News & Events

The Library and Archives at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) has acquired the archives of John G. Hanhardt, noted film and media arts curator. The donation builds on CCS Bard’s initiative to build a unique research collection comprising the personal papers and archives of innovative and influential contemporary art curators, art dealers, critics, galleries and alternative art spaces.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2501

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents a full spring season of performing arts events, including jazz, opera, and orchestral concerts, and innovative dance and theater productions, from February through May. Highlights Include Chris Washburne and the SYOTOS Band, Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, American Symphony Orchestra concerts, An Opera Double Bill, An Evening with Anna Deavere Smith, Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s Romeo & Juliet, and dance productions including Joanna Kotze’s it happened it had happened it is happening it will happen and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in residence.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2500

Construction has begun on a new baseball facility at Bard College. Bard restarted its baseball program last season after a 76-year hiatus. Now the college is getting a new field for its new team, thanks to a $2.2 million gift from an anonymous donor. The facility, to be named Honey Field, will give Bard ballplayers a field of their own, after playing home games last season at Dutchess Stadium in Fishkill and at Gruner Field in Kingston.
http://www.bardathletics.com/news/2013/12/9/BB_1209132022.aspx

Bruce Robertson's research is changing his field, providing a framework for understanding how human environments can lead animals into danger. One of his recent papers—"Ecological novelty and the emergence of evolutionary traps"—is currently among the most widely read publications in earth and planetary sciences. Bard College students have been "critically helpful" to Professor Robertson's research, assisting him in conducting experiments in the Bard labs and fieldwork in the surrounding Hudson Valley ecosystem.
http://www.bard.edu/news/news.php?id=88

Hudson Valley Balinese Gamelan Orchestras will host their annual winter concert on Friday, December 6, at Bard College's Olin Hall. The program, featuring Balinese music and dance begins at 8 p.m. under the leadership of artistic director and Balinese master musician, I Nyoman Suadin.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2499

Ten graduate students from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard will curate Marginalia, a new exhibition drawing from the Marieluise Hessel Collection. Marginalia is the first of two exhibitions in an extended exercise in reading and re-reading the permanent collection. The exhibition will open on Thursday, December 12, with a reception from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m.
http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/marginalia/

Environmental and urban studies major Jess Lambert '14 came to Bard from the small town of Liberty, New York. As a student representative for the Bard Sustainability Council, she’s committed to improving environmental practices on campus. "I’m glad I found a place that really recognizes the importance of pursuing the work you’re most excited about," she says. "That’s been really empowering for me."
http://www.bard.edu/news/profiles/?id=99

Bard alumnus and parent Pierre Joris '69 has won the Modern Language Association's Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Scholarly Study of Literature. Joris, professor emeritus of the University at Albany, State University of New York, receives the award for his translation of Paul Celan’s The Meridian: Final Version–Drafts–Materials.

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents the sublime comedy, Elephant Room. Three magicians. One show. Zero boring stuff. Sub-zero intelligence. It’s time to make it all add up in the Elephant Room. Elephant Room will be performed at the Fisher Center’s Theater Two, December 13–15.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2498

A political studies and philosophy major, Bard College alumnus Saim Saeed ’13 won a Davis Projects for Peace Award for his project, “Living Together—Navigating Common Grounds: A MENA-EU Initiative” in Istanbul, Turkey. In May 2012, during his junior year at Bard, the New York Times published his op-ed essay "Shouting in the Mirror." After graduating from Bard College, Saeed went to work as a writer for the American Interest. In this interview, he talks about the importance of his study abroad experience at Bard.


http://vimeo.com/75626944

Bard alumnus Dan Cline '08 has been volunteering with the Peace Corps in Ukraine for more than a year. He currently lives and works in the town of Haisyn, where he teaches English as a second language to primary and secondary school students at the Haisyn School-Gymnasium. Shocked to find that the classrooms had no dictionaries, Cline is raising funds to provide better learning tools for Haisyn’s students and teachers. He has also organized English language clubs at the school and has been offering extra tutoring to students. Cline acts as vice president of the Peace Corps Gender and Development Working Group in the region, and as secretary of the HIV/AIDS Working Group. He is also involved in groups for Technology for Development and the National Olympiad.

Cline also recently received a Small Project Assistance Program grant through USAID for his keystone Peace Corps service project. With this grant, Cline will organize and oversee the construction of an outdoor athletic complex on the school grounds, which will be open to the larger community. The project will also involve Cline's Young Volunteers' Club, and will make available healthy lifestyle education for students. Cline has recently garnered media attention in Ukraine for his varied and committed work on behalf of young people in Haisyn, including interviews published in The Tribune of Labor and the Haisyn Herald.

When Daniel Pacheco ’07 accepted a job through Engineers Without Borders to work in Cambodia, he had no idea that he would end up launching his own sustainable energy company there. Four years later, he's helping to bring energy independence to communities throughout the country. Working with Cambodian colleagues, Pacheco installs solar in homes, orphanages, and clinics, and makes sure these systems are sustainable for local people in the long term.
http://www.bard.edu/news/news.php?id=87

The Bard College men's and women's soccer teams have earned Team Academic Awards from the National Soccer Coaches Association of America for the 2012–13 academic year. Bard's men's team had a cumulative GPA of 3.39, highest among all Liberty League schools. Bard's women's soccer team had a 3.26 cumulative GPA. Nationally, 862 teams qualified with GPAs of 3.0 or higher, but only 182 institutions had both the men's and women's programs recognized.
http://www.bardathletics.com/news/2013/11/21/MSOC_1121132341.aspx

ECLA of Bard has now become Bard College Berlin, A Liberal Arts University. The change of name signals the institutional affiliation to Bard College in Annandale. Bard College Berlin is a German university recognized by the Senate of Berlin, with a faculty active in teaching and research and trained at the most renowned universities in Europe and the U.S. Bard College Berlin offers an intensive program in intellectual history together with the opportunity to specialize in a specific discipline of the humanities or social sciences.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2497

The Bard Prison Initiative has received two significant grants that will further the program's work with incarcerated students in New York State. A $134,000 grant from the Nancy and Edwin Marks Family Foundation will fund the launch of a new campus this fall at Fishkill Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison for men in Beacon. A $150,000 three-year grant from the New York Community Trust will fund undergraduate college degree courses and reentry support for BPI’s program for incarcerated women. The largest program of its kind in the United States, BPI has awarded 250 degrees and educated more than 500 students. Read more about grants from the Nancy and Edwin Marks Family Foundation and New York Community Trust.

The Bard College men's basketball team started the 2013–14 season with a splash last weekend when it won the Coaches vs. Cancer Tip-Off Tournament. After upending tournament host Connecticut College on Saturday night, the Raptors defeated Suffolk University, 85–75, in the championship game on Sunday. Coaches vs. Cancer is a nationwide collaboration between the American Cancer Society and the National Association of Basketball Coaches, which increases cancer awareness and raises funds in support of cancer research and education.
http://www.bardathletics.com/news/2013/11/17/MBB_1117135640.aspx

President Botstein talks about Bard's fresh look at college admissions, the evolving job market, and the future of higher education in this Huffington Post interview. "Learning, like love, death and eating, are fundamental human activities," says President Botstein. "It's at the core of human existence and its character has a resilience of continuity that is part of what makes up human nature."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/c-m-rubin/leon-botstein_b_4289107.html

Bard's Fisher Center has launched a pilot program to provide new arts education opportunities for Red Hook students. Working in collaboration with the Red Hook Central School District, the Fisher Center is inviting students to participate in a range of performing arts activities, including attending open rehearsals, plays, concerts, and master classes, and staging performances by Red Hook students in theater, choral, and band programs in the Fisher Center’s theaters.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2494

Journalist Matt Taibbi ’92 has emerged as one of the shrewdest, most tenacious reporters of our nation’s financial system and politics. In this interview with William Stavru '87, he discusses financial regulation, the multiparty system, and the state of journalism today.
http://www.bard.edu/news/news.php?id=86

The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College gathered high-level policymakers, distinguished economists, and leading banking and investment professionals at the conference “The Eurozone Crisis, Greece, and the Experience of Austerity,” in Athens, Greece, November 8–9. The conference was organized as part of the Levy Institute’s international research agenda and in conjunction with the Ford Foundation Project on Financial Instability. Click below to listen to conference audio.
http://www.levyinstitute.org/news/?event=50

Twenty-four Bard College students have been named to the Liberty League 2013 Fall All-Academic Teams. To be recognized as a member of the All-Academic team, a student athlete must be a sophomore or higher in class standing with a cumulative grade point average of at least 3.20. The Liberty League's fall championship sports include men's and women's cross country, field hockey, football, men's and women's soccer, and volleyball.
http://www.bardathletics.com/news/2013/11/7/MXC_1107132048.aspx

On a foggy January day in northernmost Vermont, Justin Gallanter ’34 recounted his memories of his years at St. Stephen’s College, the precursor to Bard: “At a school with 100 students and a faculty of maybe 15, there were no secrets.” His gaze was clear, his memory sharp, and his presence, as the last known living St. Stephen’s alumnus, a bridge to the past.
http://www.bard.edu/news/news.php?id=85

Remarks from the panelists at this year's breakfast and commentary were wide-ranging and well delivered. A great deal of emphasis was placed on the necessity of students embracing ambiguity and uncertainty in the classroom. Accomplished panelists represented BHSEC math and science faculty, and were joined by Leon Botstein, president of Bard College.
http://blogs.bard.edu/bhsecnews/2013/11/05/rethinking-math-science-classrooms-bhsec-hosts-3rd-annual-breakfast-commentary/

Bard College presents a reading by Eleanor Catton on Thursday, November 7 at 7:30 p.m. in the Bard Chapel. Catton recently became, at 28, the youngest person to ever receive the Man Booker Prize for her novel The Luminaries, which is also the longest book to receive the prize. Catton will read from The Luminaries at this event. Admission is free and open to the public and no reservations are required.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2488

Bard College is pleased to announce the opening of its newest early college campus: the Bard Early College at the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) Promise Academy. This early college program, created through a partnership between Bard College and the Harlem Children’s Zone, will provide high school students in the HCZ Promise Academy charter schools the opportunity to take undergraduate seminars taught by college professors and to earn up to a year of tuition-free Bard College credits concurrently with a high school diploma.
http://blogs.bard.edu/bhsecnews/2013/11/04/bard-college-launches-new-early-college-partnership-harlem-childrens-zone/

Bard College students Mariel Fiori '05 and Emily Schmall '05 founded La Voz magazine in 2004 as a Trustee Leader Scholar (TLS) project. Their goal was to serve the Hispanic community of the Mid–Hudson Valley with a free, Spanish-language publication featuring cultural content, news, and empowering information. This award-winning publication has grown to a circulation of 5,000 and an estimated readership of 20,000. Recently, La Voz joined the Spanish-language HuffPost Voces section of the Huffington Post as a contributor.
http://voces.huffingtonpost.com/la-voz-del-valle-de-hudson/

Senior Julia DeFabo's Bard experience has taken her to unexpected places. A student athlete playing for Bard's tennis team, she came to the College planning to study sociology or human rights. Instead she developed an unexpected interest in African art, particularly how it is curated and discussed from a Western perspective. The Pennsylvania native has since studied in France and Senegal and plans to pursue a Ph.D. in African art history after graduation.
http://www.bardathletics.com/awards.aspx?aow=10

Bard College announces the appointment of Neil Gaiman as Professor in the Arts. Gaiman, who joins the College in the spring semester of 2014 as a member of the Theater and Performance faculty, will teach courses across the Division of the Arts and the Division of Languages and Literature. His first course will be an advanced writing workshop exploring the history of the fantastic, approaches to fantasy fiction, and the meaning of fantasy today, taught through the Written Arts Program and the Experimental Humanities concentration.


Professor in the Arts Neil Gaiman discusses how he began to teach writing at Bard in the spring of 2013.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2487

Conjunctions:61, A Menagerie—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—gathers writings from many of today’s leading contemporary writers about the vast world of our fellow beasts who occupy the earth, oceans, and sky. A collection of fiction, essays, poems, memoirs, and dialogues, A Menagerie is coedited by Conjunctions editor, novelist, and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow, and novelist and 2012 Bard Fiction Prize winner Benjamin Hale. The issue features a previously unpublished conversation about animals between Bradford Morrow and Beat icon William S. Burroughs from 1987.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2486

The Bard Center for Civic Engagement and the Human Rights Project host Trey Kay, award-winning Hudson Valley journalist, who will present his new radio documentary The Long Game: Texas’ Ongoing Battle for the Direction of the Classroom on Thursday, November 7, at 7 pm in Weis Cinema of the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2485

Acclaimed sculptor and Bard faculty member Judy Pfaff will receive the International Sculpture Center's 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award. Praised in Sculpture, the magazine of the International Sculpture Center, she is an "artist’s artist, deeply admired, respected, even imitated, by colleagues, youthful peers, and art world insiders." Professor Pfaff shares this honor with sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard, and will receive the award at a gala in New York City in the spring of 2014.
http://www.sculpture.org/pfaff-uvr/bio-pfaff.shtml

In a ranked list of the contemporary art world's most powerful figures, CCS Bard was listed as one of only two schools, noted for an exceptional graduate program training cutting edge curators.
http://artreview.com/power_100/

The Bard Math Circle will host the AMC 8 Math Contest on Tuesday, November 19, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. at Bard College. The AMC 8, first offered in 1985, is an annual contest in middle school mathematics sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America. In 2012, more than 150,000 students from 2,300 schools participated in the AMC 8 contest, including 49 students at Bard College from around the Mid-Hudson Valley. The AMC 8 program at Bard will include an inspirational talk by Bard mathematics professor Sam Hsiao, and a panel discussion for parents entitled "Supporting Your Child as a High Achiever in Math and Science." Click Here to Register
http://www.bardmathcircle.org/2013/10/amc-8-registration-update.html

On Thursday, November 14, Tavia Nyong’o—associate professor of performance studies at New York University and Errol Hill Award winner for best book in African American theatre and performance studies—will speak at Bard College. Nyong’o’s talk, “Epistemology of the Lifeboat: Life of Pi and Queer Fabulation,” is being presented by Bard’s Environmental and Urban Studies Program, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, and the Language and Literature Division, with funding from a Bard College, Mellon-supported course development award. The talk takes place at 4:30 p.m. in the Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation Room 103 and is free and open to the public.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2484

Author Bennett Sims has been selected to receive the annual Bard Fiction Prize for 2014. The prize, established in 2001 by Bard College to encourage and support promising young fiction writers, consists of a $30,000 cash award and appointment as writer in residence at the College for one semester. Sims is receiving the prize for his debut novel, A Questionable Shape. In this penetrating novel set in Baton Rouge, Sims writes about a son looking for his undead father and transcends traditional zombie narrative to deliver a wise and philosophical rumination on the nature of memory and loss.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2483

Author and climate leader Bill McKibben has joined the Bard Center for Environmental Policy (Bard CEP), an innovative graduate program at Bard that offers master of science degrees in environmental policy and in climate science and policy. McKibben is the author of a dozen books about the environment, beginning with The End of Nature in 1989, which is regarded as the first book for a general audience on climate change. He is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org, which has coordinated 15,000 rallies in 189 countries since 2009. Time magazine called him “the planet’s best green journalist,” and the Boston Globe said in 2010 that he was “probably the country’s most important environmentalist.”
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2480

Bard College Master of Arts in Teaching (Bard MAT) graduate Colleen Bucci ’08 has been named a New York State Master Teacher by Governor Andrew M. Cuomo. Bucci is one of 104 educators from four regions to be selected as the first group of New York State Master Teachers. Bucci, who graduated from the Bard MAT Program in 2008, is a biology teacher in the Hyde Park Central School District.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2481

Alumni/ae Day and Family Weekend will take place on campus October 25–27. Join us for a variety of events, including What's New at Bard, the Ask the President forum, sample classes, performances by the American Symphony Orchestra, campus tours, and panel discussions. Click below to view the full program.
http://annandaleonline.org/s/990/public.aspx?sid=990&gid=1&pgid=1269&cid=2641&ecid=2641&crid=0&calpgid=13&calcid=1349

On Saturday, October 12, Bard president Leon Botstein conducted the Sinfónica Juvenil de Caracas in Tokyo's Metropolitan Art Space as part of the group's 2013 tour of Asia. As guest conductor for the Sinfónica for the third time in less than a year, President Botstein led a very well-received program of Verdi, Mozart, and Shostakovich. President Botstein is the first foreign conductor ever to be invited to conduct the Sinfónica on a tour. The 200 young musicians are part of Venezuela's El Sistema, a youth music education program that incorporates community building and social change. Bard College has formed Take a Stand with the Longy School of Music of Bard College and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in order to support El Sistema for teachers and students in the United States.

Deer are often blamed for the spread of Lyme disease, but researchers now point to the increase in white-footed mice and the decline of their natural predator, the red fox. “It is an animal weed,” says Dr. Keesing of the white-footed mice. “Anything that causes a surge in the population of these mice is something to watch.” (Scientific American)
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=researchers-seek-scapegoat-for-lyme-diseases-startling-prevalence

Bill Emmott, former Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, will present and discuss his new documentary film Girlfriend in a Coma on Thursday, October 17, at 6 pm in the Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Theater, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center at Bard College. Called “beautiful and cruel” by Le Monde, Girlfriend in a Coma—cowritten by Emmott with Annalisa Piras, the film’s director—deals with the current political and economic crisis in Italy.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2479

Bard College has received a grant of $14,000 to host The Big Read in Germantown, Kingston, Red Hook, Rhinecliff, and Tivoli. The Big Read, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) managed by Arts Midwest, is designed to revitalize the role of literature in American culture and to encourage citizens to read for pleasure and enlightenment. The local Big Read will focus on Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, and activities will take place from March 15 to May 2, 2014.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2476

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts presents The Bard College Conservatory Orchestra in concert at the Sosnoff Theater on Sunday, November 10 at 3 p.m. Conducted by Leon Botstein, music director, the Conservatory Orchestra will perform a program that includes Rossini’s Overture to William Tell; Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel; and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15 in A Major, Op. 141. The concert is part of the Conservatory Sundays series, and all proceeds will benefit the Scholarship Fund of The Bard College Conservatory of Music.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2477

Students in Bard's Theater and Performance Program present Moby Dick—Rehearsed, October 24–27 in the Fisher Center's Theater Two. In this 1955 play by Orson Welles, a company of actors gathers in a rehearsal room to work on an adaptation of the Herman Melville novel. In Welles’s dramatic experiment the rehearsal is the performance, and a door is opened on the act of theatrical creation. Tickets are $15 general admission, and free for the Bard Community. Reservations are required.
http://fishercenter.bard.edu/calendar/event.php?eid=118698

The Library and Archives at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) has acquired the archives of John G. Hanhardt, noted film and media arts curator. The donation builds on CCS Bard’s initiative to build a unique research collection comprising the personal papers and archives of innovative and influential contemporary art curators, art dealers, critics, galleries and alternative art spaces. The donation also supports CCS Bard’s 20th Anniversary Next Decade campaign, which aims to raise funds over the next ten years to maintain the school’s internationally renowned, world-class faculty and research and exhibition center.
http://www.bard.edu/ccs/2013/10/07/ccs-bard-library-and-archives-announces-that-distinguished-curator-john-g-hanhardt-has-donated-his-personal-archives-to-the-center-for-curatorial-studies/

The Bard Prison Initiative is expanding. This summer the program opened two new campuses in New York State, one of which restored BPI's program for women after Bayview Correctional Facility in Manhattan was closed after Hurricane Sandy. BPI has more students enrolled in its programs and a more diverse array of classes than ever before. In June, the program hosted a conference on the liberal arts in prison with its growing consortium of national partner organizations. BPI has also hired three new site directors, all of whom are Bard alumni/ae: classicist Rana Al-Saadi Liebert '01, writer Joe Vallese '06, and sculptor Pamela J. Wallace '87.
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This October, Bard College is launching a new path to admission: an online essay examination. The Bard Entrance Examination, open to high school juniors and seniors, will be accessible online through Bard’s admission website and is composed solely of essay questions, offering a new way to apply to Bard that bypasses existing standardized tests and admission processes.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2474

The Hannah Arendt Center will host its sixth annual international conference from Thursday, October 3 to Friday, October 4 in Olin Hall. The two-day conference, “Failing Fast: The Educated Citizen in Crisis,” will examine the issues surrounding American education and what it means to educate a conscious, democratic citizenry.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2465

Jeremy Denk, esteemed pianist and faculty of The Bard College Conservatory of Music, has been named a 2013 MacArthur Fellow. MacArthur Fellowships are awarded to talented individuals in a variety of fields who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self direction. MacArthur Fellows each receive a $625,000 grant that is bestowed with no conditions—recipients may use the money as they see fit. Nominated anonymously by leaders in their respective fields and never notified of their candidacy, the recipients learn of their selection only when they receive a call from the MacArthur Foundation days before the public announcement. Denk is the 12th Bard faculty member to be honored with a MacArthur Fellowship.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2473

The Bard Debate Union opened its 10th season with exceptional student performances at last weekend's Northeast Season Opener Debate Tournament at Binghamton University. Among a number of strong showings from the Bard team, first-year students Eva-Marie Quinones '17 and Jackie Merrill '17 were named tournament champions in the novice parliamentary division. The next event in the team's public debate series, "Resolved: Online Learning Will Save Higher Education," takes place at Bard on Tuesday, October 1 in conjunction with the Hannah Arendt Center Conference, "Failing Fast: The Educated Citizen in Crisis" (October 3–4).
http://debate.bard.edu/?page_id=459