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Bard College announces the appointment of Hannah Barrett as director of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. Prior to this appointment, Barrett, an award-winning artist and educator who has taught, lectured, and exhibited widely, was the international program coordinator at Bard College Berlin. Barrett succeeds Arthur Gibbons, who served as director of the Bard MFA program since 1990. Gibbons will continue teaching at Bard as professor of sculpture in the College’s Division of the Arts.

“I am delighted that Hannah Barrett has accepted the appointment as the new Director of the MFA program, one of Bard’s most distinguished graduate programs and one of the finest MFA programs in the country,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein. “She has been a terrific colleague and is uniquely suited to take this vital task on. She follows the remarkable, long, and distinguished tenure of Arthur Gibbons, who led the MFA to achieve its international renown. I thank Hannah and the faculty in the MFA program for their cooperation in finding a path to continue the excellent and innovative work of the MFA in this challenging time.”

Hannah Barrett is a Brooklyn and Hudson Valley based artist. The portrayal of gender ambiguity has driven her painting for over a decade, which has led to the current exploration of dandy monsters in domestic space. Recent exhibitions include a 2020 retrospective at Childs Gallery, Boston, a two-person invitational in 2019 at La MaMa Galleria, and a solo at Yours Mine and Ours Gallery in 2018. Selected group shows include Spring Break 2020, Platform Project Space, Dumbo NY, Kate Werble and Calicoon galleries in NYC, Mother Gallery, Beacon NY, and September Gallery in Hudson NY. Museum Shows include the Decordova Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and National Museum of Women in the Arts. Her work has been written about in Art Forum, Time Out New York, and Modern Painters. Barrett is on the curatorial staff of Soloway Gallery in Williamsburg. Barrett is also the illustrator of a vegan and lesbian themed children’s book “Nuts in Nutland”. Prior to coming to Bard, Barrett taught painting and drawing for 18 years and was on the faculty at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Pratt Institute Brooklyn. Barrett holds a BA in studio art and German literature from Wellesley College and an MFA in painting from Boston University.

Founded in 1981, Bard MFA is a nontraditional school for visual, written, and time-based arts. At Bard, the community itself is the primary resource for the student—serving as audience, teacher, and peer group in an ongoing dialogue. In interdisciplinary group critiques, seminars, school presentations, as well as discipline caucuses and one-on-one conferences, the artist students engage with accomplished faculty members, while developing their individual studio practices. The program probes a diversity of approaches and fosters imaginative responses and insights to aesthetic concerns across the disciplines of film/video, writing, painting, sculpture, photography, and music/sound.

With the US economy going into a deep slump, the federal government has attempted to counteract the pain by increasing spending. But for cities and states, it’s virtually impossible for them to run countercyclical fiscal policy. Furthermore, the crisis is draining local coffers due to public health expenditure and the collapse of tax revenue. Alexander Williams ’20, an MS candidate in economic theory and policy at Bard’s Levy Economics Institute, weighs in on the current state of state and municipal finances in this episode of the Odd Lots podcast with Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2020-04-12/how-to-stop-the-fiscal-emergency-facing-the-u-s-podcast

On the evening of Tuesday, April 7, the Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College (Bard CEP) will lead a virtual teach-in on climate solutions and climate justice, focusing on ambitious but feasible state and local solutions to help solve climate change by 2030. The teach-in—part of Bard CEP’s Solve Climate by 2030 (Solve Climate) project—features 50 university-led webinars in almost every U.S. state, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, and at international sites in South America, Asia, and Europe through the Open Society University Network. “As learning and activism moves online, it is essential to continue teaching about this central global issue,” says Bard CEP Director Eban Goodstein. “This April 7 teaching event is designed to engage secondary education, higher education, and local communities across the nation and around the world in a critical discussion about local climate solutions.”

The state-level teach-ins are free and open to the public. For more information, including start times, and to register for your local teach-in, visit solveclimateby2030.org. Solve Climate By 2030 is made possible by support from Clif Bar & Company.

As university and high school teachers scramble to move classes online due to the new coronavirus pandemic, Goodstein says the April 7 event provides a ready-made lesson plan for college and high school classrooms. Solve Climate has teaching guides here for follow-up discussion, including entry points from every discipline: philosophy, political science, engineering, natural science, art, and economics. Community-level viewing events will be hosted at colleges and universities, high schools, community groups and faith organizations. International universities are welcome to participate. All of the webinars will all be recorded and will be available for future discussions.
 
http://www.solveclimateby2030.org/

Alhassan Susso, Bard MAT alumnus and 2019 New York State Teacher of the Year, has been selected by the NEA Foundation as the recipient of the 2020 Member Benefits Award for Teaching Excellence, which carries a cash prize of $25,000. In making their selection, the Foundation pointed to Susso’s powerful work to educate and inspire immigrant students and the diverse community he serves: “By sharing his own experience as an immigrant and his passion for motivating young people, he has helped his students to see the potential for excellence within themselves. He is living proof that every child in this country deserves a quality education and an opportunity to thrive.” Susso, a West African émigré, teaches at the International Community High School in the Bronx and was nominated for the Members Benefits Award by New York State United Teachers.
https://www.neafoundation.org/ideas-voices/bronx-educator-honored-for-cultivating-community-of-learners-and-inspiring-immigrant-students/

Sun-Ly Pierce MM '19 has won the first prize of $10,000 in the Houston Grand Opera's prestigious competition for young singers. The 32nd annual Eleanor McCollum Competition culminated in the Concert of Arias on Friday, February 7, in which eight finalists performed in the Cullen Theater of the Wortham Theater Center in Houston. The concert was the final event in a process that began with initial auditions in November. This year's competition received over 650 applications from singers around the world.  

Concert of Arias supporters raised more than $600,000, with proceeds benefiting the Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers and Houston Grand Opera Studio’s ongoing outreach efforts to identify, attract, and nurture young artists who have the potential for major careers in opera.

Originally from Clinton, New York, Chinese American mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce recently completed the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music and holds a bachelor’s degree in vocal performance from the Eastman School of Music. As a winner of the Marilyn Horne Song Competition, Pierce will perform on an international recital tour with pianist Chien-Lin Lu. The tour includes appearances in Santa Barbara, Chicago, New York City, and London and will feature the premiere of a new song cycle written by two-time Grammy Award winning composer, Jennifer Higdon. This past fall, Pierce joined the Broad Street Orchestra as Dorinda in Handel’s Acis and Galatea. She returns to the Music Academy of the West this summer as a 2020 Vocal Fellow, performing the role of L’enfant in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges and covering Hänsel in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel.
https://www.houstongrandopera.org/globalassets/publications-media--news-items/press-releases/coa-winners-release_final_2.7.20.pdf

Cecilia Alemani MA ’05, director and chief curator of New York’s High Line, has been named curator of the 59th Venice Biennale. She will be only the fifth woman to curate the biennale in its century-long history, and the first Italian woman to do so.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/arts/design/venice-biennale-cecilia-alemani.html