Bard News & Events

The Bard SummerScape festival presents the world premiere—almost a full century after its creation—of Demolishing Everything with Amazing Speed (1917): four newly rediscovered puppet plays written by leading Italian Futurist Fortunato Depero, as translated, designed, and directed by Obie and Bessie Award–winning artist Dan Hurlin. Combining traditional bunraku puppetry techniques with state-of-the-art technology—from 3-D printing to sound sampling—and a live score from Tony Award–nominated composer/sound designer Dan Moses Schreier, the production will be mounted in the LUMA Theater at Bard's Fisher Center.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2800

Bard College students and alumnae have won several prestigious awards and honors. Among them are two Fulbrights, two Gilman Scholarships, a Davis Project for Peace Prize, a Humanity in Action Fellowship, and a Truman Scholarship finalist.
http://www.bard.edu/news/features/?id=151

The Carnegie Corporation of New York has named Mark Danner, James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities at Bard College, as one of its 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellows. Recipients of the award receive up to $200,000 to fund one to two years of scholarly research and writing in the areas of education, law, technology, business, and public policy. The award will support Danner’s reporting and writing project, entitled “Breaking the Borders,” on the dissolving borders of the Middle East. The project is related to his forthcoming book, Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War, which will be published by Simon & Schuster in June.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2799

The Bard College Department of Athletics and Recreation and the Student Athlete Advisory Committee hosted the fifth annual Special Olympics Day on Sunday, May 1. Residents from the Astor Home for Children in Rhinebeck, The Devereaux School in Red Hook, and the Children's Home of Kingston came to Bard for an afternoon of fun and camaraderie with dozens of Bard student athletes.
http://bardathletics.com/news/2016/5/1/general-bard-student-athletes-host-fifth-annual-special-olympics-day.aspx

Reviving important but neglected operas has long been central to Bard SummerScape’s mission, and this year’s immersion in "Puccini and His World"—as befits the most popular and successful opera composer of all time—offers more opera than any season to date. The festival’s operatic centerpiece is an all-too-rare, fully staged production of Iris, a darkly expressionistic forerunner of Madama Butterfly by Puccini’s close contemporary Pietro Mascagni. Starring Grammy-nominated soprano Talise Trevigne in an original new staging by James Darrah—Musical America’s New Artist of the Month for December 2015—Iris runs for five performances between July 22 and 31, with an Opera Talk, free and open to the public, before the matinee on July 24.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2798

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presents a Mother’s Day side-by-side performance with Bard Conservatory Orchestra and The Orchestra Now (TŌN). Conducted by Leon Botstein, the concert includes Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6. The concert will be held on Sunday, May 8 at 3 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. Tickets are a $15–$20 suggested donation and free to the Bard community. Ticket sales benefit the Bard Conservatory of Music’s Scholarship Fund. For tickets, call the box office at 845-758-7900, or go to fishercenter.bard.edu.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2797

The Bard College community packed the Bertelsmann Campus Center and other campus venues for Teach-In 2016 on Tuesday, April 19, and Wednesday, April 20. The Teach-In featured lectures, workshops, performances, and exhibitions designed to educate and engage the campus.
http://www.bard.edu/news/features/?id=149

Chelsea Mozen MBA '15 joined the inaugural class of Bard’s MBA in Sustainability program in the fall of 2012 because she wanted to help rewire the world with clean energy. This month, one year after graduation, Chelsea joined Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson and other team members at the company headquarters to announce a bold, near-term commitment by the Internet retailer to achieve carbon neutrality. The company pledged to transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2020 and grow a thriving, carbon neutral marketplace in the months, years, and decades to come.
http://www.bard.edu/news/features/?id=150

The Bard Debate Union at Eastern New York Correctional Facility beat the West Point team for the second time on Friday, April 15. They debated on the topic, "Resolved: American corporations should have constitutional rights," with Bard arguing in favor of the proposition. After an exciting debate, Bard was pronounced the winner. This leaves the team 4-1 in overall wins/losses and 2-1 against West Point. Members of the Bard Debate Union at Eastern study in the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), a program that provides a rigorous undergraduate curriculum—the same one that's taught on Bard's main campus in Annandale—to incarcerated students. The team made headlines last fall for beating the Harvard College team. This debate was the culmination of months of research and preparation with the tireless leadership of Coach David Register and the support of Bard Debate Union members in Annandale, who serve as BPI debate fellows, researching for their teammates at Eastern. Thanks also to Bard Debate Union codirector Ruth Zisman, BPI founder and director Max Kenner '01, Megan Callaghan, Robert Tynes, and the entire BPI staff.

Read more in the Wall Street Journal

On Thursday, April 21, Bard College will host a celebratory reading in honor of the work of Ann Lauterbach, David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature, member of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts faculty, and the renowned author of Under the Sign; Or to Begin Again (National Book Award nominee); Hum; If in Time: Selected Poems 1975–2000; The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience; and other books. Poet John Ashbery, Charles P. Stevenson Professor Emeritus of Languages and Literature, writes, “Ann Lauterbach’s poetry goes straight to the elastic, infinite core of time.” Celebrating Lauterbach’s work will be poets Jibade-Khalil Huffman ’03, Simone White, Michael Ives, Camille Guthrie, and Anselm Berrigan, who will briefly discuss their artistic relationship to Lauterbach’s influential oeuvre. The evening will culminate with Lauterbach reading her own work.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2780

Music Director Leon Botstein will conduct The Orchestra Now in a program of Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Ives, and two world premieres by Bard students Tamzin Elliott and Daniel Zlatkin on April 23–24. The concerts conclude the Orchestra’s inaugural performance season in residence at Bard College, designed to offer adventurous programs of familiar and lesser-known works in the incomparable Sosnoff Theater.  
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2789

Celebrate the arrival of spring at Bard’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts with a double bill of new dance featuring two of New York City’s most inventive choreographers, April 29 – May 1. Bessie award–winning choreographer Faye Driscoll’s Thank You For Coming: Attendance is an acclaimed work imagining a fantastical society in which performance is both a collective and political act, exploring dance from ancient ritual to contemporary forms, from balletic to the head-bang. John Jasperse’s Within between is a playful and complex dance exploring emptiness and in-between places. With an original score by Jonathan Bepler and performances by four of New York City’s most remarkable modern dancers, Within between earned two Bessie awards.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2796

Peter Eavis on how regulators mess with bankers' minds, and why that's good.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/15/upshot/how-regulators-mess-with-bankers-minds-and-why-thats-good.html

On the night of April 12, Bard College student organizers with the Election at Bard Initiative presented to the Town of Red Hook Board, appealing for a new polling place on campus. The Town Board was convinced and unanimously passed a resolution urging the Dutchess County Board of Elections to take action and create a polling location at Bard.

Professor of Studio Arts Laura Battle has created a site-specific, sixteen-foot painting, structured on the spiral galaxy, for Vassar College's Touch the Sky exhibition. Curated by Mary-Kay Lombino at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, the exhibition celebrates astronomy as seen through the eyes of 18 artists. Works on view include artist books, prints, drawings, paintings, photography, and film. The opening lecture and reception will take place on Friday, April 29, at 5:30 p.m., and the exhibition will be open through August 21.
 
http://fllac.vassar.edu/exhibitions/2016/touch-the-sky.html

The Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation has awarded a $5 million dollar leadership grant to the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies to support a scientific study, being done in partnership with Bard College, that seeks to reduce Lyme disease in neighborhoods. Research will be carried out in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, New York State Department of Health, and Dutchess County Department of Behavioral and Community Health. If successful, the project will revolutionize Lyme disease prevention.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2793

This summer, for the first time since its founding, the Bard Music Festival turns its focus to Italy, with a two-week, in-depth exploration of "Giacomo Puccini and His World." In eleven themed concert programs, complemented by pre-concert lectures, panel discussions, a special event, and expert commentary, Bard examines Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924), the most popular and successful—yet, paradoxically, all too often critically underrated—opera composer of all time. Opening a window onto Italy’s outstanding musical heritage, Weekend One explores Puccini and Italian Musical Culture (August 5–7), and Weekend Two looks Beyond Verismo (August 12–14). 
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2792

Bard College professor Brooke Jude has led a research team that includes students in the Bard biology program, at Al Quds Bard College in the West Bank, and at several Hudson Valley schools. This investigation of bacterial species in the local watershed was recently published in a citizen science–themed issue of the Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education. Researchers worked to determine the prevalence of violacein-producing bacteria, which potentially limit outbreaks of an invasive fungus that leads to a decline in the amphibian population. The secondary school students gathered water samples, after which the college students—Yegor Dukashin and Kelsey O’Brien from Bard, and Raneem Jo’Beh from Al Quds—worked to identify the samples. Local students participated from Red Hook High School, Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, and F.D. Roosevelt High School in Staatsburg.
http://www.asmscience.org/content/journal/jmbe/10.1128/jmbe.v17i1.1002

Bard College and Simon's Rock faculty member, poet, and translator of German literature Peter Filkins has recently had two of his works reviewed. His translation of H.G. Adler's novel The Wall was reviewed in the London Review of Books, and his edition of a collection of Adler's essays, Orthodoxie des Herzens, was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement.

"Death camps in civilization" in the Times Literary Supplement | PDF

"The crematorium is a zoo" in the London Review of Books | PDF

The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College gathers top policymakers, economists, and analysts at the 25th Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference on the State of the U.S. and World Economies to discuss, among many issues, whether what appears to be a global economic slowdown will jeopardize the implementation and efficiency of Dodd-Frank regulatory reforms, the transition of monetary policy away from zero interest rates, and the “new” normal of fiscal policy. The conference, “Will the Global Economic Environment Constrain U.S. Growth and Employment?,” is being organized by the Levy Institute with support from the Ford Foundation, and will take place Tuesday and Wednesday, April 12–13, at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. ​
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2777

Bard College students are organizing a public stem cell donor drive on Wednesday, April 13 from 1 to 7 p.m. The event will be held in the Bertelsmann Campus Center on the Bard College campus. It is being sponsored by the Bard DBC Stem Cell Donor Drive, in collaboration with Delete Blood Cancer (DBC), a charitable organization that has the world’s largest database of potential stem cell donors. Registering and collecting database records for prospective bone marrow donors can help save the lives of people fighting blood cancer. 
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2788

On view through April 18, "Photographs of Educated Youth: Images of the Chinese Youth Sent to the Countryside during the Cultural Revolution 1966–1976," photography of Tang Desheng, is curated by Patricia Karetzky, who holds the Oskar Munsterberg Chair of Asian Art. The show comprises 25 photographs of the Cultural Revolution in China from the perspective of the young people sent to the countryside. The photographer, Tang Desheng, who was a youth during that time, embedded himself in the movement and traveled throughout China for 10 years documenting the lives of displaced youth. The Bard Art History Program, Asian Studies Program, Hannah Arendt Center, and Human Rights Program are sponsoring the exhibition.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2790

Bard Prison Initiative founder and Executive Director Max Kenner has been named as a recipient of the 2016 Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Forty Under 40 Shaker Awards. Bestowed annually to 40 people under the age of 40 who have shown a strong commitment to the Hudson Valley, the Shaker Awards identify and honor the next generation of leaders. The awards ceremony will be held on the evening of Thursday, April 28 at the Changepoint Auditorium in Poughkeepsie, New York.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2791

On Monday, April 18, award-winning author Eli Gottlieb will read from Best Boy, his new novel about autism, memory, and redemption. The New Yorker finds Best Boy “arresting ... The book’s empathy is bracing.” Celebrated writer Cynthia Ozick says, “I’ve fallen in love with Best Boy, touched by its delicacy and fearless truths.” A short documentary film featuring Gottlieb’s brother, the model for the protagonist of Best Boy, will be screened at the start of the reading. Gottlieb will be introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow. The reading, presented as part of Morrow’s Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series, takes place at 2:30 p.m. in Weis Cinema, Bertelsmann Campus Center, and will be followed by a Q&A. The event is free and open to the public; no reservations are required.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2795

On Thursday, April 14, celebrated poet and art critic Roberto Tejada will read from his work at Bard College. The reading is presented by the John Ashbery Poetry Series. Poet Alan Gilbert says, “Tejada’s work is with dismantling borders and upsetting classifications. The result is a layered poetry that finds its form in dense stanzas composed of lines that frequently veer toward a kind of fractured prose.” Introduced by Ann Lauterbach, David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard, this event takes place at 6:00 p.m. in the Bard Chapel of the Holy Innocents. It is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2794

Experience the irresistible grooves of South African jazz that inspired Paul Simon’s Graceland with Uhadi, masters of Johannesburg’s jazz scene, on April 16. Uhadi comes to the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater for the final performance of their 2016 nationwide tour in Salute to Africa! 
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2787

For the past nine months, four Bard students have been working with students across the country to catalyze a nationwide conversation about state-level action on climate change. Now, during the week of April 4, thousands of high school and college students will meet with state officials to discuss the U.S. pledge to cut emissions 30 percent by 2030. 
http://www.bard.edu/news/features/?id=148

From April 7 to 8, the Bard College Experimental Humanities Program and its Sound Cluster at Bard College will gather scholars and practitioners to consider the potential of thinking about and through sound. The two-day symposium, Sound in Theory, Sound in Practice, will focus on questions of aurality, transmission, aesthetics, and evidence. The event takes place in the Laszlo Z. Bito ’60 Conservatory. It is free and open to the public, but pre-registration is required.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2786

Bard College junior Harry Johnson, a member of the 2016 Allstate NABC Good Works Team, was recognized for his commitment to serving others last weekend at the Men's Final Four. Johnson was honored on the court during the Oklahoma vs. Villanova game on Saturday. He and the nine other members of the Good Works Team were joined by NBA Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon on Sunday for a community service event, in which they worked with athletes from the Special Olympics of Texas. Johnson earned a place on the Good Works Team for his volunteer efforts mentoring local youth with Brothers at Bard and Dream to Achieve.
http://bardathletics.com/news/2016/4/4/mens-basketball-johnson-honored-performs-community-service-at-final-four-as-part-of-good-works-team-with-photos.aspx

Bard psychology major Eleonora Beier '16 has won a highly competitive Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. The fellowships recognize and support outstanding graduate students in the sciences, providing a three-year annual stipend of $34,000 along with a $12,000 cost of education allowance, as well as opportunities for international research and professional development. Eleonora will attend The University of California, Davis, where she plans to continue the music cognition research related to her Senior Project work in the Memory Dynamics Lab at Bard.