2023, and the awardee is selected annually by faculty members of the program. The award is presented annually at the CCS Bard Gala in New York and the awardee will receive $10,000. |
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11-17-2023 |
As the classical music world eagerly awaits the new Netflix film Maestro, starring Bradley Cooper as the renowned composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, the young musicians of Bard College’s pre-professional graduate orchestra, The Orchestra Now (TŌN), are particularly excited about the film’s imminent release. They were selected to perform Beethoven’s 8th Symphony in the film, with “Leonard Bernstein” (Cooper) conducting, and will also be on the Deutsche Grammophon release of the film’s original soundtrack.
In April of 2022, TŌN was approached by the film’s orchestra casting agent. The script included a 1989 Tanglewood performance by Bernstein with a youth orchestra. “They told us they had considered all of the major pre-professional young orchestras on the east coast,” said TŌN Executive Director Kristin Roca. By the end of the month, Cooper and the casting director had selected The Orchestra Now for the role. By May, the TŌN musicians were at Tanglewood, preparing to perform with “Lenny.” In the weeks after being cast in the film, the students squeezed costume fittings in New York City into their already busy schedule of TŌN concerts. Roca also needed to ensure the instruments they would be playing would be correct for 1989. “We arrived in Tanglewood to shoot our performance on May 21,” said Roca. “After going through hair and makeup, the students headed onto the stage, where they worked for several hours with the Metropolitan Opera’s Music Director Maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin, rehearsing and recording Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8.” With the recording complete, the orchestra was joined on stage by Bradley Cooper and filmed their 1989 Tanglewood performance for the screen. For double bassist Milad Daniari, a 2018 TŌN graduate, this was a highlight of his young career. “Like most classical musicians, I grew up surrounded by Leonard Bernstein’s iconic recordings and videos. I even have a framed print of him conducting the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood hanging above my desk,” he said. “To film this once-in-a-lifetime scene for Maestro, at Tanglewood no less, remains one of the most incredible moments of my career. The second Bradley Cooper came on set in full makeup, it truly felt as if Leonard Bernstein was in the room with us.” Leon Botstein, founder and music director of TŌN and president of Bard College said, “I’m so terribly proud of TŌN and that it was invited to participate in this fabulous project. The combination of Bernstein and Beethoven is hard to beat. It’s an experience the musicians won’t forget.” Maestro will have a limited theatrical release on November 22, and will be available for streaming on Netflix on December 20. The Maestro Original Soundtrack album will be released by Deutsche Grammophon digitally on November 17 and on CD and vinyl on December 1. |
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11-16-2023 |
Five Bard Conservatory of Music and Music Program faculty members and alumni/ae have been nominated for the 2024 GRAMMY Awards. Artistic Director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program Stephanie Blythe is featured on the album Champion, nominated for Best Opera Recording. Bard Composers in Residence Jessie Montgomery and Missy Mazzoli are both nominees for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Mazzoli’s concerto Dark With Excessive Bright and Montgomery’s “Rounds” for piano and string orchestra (featured in pianist Awadagin Pratt’s Stillpoint) have been nominated for the GRAMMY. Julia Bullock MM ’11 has been nominated for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album for her album Walking In The Dark. In the category of Best Contemporary Instrumental Album, music program alumnus Max Zbiral-Teller ’06, along with his House of Waters bandmates, has been nominated for On Becoming. The 2024 GRAMMYs, officially known as the 66th GRAMMY Awards, will take place Sunday, February 4 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
https://www.grammy.com/news/2024-grammys-nominations-full-winners-nominees-list |
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11-07-2023 |
Freyja Hartzell, associate professor at the Bard Graduate Center (BGC), spoke with Jonathan Van Ness for their podcast Getting Curious about the role that dolls play in the formation of human identity, and as pedagogical objects that shape children’s ideas about themselves. “I’m a design historian, and what I’m really interested in, in terms of design, is how we relate with objects that we use, but also how they relate to us and how they change our behavior and how they kind of influence us in various ways,” Hartzell told Van Ness. “I got this idea at some point that wouldn’t it be cool to study dolls because in a way, they’re like the quintessential example of this kind of object, right? That's baked into them. Like they’re designed to have an impact on us. They’re designed to kind of create a relationship with us.” Hartzell, who teaches the history of modern design, architecture, and art at BGC, is currently working on a new project that examines dolls and other types of human figures in the history of design as a means of interrogating key aspects of subject-object relations for a new book Doll Parts: Designing Likeness. She is also working on a related exhibition called Dollatry, which will open at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in February 2025.
https://jonathanvanness.com/podcast/why-do-we-play-with-dolls-with-freyja-hartzell/ |
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Upcoming Events
- 4/26FridayDegree Recital: Wenrui Shi, guqin, with Danni Chen, guqin, and Neilson Chen, piano
1:00 pm – 2:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space - 4/26FridayDegree Recital: Zeke Morgan, composer, presents his new opera, "Requiem"
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space - 4/26FridayDegree Recital: "Road to Freedom" with Bryan Zhe Wang, guqin
8:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space