Welcome to Inside Bard

07-18-2019: The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is pleased to announce that distinguished scholar, curator, and educator Nana Adusei-Poku will join CCS Bard as senior academic advisor and Luma Foundation Fellow. In this role, Adusei-Poku will collaborate with the staff and faculty to develop and advise on the curriculum, which centers around the study of contemporary art, the institutions and practices of exhibition-making, and the theory and criticism of the visual arts. She will also work with Executive Director Tom Eccles, Chief Curator and Graduate Program Director Lauren Cornell, and faculty to develop the curatorial and publishing program at CCS Bard, including symposia, conferences, performance, and exhibitions at the Center for Curatorial Studies and in collaboration with partners, including departments across Bard College and contemporary art institutions.

“Nana Adusei-Poku is an exceptional scholar, curator, and teacher. Her intellectual rigor and commitment to original research will be invaluable to our program and to future classes of CCS Bard graduate students,” said Cornell. Previously, Adusei-Poku served as visiting professor at The Cooper Union, and as a guest lecturer in the Department of Art and Media at the University of the Arts, Zurich. She was research professor for visual cultures (2015-17) and for cultural diversity (2013-14) at the Hogeschool Rotterdam with affiliation to the Piet Zwart Institute and Willem de Kooning Academy. She received her PhD from Humboldt University Berlin following degrees in African and gender studies, and in media and communications at Goldsmiths College London. She has also been a visiting scholar at the University of Ghana, Legon, London School of Economics, and Columbia University, New York.

She is the curator of the program Longing on a Large Scale in conjunction with Todd Gray's exhibition Eucledian Gris Gris at Pomona College Museum of Art, which starts in September 2019 and will run until May 2020. In 2018, Adusei-Poku curated the immersive event performance of No-thingness at the Academy of Arts Berlin and, in 2015, she co-curated the exhibition NO HUMANS INVOLVED at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art Rotterdam. She has published in artist monographs about Leslie Hewitt, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, and Todd Gray, among others, and in publications such as e-flux, multitudes, Le Journal des Laboratoires, Kunstforum International, as well as peer-reviewed journals such as Nka Journal for Contemporary African Art, Feministische Studien, and Dark Matter.

Adusei-Poku replaces Jeannine Tang, who joins Eugene Lang College at The New School as assistant professor in modern and contemporary art history, after nearly a decade at CCS Bard. In 2018, Tang co-curated The Conditions of Being Art: Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts. Co, (1983-2004) at the Hessel Museum of Art, a project that exemplified her commitment to building groundbreaking scholarship in contemporary art and curatorial history.
 

General information on the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College can be found at:
Read Article 16087 >>

07-15-2019: The Heinrich Böll Foundation, Bremen, Germany, has awarded its Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought to Roger Berkowitz, founder and academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College. The annual award was created to honor individuals who identify critical and unseen aspects of current political events and who are not afraid to enter the public realm by presenting their opinion in controversial political discussions. The Hannah Arendt Award is a public prize, and therefore not based solely on academic achievement. Funded by both the state government of Bremen and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the prize is endowed with 10,000 Euros and is awarded by an international jury. Berkowitz shares the 2019 award with fellow recipient Jerome Kohn, trustee of the Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust and editor of many volumes of Arendt's posthumous work.

The jury praised Berkowitz’s merits as a constitutional theorist and for his work as director of the Arendt Center, a place where “students from all over the world are encouraged to learn to politically think and to study the writings of a political philosopher who never respected the restraints of philosophical thinking.”

The Heinrich Böll Foundation is a catalyst for green visions and projects, a think tank for policy reform, and an international network. We work with more than 100 project partners in over 60 countries and currently maintain 32 international offices. For more information, visit boell.de/en.

Roger Berkowitz is the founder and academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center and professor of political studies, philosophy, and human rights at Bard College. Berkowitz writes and speaks about how justice is made present in the world. He is author of The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition, co-editor of Artifacts of Thinking: Reading Hannah Arendt's Denktagebuch (2017), Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics (2010), The Intellectual Origins of the Global Financial Crisis (2012), and editor of the annual journal HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center. His essay “Reconciling Oneself to the Impossibility of Reconciliation: Judgment and Worldliness in Hannah Arendt's Politics,” has helped bring attention to the centrality of reconciliation in Hannah Arendt's work. The Arendt Center organizes an annual conference every October. Professor Berkowitz edits the Hannah Arendt Center's weekly newsletter, Amor Mundi. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Bookforum, Chronicle of Higher Education, Paris Review Online, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, The American Interest, and many other publications.

For more information on Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, visit hac.bard.edu.
 

07-14-2019: The Bard Graduate Center (BGC) and U’mista Cultural Centre have launched an exhibition website that explores the hidden histories and multiple legacies of Franz Boas’s The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians. It is part of an international project to create a new critical edition of the volume. BGC also hosted an exhibition of The Story Box at its New York City gallery this year.
 
Read Article 16086 >>

07-09-2019: The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College (Bard MFA) presents Say Ever Moves, the class of 2020 thesis presentation, which brings together works by MFA candidates in the disciplines film/video, music/sound, painting, photography, sculpture, and writing. The exhibition will be on view from July 21 through July 28 at the Bard College Exhibition Center / UBS Gallery, 29 O’Callaghan Lane, Red Hook, New York.

An opening reception takes place on Saturday, July 20, 1–4 p.m. Evening presentations of time-based works, including performances, readings, and screenings, will be held at several locations on the Bard College campus during the week of July 22. All presentations are free and open to the public.

The Bard MFA thesis presentations feature works by Luis Arnias, Georgian Badal, Jobi Bicos, Lauren Burrow, Gwenan Davies, Omari Douglin, Carolina Fandiño Salcedo, Carolyn Ferrucci, Marco Gomez, Colleen Hargaden, Evie K. Horton, Christiane Huber, Rachel James, Jamie Krasner, Nawahineokala'i Lanzilotti, Dani Leder, Isabel Mallet, Carla Jean Mayer, Lee Nachum, Brandon Ndife, Diane Severin Nguyen, Miko Revereza, Alicia Salvadeo, Robert Sandler, Jaxyn Randall, Estelle Srivijittakar, Jordan Strafer, Daniel Sullivan, Christopher van Ginhoven Rey, Jessica Wilson, and Alex Zandi. The exhibition is coordinated by Marisa Espe ’20, a graduate student at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard).

The Bard College Exhibition Center will be open Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., and Saturday/Sunday, 1–5 p.m. For the opening reception, a return shuttle service will be offered from Rhinecliff Amtrak station. Schedules, accessibility information, and more are available below. Parking is available in the Saint Christopher’s Church lot at 7411 South Broadway or on Garden Road.
Read Article 16063 >>

07-01-2019: The League of American Orchestras honored acclaimed composer and Bard professor Joan Tower with its highest award, the Gold Baton, at the 74th National Conference in Nashville on June 5. Joan Tower is the Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts at Bard College and one of America’s most significant living composers. The Gold Baton is given annually for distinguished service to America’s orchestras. The award recognizes individuals and institutions whose far-reaching contributions to the field serve to champion and advance the cause of orchestras and symphonic music throughout the country.