Online Event On June 2, 207 years ago, John Bard was born. Our goal is 207 donors to the Bard College Fund by midnight tonight. Please join us!Give NowSponsored by: Bard College Alumni/ae Association; Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs.
Part of the Hannah Arendt Special IHRAF Festival Celebrating the life and ideas of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
Saturday, June 6, 2026 3 pm
The 30th Street Theater, 259 West 30th Street, NYC The Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College presents a discussion with artists and scholars about how Arendtian ideas influenced their work. Moderated by Thomas Bartscherer (Peter Sourian Senior Lecturer in the Humanities at Bard College) and featuring Jenny Lyn Bader (playwright) and three IHRAF artists: Emmanuelle Zagoria (The banality of being a balloon), Shailly Agnihotri (The Supremes) and Dylan Horowitz (Living The Dream).
Thomas Bartscherer (Workshop Leader) holds PhD and MA degrees from the University of Chicago and a BA (summa cum laude) from the University of Pennsylvania. He has held fellowships at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, the University of Heidelberg, and the Center for Advanced Film Studies at the Freie Universität in Berlin. He is a Senior Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities. His writing for performance has been presented at numerous venues, including LA Phil’s Disney Hall, the Baryshnikov Arts Center, the Prototype Festival, the Kaatsbaan Festival, and the First Take Opera Workshop.
Roger Berkowitz (Introduction) is an American scholar and professor whose work focuses on politics, philosophy, and law. He is recognized as a leading scholar on the political thinking of Hannah Arendt. In 2006, he founded the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, where he is a Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Human Rights.
Jenny Lyn Bader (Playwright)'s plays include Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library (Luna Stage), Equally Divine (Theatre at the 14th St. Y), In Flight (Turn to Flesh Productions), and None of the Above (New Georges). A Harvard graduate, she has received the “Best Documentary One-Woman Show” Award (United Solo Fest); Athena Playwriting Fellowship; and the O’Neill Center’s Edith Oliver Award for a playwright who has, in the spirit of the late New Yorker critic, “a caustic wit that deflates the ego but does not unduly damage the human spirit.” Her work has been published by Dramatists Play Service, Smith + Kraus, Applause, Vintage, W.W. Norton, The Lincoln Center Theater Review, Plays International + Europe, and The New York Times, where she served as a frequent contributor to the "Week in Review.”
IHRAF Festival: Hannah Arendt is taking place June 5-7 at The 30th Street Theater, 259 West 30th Street, New York, NY 10001
The International Human Rights Art Movement announces its IHRAF Festival: Hannah Arendt, highlighting the thought and power of the 20th century social philosopher Hannah Arendt, and how her work informs our understanding of today’s social and political world. IHRAF: Arendt, funded by a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts and in conjunction with the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard college, highlights her ideas through dance, theater, puppetry, music, a workshop discussion and other artistic means, 15 performances chosen out of 100 submissions.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
With performances acclaimed for both “high-octane” excitement (The Strad) and “dusky lyricism” (New York Times), the Aeolus Quartet has been awarded prizes at nearly every major competition in the United States and performed across the globe with showings “worthy of a major-league quartet” (Dallas Morning News). Their program features works by Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn, GrażynaBacewicz, and a newly revised version of Joan Tower’s Wild Summer.
Online Event Beginning Friday, June 12th, we'll begin reading Responsibility and Judgment, Hannah Arendt's indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time.
Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, where she addresses fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. At the heart of the book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” in which Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing and examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We also see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed.
Anna Polonskypiano Jaime Laredoviolin Milena Pájaro-Van de Stadtviola Sharon Robinsoncello
Four remarkable artists with a passion for chamber music have come together to form an exciting new piano-and-strings quartet, destined to become an audience favorite. For decades, violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson, together with their piano trio partner the late Joseph Kalichstein, were hailed as “chamber music royalty” (Washington Post), a distinction that equally applies to their ESPRESSIVO!partners—the stellar violist Milena Pájaro-van de Stadt, a founding member of the Dover Quartet, and the award-winning pianist Anna Polonsky, one of chamber music’s most sought-after collaborators. Their program includes favorites by Beethoven and Schumann and a reprise of Richard Danielpour’s Book of Hours, co-commissioned by the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle and premiered on our series at Olin Auditorium in 2007.
"Jackals and Arabs,” Exploring Franz Kafka’s relationship to Zionism with Salmon Kureishy
The Dialogue Project
Wednesday, June 17, 2026 1–2:30 pm
Online Event A few months before the Balfour Declaration in November 1917, Martin Buber published one of Kafka’s lesser known works- a very short story “Jackals and Arabs” in the journal Der Jude. Kafka’s well known works like “The Trial”, “The Castle”, “Metamorphoses” and “The Judgement” have been read as pointers towards his tortured relationships with virtually everything significant in his life. In light of the events since October 7, 2023, this story also offers us a complex and disturbing set of symbols and images in a context that is highly charged - that of Israel and Palestine. In this one session dialogue, we will read the story and a few reviews to help us address a range of questions.
Online Event Beginning Friday, June 12th, we'll begin reading Responsibility and Judgment, Hannah Arendt's indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time.
Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, where she addresses fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. At the heart of the book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” in which Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing and examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We also see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed.
A thrilling new opera based on Tennessee Williams’s fever-dream of a play about a family secret, and a mother’s desperate attempt to silence the truth.
In this hybrid music-theater work, Courtney Bryan premieres a ravishing score inspired by the play’s two worlds: the Mediterranean coast and the Garden District of New Orleans, Bryan’s hometown. Director Daniel Fish, who staged Fisher Center LAB’s Tony Award-winning Oklahoma!, and Fisher Center Artistic Director and Chief Executive Gideon Lester have shaped a libretto from Williams’s tale of power, desire, and the lengths a family will go to protect its legacy.
The poet Sebastian Venable died mysteriously in Spain last summer. His cousin Catharine—sung by SummerScape favorite Mikaela Bennett (Most Happy in Concert)—was with him and has since returned to New Orleans, where she obsessively recounts the story of his death. Now, Sebastian’s mother, played by renowned actor Tina Benko, is attempting to bribe a doctor to lobotomize her niece and cut the story from her memory forever.
A world premiere and the first Fisher Center LAB Civis Hope Commission to premiere, this searing new opera brings radiant new life to Williams’s study of a confrontation between truth and power.
Online Event Beginning Friday, June 12th, we'll begin reading Responsibility and Judgment, Hannah Arendt's indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time.
Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, where she addresses fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. At the heart of the book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” in which Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing and examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We also see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed.
Lucinda Childs, a defining force in American dance, returns to Bard SummerScape with a one-of-a-kind program of new and iconic works.
Celebrated for choreography that is rigorous, inventive, and hypnotically precise, Childs has shaped generations of dancers and choreographers. This program includes the North American premieres of several major new works, as well as her groundbreaking collaborations with some of the most influential artists of our time. These include her work with composers Philip Glass and John Adams, and two luminaries lost in 2025—the late theater director Robert Wilson and Frank Gehry, architect of the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Alongside new short works for her company, Childs—marking her 86th birthday—will perform a solo, offering audiences a uniquely intimate encounter with one of the great living pioneers of contemporary dance.
In 2009, Dance—Childs’s iconic 1979 collaboration with Glass and visual artist Sol LeWitt—was redeveloped and premiered at Bard SummerScape, sparking a major international revival. Today, the Fisher Center remains the place to see the Lucinda Childs Dance Company in the United States, offering an unmatched opportunity to experience her artistry, legacy, and ongoing creative vision.
Underground System is a shape-shifting, larger-than-life force in New York City’s dance music scene, fusing Afrobeat, punk, and disco into a sound that’s as unpredictable as it is infectious. The band’s debut LP, What Are You, earned cult status for its “David Byrne meets Soulwax” (KCRW) energy and propelled them onto global stages like Eurockéennes and Fusion Festival. Led by Domenica—returning to Bard SummerScape after playing flute for Illinoise in 2023—Underground System launches the Spiegeltent season with an unforgettable night of “exuberant dance music that blooms out into countless directions” (Rolling Stone).
CCS Bard Galleries Betty Parsons: An Expanded World is the first major retrospective to examine the intertwined legacies of Betty Parsons (1900 - 1982) as both pioneering abstract artist and trailblazing gallerist who shaped the trajectory of 20th century American art.
Best known for ushering in the American avant-garde by establishing the careers of Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock, among others, Parsons also maintained a dedicated artistic practice throughout her life. This exhibition centers her output as a painter and sculptor, while exploring the radical history of the Betty Parsons Gallery and its support of underrecognized, experimental artists. Organized by Kelly Taxter (CCS ‘03) with artist Amy Sillman, Betty Parsons: An Expanded World features approximately 80 works spanning painting, sculpture, and works on paper, tracing Parsons’ voluminous output as she evolved from a young academic painter to a mature abstractionist over a six-decade career. A revelatory and newly commissioned, multi-channel film by G. Anthony Svatek and Kaija Siirala will bring to life the largely unknown history of the Betty Parsons Gallery. More info here.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Replica of a Chip: The Weaving Technology of Marilou Schultz
Saturday, June 27, 2026 11 am – 5 pm
Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard Replica of a Chip: The Weaving Technology of Marilou Schultz marks the first survey of acclaimed Navajo/Diné weaver and mathematics educator Marilou Schultz. On view through November 29, 2026, the exhibition positions Schultz as an innovator whose work across culture and industry has influenced the practices of art, Navajo weaving, and computer architecture over a 65-year career. Replica of a Chip traces the full arc of Schultz’s artistic practice, demonstrating how she has consistently pushed the boundaries of experimentation within Navajo weaving, first through teaching herself new weaving styles, dyes, and techniques and later, using it as a means to reflect on the digital technologies shaping contemporary culture and society—from early computer microprocessors to stock market tickers and other digital data.
The exhibition is curated by Candice Hopkins (citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation, CCS Bard ‘03), Executive Director and Chief Curator of Forge Project and Fellow in Indigenous Art History and Curatorial Studies at CCS Bard.
More info here.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard Uman: In Between presents a solo exhibition exploring over two decades of creative practice by the painter Uman, marking the pathbreaking artist’s most comprehensive survey to date. Featuring more than 100 works, the exhibition will trace the evolution of Uman’s prolific painting practice from the intimate portraits she made in the 2000s to the commanding images she creates today, including two new murals developed for the exhibition.
Uman: In Between is organized by CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art and curated by Lauren Cornell. More exhibition info here.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Lucinda Childs, a defining force in American dance, returns to Bard SummerScape with a one-of-a-kind program of new and iconic works.
Celebrated for choreography that is rigorous, inventive, and hypnotically precise, Childs has shaped generations of dancers and choreographers. This program includes the North American premieres of several major new works, as well as her groundbreaking collaborations with some of the most influential artists of our time. These include her work with composers Philip Glass and John Adams, and two luminaries lost in 2025—the late theater director Robert Wilson and Frank Gehry, architect of the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Alongside new short works for her company, Childs—marking her 86th birthday—will perform a solo, offering audiences a uniquely intimate encounter with one of the great living pioneers of contemporary dance.
In 2009, Dance—Childs’s iconic 1979 collaboration with Glass and visual artist Sol LeWitt—was redeveloped and premiered at Bard SummerScape, sparking a major international revival. Today, the Fisher Center remains the place to see the Lucinda Childs Dance Company in the United States, offering an unmatched opportunity to experience her artistry, legacy, and ongoing creative vision.
A thrilling new opera based on Tennessee Williams’s fever-dream of a play about a family secret, and a mother’s desperate attempt to silence the truth.
In this hybrid music-theater work, Courtney Bryan premieres a ravishing score inspired by the play’s two worlds: the Mediterranean coast and the Garden District of New Orleans, Bryan’s hometown. Director Daniel Fish, who staged Fisher Center LAB’s Tony Award-winning Oklahoma!, and Fisher Center Artistic Director and Chief Executive Gideon Lester have shaped a libretto from Williams’s tale of power, desire, and the lengths a family will go to protect its legacy.
The poet Sebastian Venable died mysteriously in Spain last summer. His cousin Catharine—sung by SummerScape favorite Mikaela Bennett (Most Happy in Concert)—was with him and has since returned to New Orleans, where she obsessively recounts the story of his death. Now, Sebastian’s mother, played by renowned actor Tina Benko, is attempting to bribe a doctor to lobotomize her niece and cut the story from her memory forever.
A world premiere and the first Fisher Center LAB Civis Hope Commission to premiere, this searing new opera brings radiant new life to Williams’s study of a confrontation between truth and power.
Comedian and actor James Austin Johnson makes his Spiegeltent debut with a stand-up set showcasing the sharp wit and chameleonic impression skills that have made him one of today’s most exciting comedians. Named “one of SNL’s most versatile celebrity impressionists” by The New York Times, Johnson is widely recognized for his uncanny portrayal of Donald Trump, and is currently in his fourth season as a cast member on the show. Fresh off appearances in film (A Complete Unknown, Inside Out 2), television (Barry, Better Call Saul), and podcasting, Johnson brings a bold, unpredictable night of comedy to the Spiegeltent.
CCS Bard Galleries Betty Parsons: An Expanded World is the first major retrospective to examine the intertwined legacies of Betty Parsons (1900 - 1982) as both pioneering abstract artist and trailblazing gallerist who shaped the trajectory of 20th century American art.
Best known for ushering in the American avant-garde by establishing the careers of Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock, among others, Parsons also maintained a dedicated artistic practice throughout her life. This exhibition centers her output as a painter and sculptor, while exploring the radical history of the Betty Parsons Gallery and its support of underrecognized, experimental artists. Organized by Kelly Taxter (CCS ‘03) with artist Amy Sillman, Betty Parsons: An Expanded World features approximately 80 works spanning painting, sculpture, and works on paper, tracing Parsons’ voluminous output as she evolved from a young academic painter to a mature abstractionist over a six-decade career. A revelatory and newly commissioned, multi-channel film by G. Anthony Svatek and Kaija Siirala will bring to life the largely unknown history of the Betty Parsons Gallery. More info here.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Replica of a Chip: The Weaving Technology of Marilou Schultz
Sunday, June 28, 2026 11 am – 5 pm
Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard Replica of a Chip: The Weaving Technology of Marilou Schultz marks the first survey of acclaimed Navajo/Diné weaver and mathematics educator Marilou Schultz. On view through November 29, 2026, the exhibition positions Schultz as an innovator whose work across culture and industry has influenced the practices of art, Navajo weaving, and computer architecture over a 65-year career. Replica of a Chip traces the full arc of Schultz’s artistic practice, demonstrating how she has consistently pushed the boundaries of experimentation within Navajo weaving, first through teaching herself new weaving styles, dyes, and techniques and later, using it as a means to reflect on the digital technologies shaping contemporary culture and society—from early computer microprocessors to stock market tickers and other digital data.
The exhibition is curated by Candice Hopkins (citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation, CCS Bard ‘03), Executive Director and Chief Curator of Forge Project and Fellow in Indigenous Art History and Curatorial Studies at CCS Bard.
More info here.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard Uman: In Between presents a solo exhibition exploring over two decades of creative practice by the painter Uman, marking the pathbreaking artist’s most comprehensive survey to date. Featuring more than 100 works, the exhibition will trace the evolution of Uman’s prolific painting practice from the intimate portraits she made in the 2000s to the commanding images she creates today, including two new murals developed for the exhibition.
Uman: In Between is organized by CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art and curated by Lauren Cornell. More exhibition info here.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Uman in conversation with Lauren Cornell and Roberta Smith
Sunday, June 28, 2026 1:30–2:30 pm
Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard On the occasion of her first museum survey In Between, Uman will discuss the evolution of her art as well as her new work, including the large-scale murals painted specially for the Hessel Museum of Art. She will be in conversation with Lauren Cornell, exhibition curator, and Roberta Smith, esteemed writer, former co-chief art critic of the New York Times, and contributor to the exhibition catalogue. Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Lucinda Childs, a defining force in American dance, returns to Bard SummerScape with a one-of-a-kind program of new and iconic works.
Celebrated for choreography that is rigorous, inventive, and hypnotically precise, Childs has shaped generations of dancers and choreographers. This program includes the North American premieres of several major new works, as well as her groundbreaking collaborations with some of the most influential artists of our time. These include her work with composers Philip Glass and John Adams, and two luminaries lost in 2025—the late theater director Robert Wilson and Frank Gehry, architect of the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Alongside new short works for her company, Childs—marking her 86th birthday—will perform a solo, offering audiences a uniquely intimate encounter with one of the great living pioneers of contemporary dance.
In 2009, Dance—Childs’s iconic 1979 collaboration with Glass and visual artist Sol LeWitt—was redeveloped and premiered at Bard SummerScape, sparking a major international revival. Today, the Fisher Center remains the place to see the Lucinda Childs Dance Company in the United States, offering an unmatched opportunity to experience her artistry, legacy, and ongoing creative vision.
A thrilling new opera based on Tennessee Williams’s fever-dream of a play about a family secret, and a mother’s desperate attempt to silence the truth.
In this hybrid music-theater work, Courtney Bryan premieres a ravishing score inspired by the play’s two worlds: the Mediterranean coast and the Garden District of New Orleans, Bryan’s hometown. Director Daniel Fish, who staged Fisher Center LAB’s Tony Award-winning Oklahoma!, and Fisher Center Artistic Director and Chief Executive Gideon Lester have shaped a libretto from Williams’s tale of power, desire, and the lengths a family will go to protect its legacy.
The poet Sebastian Venable died mysteriously in Spain last summer. His cousin Catharine—sung by SummerScape favorite Mikaela Bennett (Most Happy in Concert)—was with him and has since returned to New Orleans, where she obsessively recounts the story of his death. Now, Sebastian’s mother, played by renowned actor Tina Benko, is attempting to bribe a doctor to lobotomize her niece and cut the story from her memory forever.
A world premiere and the first Fisher Center LAB Civis Hope Commission to premiere, this searing new opera brings radiant new life to Williams’s study of a confrontation between truth and power.
Kelly Taxter, Amy Sillman, and Ksenia Soboleva in Conversation
Sunday, June 28, 2026 3–4 pm
Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard While Betty Parsons is celebrated as one of the most influential gallerists of the twentieth century, the exhibition An Expanded World shows us the other side of her life, as a committed abstract painter and sculptor. Kelly Taxter and Amy Sillman, exhibition curators, and Ksenia M. Soboleva, scholar and writer, gather to discuss Parsons’s interlaced private and public practices.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
A thrilling new opera based on Tennessee Williams’s fever-dream of a play about a family secret, and a mother’s desperate attempt to silence the truth.
In this hybrid music-theater work, Courtney Bryan premieres a ravishing score inspired by the play’s two worlds: the Mediterranean coast and the Garden District of New Orleans, Bryan’s hometown. Director Daniel Fish, who staged Fisher Center LAB’s Tony Award-winning Oklahoma!, and Fisher Center Artistic Director and Chief Executive Gideon Lester have shaped a libretto from Williams’s tale of power, desire, and the lengths a family will go to protect its legacy.
The poet Sebastian Venable died mysteriously in Spain last summer. His cousin Catharine—sung by SummerScape favorite Mikaela Bennett (Most Happy in Concert)—was with him and has since returned to New Orleans, where she obsessively recounts the story of his death. Now, Sebastian’s mother, played by renowned actor Tina Benko, is attempting to bribe a doctor to lobotomize her niece and cut the story from her memory forever.
A world premiere and the first Fisher Center LAB Civis Hope Commission to premiere, this searing new opera brings radiant new life to Williams’s study of a confrontation between truth and power.
Online Event On June 2, 207 years ago, John Bard was born. Our goal is 207 donors to the Bard College Fund by midnight tonight. Please join us!Give NowSponsored by: Bard College Alumni/ae Association; Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs.
Part of the Hannah Arendt Special IHRAF Festival Celebrating the life and ideas of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
Saturday, June 6, 2026 3 pm
The 30th Street Theater, 259 West 30th Street, NYC The Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College presents a discussion with artists and scholars about how Arendtian ideas influenced their work. Moderated by Thomas Bartscherer (Peter Sourian Senior Lecturer in the Humanities at Bard College) and featuring Jenny Lyn Bader (playwright) and three IHRAF artists: Emmanuelle Zagoria (The banality of being a balloon), Shailly Agnihotri (The Supremes) and Dylan Horowitz (Living The Dream).
Thomas Bartscherer (Workshop Leader) holds PhD and MA degrees from the University of Chicago and a BA (summa cum laude) from the University of Pennsylvania. He has held fellowships at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, the University of Heidelberg, and the Center for Advanced Film Studies at the Freie Universität in Berlin. He is a Senior Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities. His writing for performance has been presented at numerous venues, including LA Phil’s Disney Hall, the Baryshnikov Arts Center, the Prototype Festival, the Kaatsbaan Festival, and the First Take Opera Workshop.
Roger Berkowitz (Introduction) is an American scholar and professor whose work focuses on politics, philosophy, and law. He is recognized as a leading scholar on the political thinking of Hannah Arendt. In 2006, he founded the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, where he is a Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Human Rights.
Jenny Lyn Bader (Playwright)'s plays include Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library (Luna Stage), Equally Divine (Theatre at the 14th St. Y), In Flight (Turn to Flesh Productions), and None of the Above (New Georges). A Harvard graduate, she has received the “Best Documentary One-Woman Show” Award (United Solo Fest); Athena Playwriting Fellowship; and the O’Neill Center’s Edith Oliver Award for a playwright who has, in the spirit of the late New Yorker critic, “a caustic wit that deflates the ego but does not unduly damage the human spirit.” Her work has been published by Dramatists Play Service, Smith + Kraus, Applause, Vintage, W.W. Norton, The Lincoln Center Theater Review, Plays International + Europe, and The New York Times, where she served as a frequent contributor to the "Week in Review.”
IHRAF Festival: Hannah Arendt is taking place June 5-7 at The 30th Street Theater, 259 West 30th Street, New York, NY 10001
The International Human Rights Art Movement announces its IHRAF Festival: Hannah Arendt, highlighting the thought and power of the 20th century social philosopher Hannah Arendt, and how her work informs our understanding of today’s social and political world. IHRAF: Arendt, funded by a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts and in conjunction with the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard college, highlights her ideas through dance, theater, puppetry, music, a workshop discussion and other artistic means, 15 performances chosen out of 100 submissions.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
With performances acclaimed for both “high-octane” excitement (The Strad) and “dusky lyricism” (New York Times), the Aeolus Quartet has been awarded prizes at nearly every major competition in the United States and performed across the globe with showings “worthy of a major-league quartet” (Dallas Morning News). Their program features works by Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn, GrażynaBacewicz, and a newly revised version of Joan Tower’s Wild Summer.
Online Event Beginning Friday, June 12th, we'll begin reading Responsibility and Judgment, Hannah Arendt's indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time.
Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, where she addresses fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. At the heart of the book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” in which Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing and examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We also see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed.
Anna Polonskypiano Jaime Laredoviolin Milena Pájaro-Van de Stadtviola Sharon Robinsoncello
Four remarkable artists with a passion for chamber music have come together to form an exciting new piano-and-strings quartet, destined to become an audience favorite. For decades, violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson, together with their piano trio partner the late Joseph Kalichstein, were hailed as “chamber music royalty” (Washington Post), a distinction that equally applies to their ESPRESSIVO!partners—the stellar violist Milena Pájaro-van de Stadt, a founding member of the Dover Quartet, and the award-winning pianist Anna Polonsky, one of chamber music’s most sought-after collaborators. Their program includes favorites by Beethoven and Schumann and a reprise of Richard Danielpour’s Book of Hours, co-commissioned by the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle and premiered on our series at Olin Auditorium in 2007.
"Jackals and Arabs,” Exploring Franz Kafka’s relationship to Zionism with Salmon Kureishy
The Dialogue Project
Wednesday, June 17, 2026 1–2:30 pm
Online Event A few months before the Balfour Declaration in November 1917, Martin Buber published one of Kafka’s lesser known works- a very short story “Jackals and Arabs” in the journal Der Jude. Kafka’s well known works like “The Trial”, “The Castle”, “Metamorphoses” and “The Judgement” have been read as pointers towards his tortured relationships with virtually everything significant in his life. In light of the events since October 7, 2023, this story also offers us a complex and disturbing set of symbols and images in a context that is highly charged - that of Israel and Palestine. In this one session dialogue, we will read the story and a few reviews to help us address a range of questions.
Online Event Beginning Friday, June 12th, we'll begin reading Responsibility and Judgment, Hannah Arendt's indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time.
Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, where she addresses fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. At the heart of the book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” in which Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing and examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We also see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed.
A thrilling new opera based on Tennessee Williams’s fever-dream of a play about a family secret, and a mother’s desperate attempt to silence the truth.
In this hybrid music-theater work, Courtney Bryan premieres a ravishing score inspired by the play’s two worlds: the Mediterranean coast and the Garden District of New Orleans, Bryan’s hometown. Director Daniel Fish, who staged Fisher Center LAB’s Tony Award-winning Oklahoma!, and Fisher Center Artistic Director and Chief Executive Gideon Lester have shaped a libretto from Williams’s tale of power, desire, and the lengths a family will go to protect its legacy.
The poet Sebastian Venable died mysteriously in Spain last summer. His cousin Catharine—sung by SummerScape favorite Mikaela Bennett (Most Happy in Concert)—was with him and has since returned to New Orleans, where she obsessively recounts the story of his death. Now, Sebastian’s mother, played by renowned actor Tina Benko, is attempting to bribe a doctor to lobotomize her niece and cut the story from her memory forever.
A world premiere and the first Fisher Center LAB Civis Hope Commission to premiere, this searing new opera brings radiant new life to Williams’s study of a confrontation between truth and power.
Online Event Beginning Friday, June 12th, we'll begin reading Responsibility and Judgment, Hannah Arendt's indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time.
Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, where she addresses fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. At the heart of the book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” in which Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing and examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We also see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed.
Lucinda Childs, a defining force in American dance, returns to Bard SummerScape with a one-of-a-kind program of new and iconic works.
Celebrated for choreography that is rigorous, inventive, and hypnotically precise, Childs has shaped generations of dancers and choreographers. This program includes the North American premieres of several major new works, as well as her groundbreaking collaborations with some of the most influential artists of our time. These include her work with composers Philip Glass and John Adams, and two luminaries lost in 2025—the late theater director Robert Wilson and Frank Gehry, architect of the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Alongside new short works for her company, Childs—marking her 86th birthday—will perform a solo, offering audiences a uniquely intimate encounter with one of the great living pioneers of contemporary dance.
In 2009, Dance—Childs’s iconic 1979 collaboration with Glass and visual artist Sol LeWitt—was redeveloped and premiered at Bard SummerScape, sparking a major international revival. Today, the Fisher Center remains the place to see the Lucinda Childs Dance Company in the United States, offering an unmatched opportunity to experience her artistry, legacy, and ongoing creative vision.
Underground System is a shape-shifting, larger-than-life force in New York City’s dance music scene, fusing Afrobeat, punk, and disco into a sound that’s as unpredictable as it is infectious. The band’s debut LP, What Are You, earned cult status for its “David Byrne meets Soulwax” (KCRW) energy and propelled them onto global stages like Eurockéennes and Fusion Festival. Led by Domenica—returning to Bard SummerScape after playing flute for Illinoise in 2023—Underground System launches the Spiegeltent season with an unforgettable night of “exuberant dance music that blooms out into countless directions” (Rolling Stone).
CCS Bard Galleries Betty Parsons: An Expanded World is the first major retrospective to examine the intertwined legacies of Betty Parsons (1900 - 1982) as both pioneering abstract artist and trailblazing gallerist who shaped the trajectory of 20th century American art.
Best known for ushering in the American avant-garde by establishing the careers of Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock, among others, Parsons also maintained a dedicated artistic practice throughout her life. This exhibition centers her output as a painter and sculptor, while exploring the radical history of the Betty Parsons Gallery and its support of underrecognized, experimental artists. Organized by Kelly Taxter (CCS ‘03) with artist Amy Sillman, Betty Parsons: An Expanded World features approximately 80 works spanning painting, sculpture, and works on paper, tracing Parsons’ voluminous output as she evolved from a young academic painter to a mature abstractionist over a six-decade career. A revelatory and newly commissioned, multi-channel film by G. Anthony Svatek and Kaija Siirala will bring to life the largely unknown history of the Betty Parsons Gallery. More info here.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Replica of a Chip: The Weaving Technology of Marilou Schultz
Saturday, June 27, 2026 11 am – 5 pm
Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard Replica of a Chip: The Weaving Technology of Marilou Schultz marks the first survey of acclaimed Navajo/Diné weaver and mathematics educator Marilou Schultz. On view through November 29, 2026, the exhibition positions Schultz as an innovator whose work across culture and industry has influenced the practices of art, Navajo weaving, and computer architecture over a 65-year career. Replica of a Chip traces the full arc of Schultz’s artistic practice, demonstrating how she has consistently pushed the boundaries of experimentation within Navajo weaving, first through teaching herself new weaving styles, dyes, and techniques and later, using it as a means to reflect on the digital technologies shaping contemporary culture and society—from early computer microprocessors to stock market tickers and other digital data.
The exhibition is curated by Candice Hopkins (citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation, CCS Bard ‘03), Executive Director and Chief Curator of Forge Project and Fellow in Indigenous Art History and Curatorial Studies at CCS Bard.
More info here.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard Uman: In Between presents a solo exhibition exploring over two decades of creative practice by the painter Uman, marking the pathbreaking artist’s most comprehensive survey to date. Featuring more than 100 works, the exhibition will trace the evolution of Uman’s prolific painting practice from the intimate portraits she made in the 2000s to the commanding images she creates today, including two new murals developed for the exhibition.
Uman: In Between is organized by CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art and curated by Lauren Cornell. More exhibition info here.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Lucinda Childs, a defining force in American dance, returns to Bard SummerScape with a one-of-a-kind program of new and iconic works.
Celebrated for choreography that is rigorous, inventive, and hypnotically precise, Childs has shaped generations of dancers and choreographers. This program includes the North American premieres of several major new works, as well as her groundbreaking collaborations with some of the most influential artists of our time. These include her work with composers Philip Glass and John Adams, and two luminaries lost in 2025—the late theater director Robert Wilson and Frank Gehry, architect of the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Alongside new short works for her company, Childs—marking her 86th birthday—will perform a solo, offering audiences a uniquely intimate encounter with one of the great living pioneers of contemporary dance.
In 2009, Dance—Childs’s iconic 1979 collaboration with Glass and visual artist Sol LeWitt—was redeveloped and premiered at Bard SummerScape, sparking a major international revival. Today, the Fisher Center remains the place to see the Lucinda Childs Dance Company in the United States, offering an unmatched opportunity to experience her artistry, legacy, and ongoing creative vision.
A thrilling new opera based on Tennessee Williams’s fever-dream of a play about a family secret, and a mother’s desperate attempt to silence the truth.
In this hybrid music-theater work, Courtney Bryan premieres a ravishing score inspired by the play’s two worlds: the Mediterranean coast and the Garden District of New Orleans, Bryan’s hometown. Director Daniel Fish, who staged Fisher Center LAB’s Tony Award-winning Oklahoma!, and Fisher Center Artistic Director and Chief Executive Gideon Lester have shaped a libretto from Williams’s tale of power, desire, and the lengths a family will go to protect its legacy.
The poet Sebastian Venable died mysteriously in Spain last summer. His cousin Catharine—sung by SummerScape favorite Mikaela Bennett (Most Happy in Concert)—was with him and has since returned to New Orleans, where she obsessively recounts the story of his death. Now, Sebastian’s mother, played by renowned actor Tina Benko, is attempting to bribe a doctor to lobotomize her niece and cut the story from her memory forever.
A world premiere and the first Fisher Center LAB Civis Hope Commission to premiere, this searing new opera brings radiant new life to Williams’s study of a confrontation between truth and power.
Comedian and actor James Austin Johnson makes his Spiegeltent debut with a stand-up set showcasing the sharp wit and chameleonic impression skills that have made him one of today’s most exciting comedians. Named “one of SNL’s most versatile celebrity impressionists” by The New York Times, Johnson is widely recognized for his uncanny portrayal of Donald Trump, and is currently in his fourth season as a cast member on the show. Fresh off appearances in film (A Complete Unknown, Inside Out 2), television (Barry, Better Call Saul), and podcasting, Johnson brings a bold, unpredictable night of comedy to the Spiegeltent.
CCS Bard Galleries Betty Parsons: An Expanded World is the first major retrospective to examine the intertwined legacies of Betty Parsons (1900 - 1982) as both pioneering abstract artist and trailblazing gallerist who shaped the trajectory of 20th century American art.
Best known for ushering in the American avant-garde by establishing the careers of Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock, among others, Parsons also maintained a dedicated artistic practice throughout her life. This exhibition centers her output as a painter and sculptor, while exploring the radical history of the Betty Parsons Gallery and its support of underrecognized, experimental artists. Organized by Kelly Taxter (CCS ‘03) with artist Amy Sillman, Betty Parsons: An Expanded World features approximately 80 works spanning painting, sculpture, and works on paper, tracing Parsons’ voluminous output as she evolved from a young academic painter to a mature abstractionist over a six-decade career. A revelatory and newly commissioned, multi-channel film by G. Anthony Svatek and Kaija Siirala will bring to life the largely unknown history of the Betty Parsons Gallery. More info here.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Replica of a Chip: The Weaving Technology of Marilou Schultz
Sunday, June 28, 2026 11 am – 5 pm
Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard Replica of a Chip: The Weaving Technology of Marilou Schultz marks the first survey of acclaimed Navajo/Diné weaver and mathematics educator Marilou Schultz. On view through November 29, 2026, the exhibition positions Schultz as an innovator whose work across culture and industry has influenced the practices of art, Navajo weaving, and computer architecture over a 65-year career. Replica of a Chip traces the full arc of Schultz’s artistic practice, demonstrating how she has consistently pushed the boundaries of experimentation within Navajo weaving, first through teaching herself new weaving styles, dyes, and techniques and later, using it as a means to reflect on the digital technologies shaping contemporary culture and society—from early computer microprocessors to stock market tickers and other digital data.
The exhibition is curated by Candice Hopkins (citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation, CCS Bard ‘03), Executive Director and Chief Curator of Forge Project and Fellow in Indigenous Art History and Curatorial Studies at CCS Bard.
More info here.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard Uman: In Between presents a solo exhibition exploring over two decades of creative practice by the painter Uman, marking the pathbreaking artist’s most comprehensive survey to date. Featuring more than 100 works, the exhibition will trace the evolution of Uman’s prolific painting practice from the intimate portraits she made in the 2000s to the commanding images she creates today, including two new murals developed for the exhibition.
Uman: In Between is organized by CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art and curated by Lauren Cornell. More exhibition info here.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Uman in conversation with Lauren Cornell and Roberta Smith
Sunday, June 28, 2026 1:30–2:30 pm
Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard On the occasion of her first museum survey In Between, Uman will discuss the evolution of her art as well as her new work, including the large-scale murals painted specially for the Hessel Museum of Art. She will be in conversation with Lauren Cornell, exhibition curator, and Roberta Smith, esteemed writer, former co-chief art critic of the New York Times, and contributor to the exhibition catalogue. Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Lucinda Childs, a defining force in American dance, returns to Bard SummerScape with a one-of-a-kind program of new and iconic works.
Celebrated for choreography that is rigorous, inventive, and hypnotically precise, Childs has shaped generations of dancers and choreographers. This program includes the North American premieres of several major new works, as well as her groundbreaking collaborations with some of the most influential artists of our time. These include her work with composers Philip Glass and John Adams, and two luminaries lost in 2025—the late theater director Robert Wilson and Frank Gehry, architect of the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Alongside new short works for her company, Childs—marking her 86th birthday—will perform a solo, offering audiences a uniquely intimate encounter with one of the great living pioneers of contemporary dance.
In 2009, Dance—Childs’s iconic 1979 collaboration with Glass and visual artist Sol LeWitt—was redeveloped and premiered at Bard SummerScape, sparking a major international revival. Today, the Fisher Center remains the place to see the Lucinda Childs Dance Company in the United States, offering an unmatched opportunity to experience her artistry, legacy, and ongoing creative vision.
A thrilling new opera based on Tennessee Williams’s fever-dream of a play about a family secret, and a mother’s desperate attempt to silence the truth.
In this hybrid music-theater work, Courtney Bryan premieres a ravishing score inspired by the play’s two worlds: the Mediterranean coast and the Garden District of New Orleans, Bryan’s hometown. Director Daniel Fish, who staged Fisher Center LAB’s Tony Award-winning Oklahoma!, and Fisher Center Artistic Director and Chief Executive Gideon Lester have shaped a libretto from Williams’s tale of power, desire, and the lengths a family will go to protect its legacy.
The poet Sebastian Venable died mysteriously in Spain last summer. His cousin Catharine—sung by SummerScape favorite Mikaela Bennett (Most Happy in Concert)—was with him and has since returned to New Orleans, where she obsessively recounts the story of his death. Now, Sebastian’s mother, played by renowned actor Tina Benko, is attempting to bribe a doctor to lobotomize her niece and cut the story from her memory forever.
A world premiere and the first Fisher Center LAB Civis Hope Commission to premiere, this searing new opera brings radiant new life to Williams’s study of a confrontation between truth and power.
Kelly Taxter, Amy Sillman, and Ksenia Soboleva in Conversation
Sunday, June 28, 2026 3–4 pm
Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard While Betty Parsons is celebrated as one of the most influential gallerists of the twentieth century, the exhibition An Expanded World shows us the other side of her life, as a committed abstract painter and sculptor. Kelly Taxter and Amy Sillman, exhibition curators, and Ksenia M. Soboleva, scholar and writer, gather to discuss Parsons’s interlaced private and public practices.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
A thrilling new opera based on Tennessee Williams’s fever-dream of a play about a family secret, and a mother’s desperate attempt to silence the truth.
In this hybrid music-theater work, Courtney Bryan premieres a ravishing score inspired by the play’s two worlds: the Mediterranean coast and the Garden District of New Orleans, Bryan’s hometown. Director Daniel Fish, who staged Fisher Center LAB’s Tony Award-winning Oklahoma!, and Fisher Center Artistic Director and Chief Executive Gideon Lester have shaped a libretto from Williams’s tale of power, desire, and the lengths a family will go to protect its legacy.
The poet Sebastian Venable died mysteriously in Spain last summer. His cousin Catharine—sung by SummerScape favorite Mikaela Bennett (Most Happy in Concert)—was with him and has since returned to New Orleans, where she obsessively recounts the story of his death. Now, Sebastian’s mother, played by renowned actor Tina Benko, is attempting to bribe a doctor to lobotomize her niece and cut the story from her memory forever.
A world premiere and the first Fisher Center LAB Civis Hope Commission to premiere, this searing new opera brings radiant new life to Williams’s study of a confrontation between truth and power.
Uman in conversation with Lauren Cornell and Roberta Smith
Sunday, June 28, 2026 1:30–2:30 pm
On the occasion of her first museum survey In Between, Uman will discuss the evolution of her art as well as her new work, including the large-scale murals painted specially for the Hessel Museum of Art. She will be in conversation with Lauren Cornell, exhibition curator, and Roberta Smith, esteemed writer, former co-chief art critic of the New York Times, and contributor to the exhibition catalogue.
Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Kelly Taxter, Amy Sillman, and Ksenia Soboleva in Conversation
Sunday, June 28, 2026 3–4 pm
While Betty Parsons is celebrated as one of the most influential gallerists of the twentieth century, the exhibition An Expanded World shows us the other side of her life, as a committed abstract painter and sculptor. Kelly Taxter and Amy Sillman, exhibition curators, and Ksenia M. Soboleva, scholar and writer, gather to discuss Parsons’s interlaced private and public practices. Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
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