News and Events

The world premiere of Bard alumna Chaya Czernowin’s new opera Heart Chamber at the Deutche Oper Berlin on December 6 is one of the year’s top 10 notable performances, says New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, and her “engulfing” war requiem Infinite Now (2016–17) is one of the reasons the it has been a “chaotically great decade for new music.” Czernowin, who studied with composers Elie Yarden and Joan Tower while at Bard, is currently Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Composition at Harvard University.

In film after film, including his latest, Dark Waters, the director Todd Haynes asks viewers to contend with ambiguity, writes John Lahr in the New Yorker: “Dark Waters subverts by taking the legal thriller—a form that traditionally concludes with the triumph of good over evil—into areas of psychological complexity and ambiguity. All investigative stories, he told me, when we met in Los Angeles in June, have the burden of revealing a truth. ‘What I love so much about the genre,’ he explained, ‘is the cost of revealing the truth. The drama of that, and what it does to people. That is the part that kills you.’

Mueller, who teaches painting at Bard’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, talks to Art in America’s Steel Stillman about the evolution of her work in video, audio, performance, and alternative ways of painting. “I came to understand that the trajectory for my work was to move deeper into the studio and toward painting as a receding horizon,” says Mueller. “At the same time, I was beginning to feel overly safe and in control. I’d become fairly good at negotiating the processes and decisions involved in making the drawings that became enamel paintings and rugs. What would happen if I removed some of that mediation and started to use a brush? I wanted to challenge myself, to operate across a fuller spectrum.”

Sillman’s The Shape of Shape at the newly reopened Museum of Modern Art in New York City is “among the most valuable of the inaugural shows.” Sillman “ranges throughout the collection, across media, generations and styles, seeking out overlooked or excluded artists and unfamiliar works. Her effort parallels the approaches at work in the permanent collection galleries, but reflects a relatively robust visual appetite — the artist’s unfettered eye — that the museum needs more of.  The show’s dense installation encourages surprising connections …”
 

On Friday, October 18, nearly 100 middle school students from Miller Middle School in Kingston, New York, spent the day at Bard College working with undergraduates from the course Pedagogy and Practice in Civic Engagement, an Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences offering that is crosslisted between Bard’s undergraduate and master of arts in teaching programs. This course is cotaught each year by Bard MAT visiting faculty member Mary Leonard and BHSEC Newark faculty member Michael Murray. The course is designed for Bard undergraduates who are working in one of the College’s many educational outreach programs and who are committed to the idea of civic engagement. Guided by readings in education, the class considers the interpersonal, cultural, social, and ethical issues that arise in the context of civic engagement in schools.

In its review of the Freehand New York, Business Insider points to the hotel’s abundant art—commissioned from students and alumni/ae of Bard College for its public spaces, corridors, and all 395 guest rooms—as its not-to-be-missed feature. “Take time to explore,” their critic writes, “and appreciate the fact that you’re practically living in a gallery.”

For over 30 years, Bard MFA chair and Bard College alum Nayland Blake '82 has been a critical figure in American art, working between sculpture, drawing, performance, and video. No Wrong Holes marks the most comprehensive survey of Blake’s work to date and their first solo institutional presentation in Los Angeles.

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.

Bard MFA alumnus Fitz Patton won the 2019 Tony Award for Best Sound Design of a Play for Choir Boy.

The annual award provides $10,000 in unrestricted funding to a visual artist who has lived or worked in New York City for at least two years.

Ginzburg, who was raised in Saint Petersburg, Russia, talks about the range of possibilities inherent in the movement and transition between one place and another: “The experience of immigration . . . makes you aware of how perception and self-awareness shift with displacement (both geographical and cultural).”

Bard MFA professors Hong-Kai Wang and Bill Dietz are leading a monthlong project in Philadelphia called “Singing is what makes work possible.” Participants learn songs people sing during work in different languages and cultures, in collaboration with a sound art gallery called Remote Viewing.

The yearlong residency program is open to alumni/ae of the Bard MFA program and affiliated artists of Live Arts Bard. This year’s winners: artists William Lamson, Caitlin MacBride, and Tania El Khoury, visiting assistant professor of theater and performance at Bard; and pianist Courtney Bryan.

Revereza’s first feature documentary tracks his journey by train from his home in Los Angeles to Rhinecliff, New York, and ultimately grad school at Bard.

Handelman will receive up to $100,000 to develop her multichannel video installation Delirium.