News

Bard College is pleased to announce the appointment of Kobena Mercer as the Charles P. Stevenson Chair in Art History and the Humanities, a joint appointment between the Art History and Visual Culture Program in the undergraduate College, and the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS). Mercer, who comes to Bard from Yale University, will assume his faculty position in fall 2021.

“We are delighted that Kobena Mercer has chosen to accept the Stevenson professorship,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein. “It is an honor to have as distinguished a scholar and teacher as Professor Mercer, whose wide-ranging work spanning the arts and humanities feels crucial to Bard’s mission, as a member of our undergraduate and graduate faculties.”

“I am honored beyond words to be coming to Bard, which is renowned worldwide for its interdisciplinary excellence,” said Mercer. “Not only have I found the best home for my scholarship, which cuts across Art History, Black Studies, and Cultural Studies, but I am also looking forward to collaborating with Bard’s innovative arts and humanities programs to further grow a liberal arts education that is critically responsive to the urgent questions we face today.”

“Mercer joining the faculty of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, is momentous for the graduate program. His luminary scholarship has fundamentally shaped our fields of focus and his writing is already essential to our curriculum,” said Lauren Cornell, director of the graduate program at CCS Bard. “He is one of the leading figures of Cultural Studies, Art History, and Black Studies, and it is an enormous privilege that his perspective will be available firsthand to CCS graduate students.”

Kobena Mercer teaches modern and contemporary art in the Black Atlantic, examining African American, Caribbean and Black British artists with critical methods from cultural studies. His work has significantly transformed current thinking about art and identity. Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies (1994), his first book, was a groundbreaking contribution to multiple fields, bringing a Black British perspective to wide-ranging cultural forms that arose from the volatile transformations of the 1980s. This collection of essays was followed by influential studies on artists including Romare Bearden, Keith Piper, Isaac Julien, and James VanDerZee.  Throughout his career, Mercer’s research has illuminated the art of our time through evolving frameworks and subjects. His recent essay collection, Travel & See: Black Diaspora Art Practices since the 1980s (2016), examined artists such as John Akomfrah, Renée Green, and Kerry James Marshall, showing how Black artists contributed to art’s transformation in an age of globalization. He edited and introduced Stuart Hall’s The Fateful Triangle: Race, Ethnicity, Nation (2017), and prior to that he conceived and edited the Annotating Art’s Histories series, published by MIT, whose titles are Cosmopolitan Modernisms (2005), Discrepant Abstraction (2006), Pop Art and Vernacular Culture (2007) and Exiles, Diasporas & Strangers (2008). Over the last few years his exhibition catalogue contributions include Wilfredo Lam at Centre Pompidou, Frank Bowling at Haus der Kunst, Adrian Piper at Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Theaster Gates at Tate Liverpool. His forthcoming book is Alain Locke and the Visual Arts, published by Yale University Press in 2022.

A prolific and dedicated teacher, Mercer has taught at Yale University, New York University, University of California Santa Cruz and Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he earned his PhD. Educated in Ghana and England, he is an inaugural recipient of the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing, awarded by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in 2006.2/17/21
 

Bard College announced today that artist George Condo has made a significant gift supporting the arts on campus, including a new online concert series and a dedicated $400,000 fund underwriting scholarships, musical events, and exhibitions at Bard’s Conservatory of Music, The Orchestra Now, the Center for Curatorial Studies, and the Masters in Fine Art programs. Among those scholarships is the new Inclusive Excellence in Music Scholarship Program that addresses inequities in access to higher education in music.

“The Condo Concerts,” presented by the Bard College Conservatory of Music and CCS Bard, begins February 19 with a performance by violinist Leila Josefowicz, winner of the Avery Fisher Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship, and continues with recitals by The Fred Sherry Quartet on March 14 and April 18, and clarinetist Anthony McGill on May 2. Full details on upcoming performances follow below.

“During one of the most challenging times for colleges in the United States, I wanted to provide both funding and inspirational programming for students,” says Condo, whose daughter, Raphaelle, graduated from Bard in 2018. “Bard College is a place where my daughter thrived and one where the arts are central to the student experience.”

“We are grateful to George Condo for his support not only of the students at Bard, but also for underwriting these concerts and supporting the great musicians on this series, whose opportunities to perform have been so limited by the pandemic,” said Bard Conservatory Director Franks Corliss.

In establishing this fund, Condo created a special edition etching being sold through Hauser & Wirth, with all proceeds dedicated to supporting the arts at Bard. For more information on purchasing Condo’s etching, contact Cristopher Canizares at Hauser & Wirth.

About the Condo Concert Series
The first concert in the series, streaming February 19 at 8 pm, is a solo performance by the internationally renowned violinist Leila Josefowicz, winner of the Avery Fisher Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship. Her program combines a Partita by J. S. Bach with a new work by the noted conductor and composer Matthias Pintscher, La Linea Evocativa, that was composed for her in 2020 and inspired by Condo’s artwork.

For the next two concerts, streaming on March 14 and April 18, Josefowicz will perform as part of the Fred Sherry String Quartet with her renowned colleagues, violinist Jesse Mills, violist Hsin-Yun Huang, and cellist Fred Sherry, to perform string quartets by Schoenberg and Schubert, and other works to be announced.

The final concert in the series will be a recital by clarinetist Anthony McGill, who is the principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic and a recipient of the 2020 Avery Fisher Career Prize.

The Condo Concerts Spring 2021 programs

Friday, February 19, at 8 pm
Matthias Pintscher La Linea Evocativa (2020)
Bach Partita No. 2 BWV 1004
Leila Josefowicz, violin

Sunday, March 14, at 3 pm
Schoenberg String Quartet #1, Opus 7
Fred Sherry String Quartet, with Leila Josefowicz and Jesse Mills, violins, Hsin-Yun Huang, viola, and Fred Sherry, cello.

Sunday, April 18, at 7 pm
Schubert String Quartet No. 15 in G Major
Fred Sherry String Quartet, with Leila Josefowicz and Jesse Mills, violins, Hsin-Yun Huang, viola, and Fred Sherry, cello.

Sunday, May 2, at 3 pm 
Anthony McGill, clarinet

Please click here for reservations and additional program details.


About the Artists
Leila Josefowicz’s passionate advocacy of contemporary music for the violin is reflected in her diverse programs and enthusiasm for performing new works. In recognition of her outstanding achievement and excellence in music, she won the 2018 Avery Fisher Prize and was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 2008, joining prominent scientists, writers and musicians who have made unique contributions to contemporary life.
 
Highlights of Josefowicz’s 2019/20 season include opening the London Symphony Orchestra’s season with Sir Simon Rattle and returning to San Francisco Symphony with the incoming Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen to perform his Violin Concerto. Other engagements include concerts with Los Angeles Philharmonic, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras, where she will be working with conductors at the highest level, including Susanna Mälkki, Matthias Pintscher and John Adams.
 
A favourite of living composers, Josefowicz has premiered many concertos, including those by Colin Matthews, Steven Mackey and Esa-Pekka Salonen, all written specially for her. This season, she will perform the UK premiere of Helen Grime’s Violin Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Dalia Stasevska. Other recent premieres include John Adams’ Scheherazade.2 (Dramatic Symphony for Violin and Orchestra) in 2015 with the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert, and Luca Francesconi’s Duende – The Dark Notes in 2014 with Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Susanna Mälkki. Josefowicz enjoyed a close working relationship with the late Oliver Knussen, performing various concerti, including his violin concerto, together over 30 times.
 
Alongside pianist John Novacek, with whom she has enjoyed a close collaboration since 1985, Josefowicz has performed recitals at world-renowned venues such as New York’s Zankel Hall, Washington DC’s Kennedy Center and London’s Wigmore Hall, as well as in Reykjavik, Chicago, San Francisco and Santa Barbara. This season, they appear together at Washington DC’s Library of Congress, New York’s Park Avenue Armory and Amherst College. She will also join Thomas Adès in recital to perform the world premiere of his new violin and piano work at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris and the Japanese premiere at the Tokyo Opera City Cultural Foundation.
 
Recent highlights include engagements with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and Boston and Finnish Radio symphony orchestras. In summer 2019, Josefowicz took part in a special collaboration between Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Royal Ballet, and Company Wayne McGregor featuring the music of composer-conductor Thomas Adès.
 
Josefowicz has released several recordings, notably for Deutsche Grammophon, Philips/Universal and Warner Classics and was featured on Touch Press’s acclaimed iPadapp, The Orchestra. Her latest recording, released in 2019, features Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Violin Concerto with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted byHannu Lintu. She has previously received nominations for Grammy Awards for her recordings of Scheherazade.2 with the St Louis Symphony conducted by David Robertson, and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Violin Concerto with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer.Violist Hsin-Yun Huang has forged a career by performing on international concert stages, commissioning and recording new works, and nurturing young musicians. Highlights of her 2017–2018 season included performances as soloist under the batons of David Robertson, Osmo Vänskä, Xian Zhang, and Max Valdés in Beijing, Taipei, and Bogota. She is also the first solo violist to be presented in the National Performance Center of the Arts in Beijing and was featured as a faculty member with Yo-Yo Ma and his new initiative in Guangzhou. She has commissioned compositions from Steven Mackey, Shih-Hui Chen, and Poul Ruders. Her 2012 recording for Bridge Records, titled Viola Viola, won accolades from Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. Her next recording will be the complete unaccompanied sonatas and partitas of J. S. Bach, in partnership her husband, violist Misha Amory.

Ms. Huang regularly appears at festivals, including Marlboro, Spoleto, Ravinia, Santa Fe, and Music@Menlo, among many others. Huang first came to international attention as the gold medalist in the 1988 Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition. In 1993, she was the top-prize winner in the ARD International Competition in Munich and was awarded the highly prestigious Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award. A native of Taiwan, she received degrees from the Yehudi Menuhin School, the Curtis Institute of Music, and The Juilliard School. She now serves on the faculties of Juilliard and Curtis and lives in New York City.Two-time Grammy nominated violinist Jesse Mills performins music of many genres, from classical to contemporary, as well as composed and improvised music of his own. Since his concerto debut at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, Mr. Mills has performed throughout the U.S. and Canada. He has been a soloist with the Phoenix Symphony, the Colorado Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony, the Green Bay Symphony, Juilliard Chamber Orchestra, the Denver Philharmonic, the Teatro Argentino Orchestra (in Buenos Aires, Argentina), and the Aspen Music Festival's Sinfonia Orchestra.

As a chamber musician Jesse Mills has performed throughout the U.S. and Canada, including concerts at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, the Metropolitan Museum, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Boston's Gardener Museum, Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, and the Marlboro Music Festival. He has also appeared at prestigious venues in Europe, such as the Barbican Centre of London, La Cité de la Musique in Paris, Amsterdam’s Royal Carré Theatre, Teatro Arcimboldi in Milan, and the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels. Mills is co-founder of Horszowski Trio and Duo Prism, a violin-piano duo with Rieko Aizawa, which earned 1st Prize at the Zinetti International Competition in Italy in 2006.

Mills is also known as a pioneer of contemporary works, a renowned improvisational artist, as well as a composer. He earned Grammy nominations for his performances of Arnold Schoenberg's music, released by NAXOS in 2005 and 2010. He can also be heard on the Koch, Centaur, Tzadik, Max Jazz and Verve labels for various compositions of Webern, Schoenberg, Zorn, Wuorinen, and others. As a member of the FLUX Quartet from 2001-2003, Mills performed music composed during the last 50 years, in addition to frequent world premieres. As a composer and arranger, Mills has been commissioned by venues including Columbia University’s Miller Theater, the Chamber Music Northwest festival in Portland, OR and the Bargemusic in NYC.

Jesse Mills began violin studies at the age of three. He graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from The Juilliard School in 2001. He studied with Dorothy DeLay, Robert Mann and Itzhak Perlman. Mr. Mills lives in New York City, and he is on the faculty at Longy School of Music of Bard College and at Brooklyn College.Fred Sherry has introduced audiences on five continents and all fifty United States to the music of our time for over five decades. He was a founding member of TASHI and Speculum Musicae, Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and has been a member of the Group for Contemporary Music, Berio's Juilliard Ensemble and the Galimir String Quartet. He has also enjoyed a close collaboration with jazz pianist and composer Chick Corea.
Elliott Carter, Mario Davidovsky, Steve Mackey, David Rakowski, Somei Satoh, Charles Wuorinen and John Zorn have written concertos for Sherry, and he has premiered solo and chamber works dedicated to him by Milton Babbitt, Derek Bermel, Jason Eckardt, Lukas Foss, Oliver Knussen, Peter Lieberson, Donald Martino and Toru Takemitsu among others.

Fred Sherry’s vast discography encompasses a wide range of classic and modern repertoire; he has been soloist and “sideman” on hundreds of commercial and esoteric recordings. Mr. Sherry was the organizer for Robert Craft’s New York recording sessions from 1995-2012. Their longstanding collaboration produced celebrated performances of the Schoenberg Cello Concerto, all four String Quartets and the String Quartet Concerto as well as major works by Stravinsky and Webern.

Mr. Sherry's book 25 Bach Duets from the Cantatas was published by Boosey & Hawkes in 2011, the revised edition was released in 2019. C.F. Peters unveiled his treatise on contemporary string playing, A Grand Tour of Cello Technique in 2018. He is a member of the cello faculty of The Juilliard School, The Mannes School of Music and The Manhattan School of Music.Clarinetist Anthony McGill is one of classical music’s most recognizable and brilliantly multifaceted figures. He serves as the principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic — that orchestra’s first African-American principal player — and maintains a dynamic international solo and chamber music career. Hailed for his “trademark brilliance, penetrating sound and rich character” (The New York Times), as well as for his “exquisite combination of technical refinement and expressive radiance” (The Baltimore Sun), McGill also serves as an ardent advocate for helping music education reach underserved communities and for addressing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in classical music. He was honored to take part in the inauguration of President Barack Obama, premiering a piece written for the occasion by John Williams and performing alongside violinist Itzhak Perlman, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and pianist Gabriela Montero.

McGill’s 2019-20 season includes the premiere of a new work by Tyshawn Sorey at the 92Y, and a special collaboration with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato at Carnegie Hall. He will be a featured soloist at the Kennedy Center performing the Copland concerto at the SHIFT Festival of American Orchestras with the Jacksonville Symphony, and will also perform concertos by Copland, Mozart, and Danielpour with the Richmond, Delaware, Alabama, Reno, and San Antonio Symphonies. Additional collaborations include programs with Gloria Chien, Demarre McGill, Michael McHale, Anna Polonsky, Arnaud Sussman, and the Pacifica Quartet.

McGill appears regularly as a soloist with top orchestras around North America including the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Baltimore Symphony, San Diego Symphony, and Kansas City Symphony. As a chamber musician, McGill is a favorite collaborator of the Brentano, Daedalus, Guarneri, JACK, Miró, Pacifica, Shanghai, Takacs, and Tokyo Quartets, as well as Emanuel Ax, Inon Barnatan, Gloria Chien, Yefim Bronfman, Gil Shaham, Midori, Mitsuko Uchida, and Lang Lang. He has led tours with Musicians from Marlboro and regularly performs for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Festival appearances include Tanglewood, Marlboro, Mainly Mozart, Music@Menlo, and the Santa Fe, Seattle, and Skaneateles Chamber Music Festivals.

In January 2015, McGill recorded the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto together with Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic, which was released on DaCapo Records. He also recorded an album together with his brother Demarre McGill, principal flute of the Seattle Symphony, and pianist Michael McHale; and one featuring the Mozart and Brahms Clarinet Quintet with the Pacifica Quartet that were both released by Cedille Records.

A dedicated champion of new music, in 2014, McGill premiered a new piece written for him by Richard Danielpour entitled “From the Mountaintop” that was commissioned by the New Jersey Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, and Orchestra 2001. McGill served as the 2015-16 Artist-in-Residence for WQXR and has appeared on Performance Today, MPR’s St. Paul Sunday Morning, and Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. In 2013, McGill appeared on the NBC Nightly News and on MSNBC, in stories highlighting the McGill brothers’ inspirational story.

A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, McGill previously served as the principal clarinet of the Metropolitan Opera and associate principal clarinet of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. In-demand as a teacher, he serves on the faculty of the Juilliard School, the Curtis Institute of Music, and Bard College’s Conservatory of Music. He also serves as the Artistic Advisor for the Music Advancement Program at the Juilliard School, on the Board of Directors for both the League of American Orchestra and the Harmony Program, and the advisory council for the InterSchool Orchestras of New York.2/11/21

Bard MFA candidate Woojae Kim writes for Canadian Art on the complex role of smell in human emotions and the natural world. “On one hand, smell is a memory. I know each smell through lived experience. On the other hand, smell is a chemical compound that triggers reactions in other organisms.” Woojae Kim is an artist living in Vancouver. His works accommodate contact between nonhuman/material intelligence and human memory. His current research is on olfactory communication.
 
https://canadianart.ca/essays/woojae-kim-the-territory-of-the-unsmelled/

Time-lapse photographs of airplane arrivals and departures by Bard alumnus Pete Mauney ’93 MFA ‘00 are on view through March 1 as part of A Trip Back in Time at the Quad City International Airport in Moline, Illinois. The exhibit comprises Mauney’s photographs, Drew Morton’s digital drawings of airport runways around the world, and a selection of mid-century modern artifacts. For this series, Mauney camped out in select locations for hours at a time with his camera aperture open to capture the light emitted from airplanes and stars as they moved through the night sky. Pete Mauney lives and works in Tivoli, New York. He received his BA and MFA in photography from Bard College. 
https://www.wvik.org/post/airport-art-exhibit-airport#stream/0

The Bard MBA in Sustainability has been named the number one Best Green MBA by the Princeton Review for 2021. The Bard program also made the Top 10 list for Best MBA for Nonprofits, along with the MBA programs at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and Berkeley.
 
The Bard MBA offers a new kind of business education that combines sustainability vision and leadership training with a mastery of business fundamentals. The Princeton Review's rankings are based on surveys of administrators, students, and alumni/ae; more than 17,800 MBA students participated nationally in the survey. This is the first year the Bard MBA has been invited to participate.
https://leadthechange.bard.edu/blog/bards-mba-in-sustainability-ranked-one-green-mba

Bard College announces the appointment of internationally acclaimed interdisciplinary artist and educator Nayland Blake ’82 as the incoming chair of the Bard Studio Arts Program, beginning with the academic year 2021–2022. Blake is the chair of the ICP-Bard Program in Advanced Photographic Studies, a joint masters program run by Bard College and the International Center of Photography in New York City. They succeed Ellen Driscoll, who returns to the studio arts faculty. For more information about Bard’s Studio Arts Program, please visit studioarts.bard.edu.

“Nayland Blake has a long history with Bard and a significant appreciation for what makes the institution unique. At the same time, they bring an important new perspective to imagining the future of Bard's Studio Arts program,” said Bard’s Dean of the College, Deirdre D’Albertis. “What all members of the program have commented on and appreciate already about Nayland is their commitment to students, faculty, and staff in the program all being heard and considered in building toward that future.”

Nayland Blake is an internationally acclaimed interdisciplinary artist and educator whose work is included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Des Moines Art Center, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the University Art Museum, Berkeley. Their writing has been published in Artforum, Shift, Interview, Out, Outlook, and numerous exhibition catalogues. Blake has been on the faculty of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts (Bard MFA) and has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, the California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, Berkeley, Parsons School for Design, New York University, the School of Visual Arts, and Harvard University Department of Visual and Environmental Studies. They are represented by Matthew Marks Gallery in New York. Blake has a BA in sculpture from Bard and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 160-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.
 

Eliza Edge ’20, Stephanie Erwin ’20, and Lindsey Strange ’19 met in the Bard MBA in Sustainability Program. They were captivated by the idea of the circular economy and bonded over finding value in products that society deems “trash.” In particular—as an aunt, a teacher, and a mom—they saw an opportunity to develop a circular model for children's clothing, which can be outgrown so quickly. The team soon brought together their skills in apparel design, data, marketing, and operations to build Cahoots.

After a semester of working on the idea, the team pitched at the Bard MBA Disrupt to Sustain Competition and won. The panel of judges encouraged the three women to pilot the project, and the company took off. Cahoots now operates out of Kingston, New York.

Unlike other retail and rental models, Cahoots focuses on quality over new. Cahoots is the first ever closed-loop children’s clothing membership that artfully repairs and shares clothing to achieve a net positive impact. Through artful repair, they can extend the life of clothes and reduce the community’s need for new clothing production, where the worst environmental and social impact in the fashion supply chain occurs. Cahoots offers subscribing families access to their shared closet and the ability to borrow clothing as needed for up to a year.
https://hudsonvalleyone.com/2020/11/06/kingston-based-subscription-service-restyles-clothing-for-kids-sustainably/

The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) presents Sky Hopinka: Centers of Somewhere opening October 17, 2020, a focused look at key ideas, preoccupations, and methods in the work of artist and filmmaker Sky Hopinka (born 1984 in Ferndale, Washington). In order to limit capacity in the museum guests must register in advance - see below for details on how to visit.

A member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, Hopinka has become recognized for video work that centers around personal positions of Indigenous homeland and that explores language as a container of culture. Within the trajectory of experimental cinema, Hopinka contributes to the development of Indigenous aesthetics, insisting on a profoundly subjective position that destabilizes entrenched colonial perspectives and related descriptions of land, sky, sea, myth, place, and personhood. Significant to his work is the study and teaching of the near extinct Indigenous language chinuk wawa. His films are sometimes subtitled in English and chinuk wawa or the language Hočąk, and move between concepts in each linguistic system to subvert and question them.

Centers of Somewhere will present a newly commissioned, multi-channel work Here you are before the trees (2020), alongside a selection of recent videos and photography. The newly commissioned work will explore Indigenous histories of the Hudson Valley as they are connected to other regions in the U.S. Each channel of the new installation will focus on a different aspect of these landscapes, including the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians who were relocated from the Hudson Valley region to Wisconsin near Hopinka’s tribal homeland. The installation also incorporates research on Henry Roe Cloud, a Ho-Chunk tribal member from Wisconsin who was a contributor to the Merriam Report of 1928 as well as the prolific and influential writer Vine Deloria Jr. and his father, Vine Deloria Sr. who was a graduate of St. Stephen’s College, Bard’s first incarnation. Centers of Somewhere will also present a new series of sixteen photographs entitled Breathings (2020) that were shot throughout the U.S. in 2020. While the photographs within the Breathings series range in locations and subject matter, a text binds them, with its handwritten lines encircling the borders of each image. For instance, a line around a cold Chicago intersection devoid of people reads:  “I think of my home tonight. I don't have any resolutions, but I've felt so much through these streets, these neighborhoods. This land and this Land hold so much, and this pain and this Pain call for salves we already have, still needing to be wrapped and poulticed.”

Centers of Somewhere also includes several short video works by Hopinka including Dislocation Blues (2017), an experimental documentary of the Standing Rock protests, offering what the artist calls an “incomplete and imperfect portrait of reflections” around the historic event and its potential; Jáaji Approx (2015), which layers recordings of Hopinka’s father over landscapes that the two (father and son) have separately traveled; and, I’ll Remember You as You Were, not as What You’ll Become (2016), an elegy to poet Diane Burns (Chemehuevi/ Anishinabe) that meditates on mortality, afterlife and reincarnation.

Sky Hopinka: Centers of Somewhere is curated by Lauren Cornell, Director of the Graduate Program and Chief Curator, CCS Bard. A series of on-line public programs for Centers of Somewhere will be organized by Cornell and Dr. Christian Ayne Crouch, Associate Professor of History, Bard College. The first virtual event was on October 19th at 5 p.m. In this special presentation, Heather Bruegl, Director of Cultural Affairs for the Stockbridge Munsee Community, gave an overview of local history with an aim to restore Indigenous presence at Bard College. This activation, issued from the community's current home in Wisconsin, acknowledges the continuing Mohican and Munsee relationship to their homelands. Registration for this virtual event and others (to be announced) will be available on the CCS Bard website (https://ccs.bard.edu/).

Alongside Centers of Somewhere, CCS Bard has co-published Perfidia a book of Hopinka’s writings with Wendy’s Subway, a non-profit reading room, writing space, and independent publisher located in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The book features an essay by Julie Niemi, independent curator and CCS Bard Alum 2017.

Exhibitions at CCS Bard are made possible with support from the Marieluise Hessel Foundation, the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Foundation, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the Board of Governors of the Center for Curatorial Studies, the CCS Bard Arts Council, and the Center’s Patrons, Supporters, and Friends.

Major support for Centers of Somewhere is provided by Lonti Ebers.

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How To Visit
The CCS Bard Galleries are open Thursday through Sunday from 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Admission is by advance reservation only - reserve and confirm your timed tickets here. We have instituted new attendance protocols to ensure the health and safety of our patrons, community, and staff. To read more about all the safety precautions we have in place and to prepare for your museum visit, please read more here.  Reserved tickets are free to the public. We cannot admit walk-up visitors, so please confirm your reservation before visiting.

Access Policy for Hessel Museum of Art and CCS Bard Galleries
CCS Bard and the Hessel Museum are located in a single-level facility. Parking is available outside of the building in an ADA-compliant parking lot which has four accessible parking spaces at the end of the paved entrance way. If you have specific questions or requests about access, please write to ccs@bard.edu at least two weeks before your visit or the event you plan to attend and we will make every effort to accommodate you. During your visit, you may seek the assistance of Security and Visitor Service staff members who are present at the CCS Bard reception desk and throughout the exhibitions. Please don’t hesitate to contact ccs@bard.edu with feedback about your visit. To read our full access policy, please see our website here.

MEDIA CONTACTS:    
For further information, for images, or to arrange interviews, please contact:

BARD COLLEGE CONTACT:
Mark Primoff
Director of Communications
Tel: +1 845.758.7412      
Email: primoff@bard.edu        

PRESS ADVISOR:
Gabriel (Gabe) Einsohn
M: 202.415.8095
Email: Gabriel.Einsohn@gmail.com

CCS BARD CONTACT:                                    
Ramona Rosenberg                                        
Director of External Affairs                                          
Tel: +1 (845) 758-7574                                               
Email: rrosenberg@bard.edu
 
https://ccs.bard.edu/

A native of Port Arthur, Texas, Alexander holds a bachelor of music degree in piano from Prairie View A&M University and a master of music degree in orchestral conducting from the Bard Conservatory of Music. He is currently pursuing a professional studies certificate in orchestral conduction from the Manhattan School of Music. The Project Inclusion Conducting Freeman Fellowship fosters the development of four to six conductors of diverse backgrounds who are on the verge of professional careers.
http://www.chicagosinfonietta.org/education/project-inclusion/picf/

Bard College announces the appointment of Professor Christian Crouch as the incoming Dean of Graduate Studies, beginning July 1, 2021. 

Professor Crouch has been Associate Professor of History and Director of American Studies at Bard since 2014. Her work focuses on the histories of the early modern Atlantic, comparative slavery, American material culture, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. with Distinction in Atlantic History from New York University, and an A.B. cum laude in History from Princeton University. 

She has taught in the Clemente Course in the Humanities since 2010 and served as Curatorial Advisor for the 2020–2021 Brooklyn Museum exhibition “Jeffrey Gibson: When Fire is Applied to a Stone it Cracks.” Her book, Nobility Lost: French and Canadian Martial Cultures, Indians, and the End of New France 1600–1848 (Cornell University Press, 2014) won the Mary Alice and Philip Boucher Prize for best book in French colonial history from the French Colonial Historical Society in 2015. Her recent scholarly work includes articles in William and Mary Quarterly (2018), Early American Studies (2016) and chapters in the edited volumes France, Ireland, and the Atlantic in a Time of War: Reflections on the Bordeaux–Dublin Letters, 1757 (Routledge 2017) and The French Revolution as Moment of Respatialization (De Gruyter 2019). 

Professor Crouch currently serves on the council of the Omohundro Institute and is a member of the inaugural cohort of Bright Institute Fellows. In 2019, she received a Georgian Papers Program Fellowship and previously was a 2016–2017 Hutchins fellow at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Her research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the American Philosophical Society, the Yale Center for British Art, the John Carter Brown Library, the William L. Clements Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Newberry Library. Her current manuscript in progress, Queen Victoria's Captives: A Story of Ambition, Empire, and a Stolen Ethiopian Prince, studies the human consequences of the 1868 Maqdala Campaign. 

“I am delighted that Professor Crouch has agreed to accept this vital leadership position, said Bard College President Leon Botstein. “Graduate education has been a crucial part of the college's mission for nearly half a century. Its significance is defined by the specific constituencies each separate program serves, the capacity of graduate education to enrich the experiences and opportunities available to undergraduate students at Bard, and the contribution the graduate programs make to the long-term sustainability of Bard.”
 
Professor Crouch succeeds Professor Norton Batkin, who stepped down on September 1 after 15 years as Dean of Graduate Studies. During his tenure, Norton Batkin oversaw the growth and success of Bard’s graduate programs. He came to Bard in 1991 as visiting associate professor of philosophy and art history and director of the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS). “Bard owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Norton for his exemplary stewardship, energy and dedication,” Botstein said. “He demonstrated resilience and creativity as CCS Director, and Graduate Dean. Norton will continue teaching philosophy in the undergraduate college.” 
 
The College also announces that Michael Sadowski, executive director of Bard Early College Hudson Valley programs and director of inclusive pedagogy and curriculum in the office of the Dean of the College, has agreed to assume the position of Interim Dean of Graduate Studies for this academic year 2020–2021. Sadowski was the founding executive director of Bard Early College Hudson, Bard’s first early college program in the Hudson Valley. He also teaches courses in youth identity development for the Master of Arts in Teaching program, and on LGBTQ+ issues in American education in the Human Rights Program. He has been an instructor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he earned his doctorate, and was a visiting professor in 2016–17 at Stanford University. He will serve as Dean of Graduate Studies until July 1, when Professor Crouch assumes the position.
https://www.bard.edu/graduate/