News and Events

“We need art to give us as much knowledge of the larger world...as possible.” The 40 works in No to the Invasion bring the modern Arab world into vivid focus.

The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College (Bard MFA) presents the Class of 2018 Thesis Exhibition July 22–30 at the Bard College Exhibition Center/UBS Gallery at 29 O’Callaghan Lane in Red Hook, New York, with an opening reception on Saturday, July 22, from 1 to 4 p.m. The exhibition brings together candidates’ culminating work in film/video, music/sound, painting, photography, sculpture, and writing. Performances, readings, and screenings of time-based works will take place on the Bard College campus during the evenings of July 24–28.

Swartz is attempting to reveal something that is inside all of us—a dynamic, expressive, intimate feeling felt through the shape of sound.

Bard's MFA Program is named among the 25 Best MFA Programs by College Choice, a leading authority in college and university rankings and resources, in its recently published 2017 rankings.

Bard alumnus Duane Linklater's show at NYU's 80WSE gallery engages with questions about the under- and misrepresentation of indigenous artists in galleries and museums.

Multidisciplinary artist Christine Sun Kim was born deaf, and she uses sound in her work to challenge and disturb the norms of the hearing world.

Actor Robert De Niro has named R.H. Quaytman as the winner of the Robert De Niro Sr. Prize, which is given to an artist "devoted to the pursuit of excellence and innovation in painting."

Work by several Bard alumnae and faculty members will be featured in the Whitney Biennial this spring. Bard alumnae include Celeste Dupuy Spencer (Studio Arts), Dani Leventhal MFA '10 (Film/Video), Carrie Moyer MFA '02 (Painting), and Leila Weinraub (MFA). Faculty artists include Susan Cianciolo (MFA visiting artist in Painting), Kevin Everson (MFA Film/Video faculty), An-My Lê (Photography), Ulrike Müller (MFA Painting cochair), and Cauleen Smith (MFA Film/Video faculty).  

Shaver's Dress the Form is an installation of wall-size fabrics, furniture, and found objects arranged with "skill and aplomb." On view through August 19.

MFA writing professor Hoa Nguyen's poems "Ode to Second Chances (Late February)" and "O Prosperity" are featured in Hyperallergic's monthly poetry series.

The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts will present its Class of 2017 thesis exhibition July 16–23 at the Bard College Exhibition Center (UBS Gallery) at 29 O’Callaghan Lane in Red Hook, with an opening reception on Saturday, July 16 from 1 to 4 p.m.

The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation has unveiled its biennial list of 2015 grantees. Among them are two Bard MFA faculty members, Pam Lins and A. L. Steiner, and three MFA alumni/ae: Jared Buckhiester '13, Rochelle Goldberg '15, and Kelly Kaczynski '03. More on Arforum

Saxophonist and sound artist Matana Roberts has received a 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award, which carries an unrestricted grant of $275,000.

Long Soldier is noted by the award committee for her "trenchant, beautiful ... writing about the relationship between official political speech and literature’s capacity to write back."

Caitlin Keogh is now being represented by Chelsea gallery Bortolami. Her work can be found in the well-received group exhibition “Flatlands” at the Whitney Museum of Art.

Bard MFA alumna Robin Coste Lewis discusses her book Voyage of the Sable Venus, which won the National Book Award last year.

Layli Long Soldier has been awarded a 2015 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry. She resides in Tsaile, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation and is an English faculty member at Diné College.

Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College (Bard MFA) will host upcoming information sessions in New York City, Chicago, and on the Bard College Campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Bard MFA applications are due January 10, 2016. Representatives from the Bard MFA and Wave Farm, a Hudson Valley–based experimental digital media organization, will host a casual meet and greet Thursday, December 3, from 12 to 2 p.m. at Printed Matter, 231 11th Ave., in New York City. Attendees will have the opportunity to speak with music/sound and film/video faculty about Bard MFA’s interdisciplinary, low residency program and to Bard faculty and Wave Farm staff about programs and funding opportunities in 2016. Additional information sessions for Bard MFA take place Wednesday, December 2, at 7 p.m. in Chicago (1926 West Erie St.) and Saturday, December 5, from 2 to 4 p.m., Fisher Studio Arts Building, on the Bard College campus.

Seven of the 10 recipients of the 2015 Anonymous Was A Woman Award have Bard College affiliations, including faculty members, visiting artists, artists in residence, and alumnae. Anonymous Was A Woman is an unrestricted grant of $25,000 that enables women artists, over 40 years of age and at a significant juncture in their lives or careers, to continue to grow and pursue their work. The award is given in recognition of an artist's accomplishments, artistic growth, and the quality of her work. The Bard-affiliated 2015 winners are: Wendy Ewald, former Bard MFA visiting artist; Rachel Harrison, Bard MFA faculty member and former visiting artist; Pam Lins, Bard MFA faculty member; Jennifer Montgomery, former Bard MFA faculty and Bard MFA ’94 alumna; Dona Nelson, Bard MFA faculty member; Lisa Sanditz, visiting assistant professor of studio arts at Bard College; Julianne Swartz, artist in residence in studio arts at Bard College and Bard MFA ‘02 alumna. More about the award

On Thursday, October 8, poet Anna Moschovakis, a founding editor of Ugly Duckling Presse and winner of the Academy of American Poets’ James Laughlin Award, will give a reading at Bard College. Author of I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone, You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake, and the forthcoming They and We Will Get into Trouble for This, Moschovakis will be introduced by Ann Lauterbach, David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature. This event, presented by the John Ashbery Poetry Series, takes place in Bard Hall at 6:00 p.m. It is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required. Books will be available for sale and signing from Oblong Books & Music.

Fennelly talks about working with Maryanne Amacher and David Behrman as a student in the Bard MFA program.

Professor Leonard’s photographs, on view at the Museum of Modern Art, show low-end commerce from New York to Africa, representing the human toll of corporate globalization.

Berrigan’s innovative rectangular poems are now available online at Bomb magazine.

This spring Triangle invites you to visit us at 20 Jay Street in Brooklyn, Suites 318 + 350 to meet artists-in-residence. View works-in-progress and engage directly with the artists whose projects span drawing, installation, painting, pedagogy, performance, photography, sculpture, video and more. 

Jazz musician and Bard MFA music/sound faculty Matana Roberts's Coin Coin Chapter Three: river run thee is "a 12-part cycle of personal, socio-historical and psychic inquisition."

The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) has announced its 2014 Artists' Fellowships Awardees, and a Bard MFA alumna and faculty members are among them. Music/Sound faculty Jace Clayton, Writing alumna Charity Coleman MFA '13, and Writing faculty Matvei Yankelevich have all been named as winners. For the past 29 years, NYFA has awarded unrestricted fellowships of $7,000 to artists living and working in the state of New York. Awarded in 15 different disciplines over a three-year period, Artists' Fellowships support artists from diverse cultural backgrounds at all stages of their professional careers.

Bard MFA alumnus Zach Layton '15 and faculty members Ellen Fullman and David Hartt have been named recipients of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts 2015 Grants to Artists. Each of 14 winners receives an unrestricted grant of $35,000. These cash awards, given to artists across disciplines, provide recipients with the financial means to engage in whatever artistic endeavors they wish to pursue, to research and develop ideas, to embark on projects, and to complete projects already underway. Fullman and Layton won in the category of Music/Sound and Hartt won in the category of Visual Arts.

MFA Photography student Felipe Meres '16 is the Grand Prize winner of the Tom of Finland Foundation 2014 Emerging Artist Competition. The Foundation produces a biannual contest that supports and encourages emerging erotic artists by providing exhibition of their work, publicity, and awards.

Sound artist and educator Christine Sun Kim joins this year's TED fellows, a select group that presents at TED conferences and participates in a network of cross-disciplinary collaboration.

In honor of the late artist Robert De Niro Sr., each year his estate supports a mid-career American painter with the $25,000 Robert De Niro Sr. Prize. This year's recipient is Robert Bordo, Bard MFA painting faculty member.

Chan’s “singular artistic voice” and versatile practice won him the prestigious award, which includes a $100,000 prize and an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum.

Lisa Oppenheim is the recipient of the prestigious Aimia | AGO Photography Prize which carries a $50,000 CAD prize in addition to a six-week, fully funded residency.

Bard MFA sculpture faculty Nancy Shaver is the first-ever recipient of the Art as Media Award presented by the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) as part of the Exceptional Merit Media Awards (EMMAs). The EMMAs were created by the NWPC in 1986 to honor and reward journalists and media outlets in radio, television, print and the Internet that inform and educate the public about critical issues that impact women’s lives. The 2014 EMMAs were presented on the evening of October 27 at The Metropolitan Club of New York City. Previous recipients include Ellen Goodman, Cokie Roberts, Barbara Ehrenreich and Diane Sawyer. Cochairs for this year’s awards were Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. Nancy Shaver's work has been shown extensively in the United States and abroad in both solo and group exhibitions. She has also been the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant and fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony.

Los Angeles-based painter Mary Weatherford MFA '06 has won the Artists' Legacy Foundation 2014 Artist Award and will receive a $25,000 cash prize.

Bard MFA photography faculty Mark Alice Durant interviews MFA writing faculty David Levi Strauss on art, writing, and politics.

Bard MFA alumna Corrine Fitzpatrick writes an in-depth article on the intense immersion experience of studying in Bard's MFA program.

Bard alumna Lisa Oppenheim MFA '02 has made the short list for the Aimia | AGO Photography Prize. She and three other artists will compete for the $50,000 award.

Bard MFA faculty and alumna Amy Sillman '95 offers surprises and inspiration in new exhibition.

Works by Israeli artist and Bard graduate Orit Raff MFA '03 "transcend national identities, challenge assumptions and transport viewers." 

The Bard MFA is noted for its unique low-residency program, in which "the focus is on creating art, rather than credits, grades, or classes."

Jazz musician and Bard MFA music/sound faculty member Matana Roberts is one of the inaugural recipients of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Impact Awards. The new awards are part of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Awards, a special, 10-year initiative to support artists with flexible, multiyear funding in response to financial challenges that are specific to the performing arts. Doris Duke Impact Award recipients receive $80,000. Since commencing in April 2012, the program has awarded a total of $18.1 million to artists in the fields of jazz, dance and theater.

Taylor Davis's sculptures necessitate engaged reorientation on the part of the viewer. Her works—for example, the text cylinders in this exhibition—require "at least six orbital journeys" in order to be fully understood.

Bard MFA Music/Sound faculty member Matana Roberts has been named as a recipient of the distinguished Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, which carries a prize of $75,000. Every year five mid-career, risk-taking artists in the categories of dance, film/video, music, theater, and visual arts are each selected to receive an award from the foundation. "Visionary composer, avant-garde saxophonist, and sound artist Matana Roberts was chosen as the winner in Music for her charismatic, powerful renderings of sound," says awards director Irene Borger. On May 9, the recipients will receive their awards at a private celebratory luncheon at the Herb Alpert Foundation in Santa Monica, California.

The John Ashbery Poetry Series at Bard College presents Brenda Coultas and Ann Lauterbach reading from their work, with an introduction by Michael Ives. The program takes place on Thursday, April 3, at 6 p.m. in Bard Hall, and is free and open to the public.

Composer Richard Teitelbaum discusses his early work in electronic music in the 1960s with Musica Elettronica Viva.

Multimedia artist Dani Leventhal discusses the evolution of her work from ceramics to drawing and film, and reflects on her time at Bard.

Bard MFA faculty and alumna Amy Sillman will be featured in the Whitney Biennial for the second time this year, and her acclaimed survey Amy Sillman: One Lump or Two will come to CCS Bard.

Installation artist Brad Tucker MFA '09 has created a new art book suitable for toddlers, called Dunes at Noons, and it's published by fellow alum Julia Klein MFA '09's Soberscove Press.

Artist, alumna, and Bard MFA faculty Amy Sillman launched her first museum survey this year. Now the exhibition catalogue is one of the best art books of 2013.

Matana Roberts's new album, Coin Coin Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile, is "Family history as social history in a swirling mix of free jazz, opera and spoken word. Challenging yet ultimately beautiful."

Bard MFA graduate and visual artist Sadie Laska discusses her "deliriously frenetic abstract paintings."