Bard’s extraordinary faculty are dedicated to the philosophy of teaching. Today and throughout Bard’s history, members of the faculty have effected change in medicine, the arts and letters, international affairs, journalism, scientific research, and education, among other endeavors. These distinguished scholars are advisers as well as instructors: Bard has no graduate teaching assistants. And the average class size of 16 in the Lower College and 12 in the Upper College allows for intimate discussions and one-on-one interaction.
David Bloom ’13 MM ’15. Photo by Bruce Kung
“What brought me to Bard, in a word, was the faculty.”
“To work with Joan Tower, George Tsontakis, and James Bagwell was an opportunity I couldn’t miss. I had long followed and admired their work, and then I found out that each of them taught here. It’s easy for musicians to focus only on music, whereas I wanted to have a broader education that would prepare me for a world that requires a more well-rounded base of knowledge and experience.”
—David Bloom ’13 MM ’15
—David Bloom ’13 MM ’15
Faculty News
Fisher Center Artist and Honorary Doctor of the Arts Justin Vivian Bond Profiled in the New York Times
“I don’t know any other singer or cabaret performer that does five individual, distinct shows a year.”
Fisher Center Artist and Honorary Doctor of the Arts Justin Vivian Bond Profiled in the New York Times
Bond, who recently moved to Paris, is performing a month-long residency at Joe's Pub in the East Village. Photo by Kyle Kupres
Bond first achieved notoriety as Kiki DuRane, part of the stage duo Kiki and Herb, with Kenny Mellman playing Herb. She has since released various records and performed widely, including as part of a long relationship with the Fisher Center and Bard College. Bond curated and hosted the Spiegeltent season for five years, regularly performing in sold-out summer shows there, and taught in Bard’s undergraduate Theater and Performance Program.
As detailed in the New York Times article, Bond left the United States for France when NYU Langone Health hospital ended its program providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth. Bond, who is trans, stars in an upcoming feature film—their first in a leading role—which she says is “about being detransitioned without your consent, which I think a lot of people are more worried about now than they were last year.”
Bard’s Theater and Performance Program offers an interdisciplinary, liberal arts-based approach to the making and study of theater and performance, and embraces a wide range of performance practices, from live art and interactive installation to classical theater from around the globe.
Post Date: 09-16-2026
Exhibition Curated By Professor Jack Ferver Reviewed in ArtForum
“Martha Graham: The Mother of Psychological Dance" offers "a deep examination of the artist’s legacy," writes ArtForum.
Exhibition Curated By Professor Jack Ferver Reviewed in ArtForum
Assistant Professor of Performing Arts Jack Ferver.
Ferver teaches in Bard’s Theater and Performance Program, which offers an interdisciplinary, liberal arts-based approach to the making and study of theater and performance, and embraces a wide range of performance practices, from live art and interactive installation to classical theater from around the globe.
Post Date: 09-16-2026
More News
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Bard College Professor Roosevelt Montás Awarded $100,000 Prize for Work in the Humanities
Bard College Professor Roosevelt Montás Awarded $100,000 Prize for Work in the Humanities
The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture has named Laura Y. Chang and Arnold Chavkin Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life at Bard Roosevelt Montás as the recipient of the prestigious Hiett Prize. The $100,000 cash prize was established in 2005 to support emerging leaders in the humanities who are actively contributing to ideas around what it means to be human.The Heitt Prize was established in 2005 to support emerging leaders in the humanities who are actively contributing to ideas around what it means to be human.
Montás, a specialist in American literature and culture with a particular interest in American national identity, joined Bard’s faculty in 2025 as part of the Chang Chavkin Center for Liberal Education and Civic Life. He also teaches in Bard’s literature program. Through his research and teaching, Montás has focused on the importance of liberal education and the future of the humanities.
“I am deeply honored to receive the Hiett Prize in the Humanities,” says Montás. “I have devoted my career to the conviction that the humanities are not a luxury but the most powerful means we have for cultivating free minds, enlarging our moral imagination, and preparing us for lives of purpose and responsible citizenship.”
Programming honoring Montás will take place at Southern Methodist University on October 15–16.
The Chang Chavkin Center for Liberal Arts and Civic Life is focused on the connection between liberal education and civic life. It hosts discussion-based classes and supports faculty in building general education programs for students in all disciplines.
Post Date: 09-10-2026
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Visiting Artist Tschabalala Self’s ’12 Lady In Blue Unveiled in London’s Trafalgar Square and Featured in the Guardian
Visiting Artist Tschabalala Self’s ’12 Lady In Blue Unveiled in London’s Trafalgar Square and Featured in the Guardian
A sculpture by Visiting Artist Tschabalala Self ’12 was unveiled in London’s Trafalgar Square on September 10. Lady in Blue stands prominently on the Square’s fourth plinth, one of the world’s best-known commission spaces for public art. The fourth plinth has been host to a rotating series of contemporary artists including Mark Wallinger, Katharina Fritsch, and David Shrigley.Tschabalala Self’s sculpture Lady In Blue.
The Guardian also featured Self in advance of Lady in Blue’s unveiling. Speaking about the sculpture, which the artist describes as an image of an everywoman striding forward into the future, and “a beacon that could shed light into a possible future,” she says, “it’s about there being space for all in places that were formerly weighted down by antiquated gestures, belief systems and impossibilities." The Guardian describes her work as “a lurid, vivid, super-colourful, mega-joyful celebration of everyday bodies” embodying “simplicity, joy, and above all freedom.” Lady in Blue will remain on the plinth for two years.
Self is a visiting artist in Bard’s Studio Arts Program, which provides a breadth of expanded offerings while retaining a strong core of courses that provide a firm grounding in basic techniques and principles, in an era when much contemporary art cannot be contained within the traditional categories and technology is transforming the production of visual images.
Post Date: 09-09-2026
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Pavlina Tcherneva, President of Bard’s Levy Economics Institute, Interviewed by Marketplace
Pavlina Tcherneva, President of Bard’s Levy Economics Institute, Interviewed by Marketplace
Pavlina Tcherneva, president of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, was interviewed by the Minnesota Public Radio program Marketplace. The segment addressed forthcoming economic data and their implications on inflation and daily life for average Americans. Tcherneva pointed to the impact of energy prices on the problem of inflation, especially amidst ongoing war in the Middle East. “There are no indications at this moment that inflation expectations are slowing down,” she said. Tscherneva previously spoke with Marketplace, also about inflation, in June.Pavlina Tcherneva, president of Bard’s Levy Economics Institute, was interviewed by Marketplace about the state of the US economy.
The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public policy research organization that encourages diversity of opinion in the examination of economic policy issues while striving to transform ideological arguments into informed debate.
Post Date: 09-09-2026
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Betty Parsons Exhibition at Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art Receives Multiple Positive Reviews
Betty Parsons Exhibition at Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art Receives Multiple Positive Reviews
The Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies has received a new round of reviews for the exhibition, “Betty Parsons: An Expanded World.” Hyperallergic, Brooklyn Rail, and Cultured all recently published glowing reviews of the exhibition. Parsons was a gallerist who championed abstract expressionist painters such as Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, and Barnett Newman, though her own artistic work has largely gone unknown to the general public. The exhibition, which opened in June and runs through October 18, 2026, is the first major exhibition of Parsons’s work. It features over eighty pieces, including sculptures and paintings spanning sixty years, along with two commissioned films exploring Parsons’s career. “Taken as a whole, An Expanded World offers a timely and detailed view into the world of Betty Parsons and her artmaking,” writes the Brooklyn Rail.The Betty Parsons Exhibition at Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art has received praise in numerous outlets.
“For the magnificent exhibition,” writes Cultured, “curator Kelly Taxter and artist Amy Sillman focus on the artistic aspects of [Parsons’s] legacy, gathering 81 of the paintings, works on paper, and sculptural assemblages that she created on the days she had off from being a dealer. Across these objects, her confident use of color and her assured gestural marks demonstrate that she was driven to make art, and did so in abundance, despite the time constraints of running a business promoting others.”
Parsons’s work will be discussed as part of an upcoming event, “A Conversation on Agnes Martin, Betty Parsons, and Coenties Slip,” on September 26 at Dia Beacon in Beacon, NY.
The Center for Curatorial Studies is an incubator for experimentation in exhibition-making and the leading institution dedicated exclusively to curatorial studies. The Hessel Museum of Art, built in 2006, presents experimental group exhibitions and monographic shows and also draws from the Marieluise Hessel Collection of Contemporary Art for exhibitions.
Further reading:
CCS Hessel Museum’s Betty Parsons Exhibit Reviewed in Art News and the New York Times
Post Date: 09-09-2026
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Exhibit Curated by Professor Susan Aberth Opens at Andrew Edlin Gallery
Exhibit Curated by Professor Susan Aberth Opens at Andrew Edlin Gallery
Conduits of the Unseen: Women Artists Imagine Other Worlds, a new exhibit curated by Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History Susan Aberth, has opened at Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York City. Centering the work of Paulina Peavy, a visionary artist known for her paintings, drawings, and ornamented masks, the exhibit also includes artists Leonora Carrington and Agnes Pelton, among others, alongside mediums like Madge Gill and Emma Kunz. In a press release, the gallery said the exhibition presents artists who “gave visual form to alternate realities, spirits, cosmic forces, and other planes of consciousness . . . united by a shared desire to give form to their inner visions, expressed across landscapes, portraits, narratives, and pure abstraction.” The exhibit opened on September 9 and runs through October 31, 2026.Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History Susan Aberth.
Aberth teaches in the Art History and Visual Culture Program, which introduces students to visual material across a broad range of periods and societies.
Post Date: 09-09-2026
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Bard’s New Chang Chavkin Center Director Roosevelt Montás Featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education
Bard’s New Chang Chavkin Center Director Roosevelt Montás Featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education
Bard’s new Chang Chavkin Center was featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The feature profiles Roosevelt Montás, the center’s director and Laura Y. Chang and Arnold Chavkin Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life, and explores his philosophy of a broad, less departmentally siloed form of liberal education. As the former director of Columbia University’s Core Curriculum, Montás has an established track record of advocating for a model of undergraduate learning based on foundational texts and discussion-based courses. He teaches in the undergraduate college, leading research into the advancement of liberal education. His focus is on the importance of liberal education and the study of texts with major cultural significance related to fundamental human questions, emphasizing lives of purpose and deep civic engagement.Bard’s new Chang Chavkin Center and Laura Y. Chang and Arnold Chavkin Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life Roosevelt Montás were featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Photo by Inbal Sivan
“Montás may seem like he’s tilting at windmills,” writes Beth McMurtrie, senior writer for the Chronicle. “But a lot of other people and groups are galloping alongside him. They include foundations, longtime champions of Great Books curricula, and the many faculty members who have transformed their classrooms by adopting this approach.”
Montás teaches in the Literature Program at Bard, which emphasizes cultural, linguistic, and geographic diversity, challenging national, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries.
Post Date: 09-03-2026
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