State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce the thesis exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts, Class of 2025.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3–7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard College. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students. They make interventions at both the analytic and methodological levels of analysis.
Below is the program for the thesis exhibition, including a list of events and showcased works :
Opening Reception Friday, 25 April 2025 4pm–7pm Exhibition opening and food-for-purchase provided by Samosa Shack.
Lecture Performance Conducting Empire by Elinor Arden Friday 25 April, Sunday 27 April, Saturday 3 May 6:30 pm–7pm
Panel Presentation Featuring Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona, Pyae Phyo Aung, and Arina Pshenichnaya Saturday, May 3 4 pm–5 pm
Written Theses Excerpts of these works are on display in the exhibition
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in A Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih
Installations Open daily, 3–7:30 pm
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli
Thesis Project Abstracts
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant This installation features a docufiction video and explores the role of an unofficial taxi vehicle vital to mobility in occupied Palestine, using the cases of Abu Dis and Al-Eizariya, two towns located in Area C of the West Bank. Manufactured by Ford Motor Company, this US vehicle has unintentionally functioned as the connective tissue of a fragmented landscape, navigating an apartheid system reinforced by the Oslo Accords. Operating illegally for over thirty years, the Ford Transit has not only sustained movement but also emerged as a tool of cultural sovereignty, community-structured infrastructure, and self-governance. A time capsule of Oslo’s failures, this vehicle offers a lens into the lived realities of Palestinian daily resistance and the unyielding struggle for the right to move.
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya This hybrid project, comprised of an interactive, web-based installation and research article, examines how “history’s first livestreamed genocide” in Gaza has been presented on TikTok LIVE. The work explores these streams, characterized by their low viewership as well as scattered and disorienting nature, arguing that they reshape our understanding of “livestreamed genocide” as a historical media paradigm. The installation foregrounds the tensions between a gamified platform and the realities of war on the Gaza Strip. In doing so, it examines the uneasy rise of TikTok’s algorithmically-driven platform as a space where social media visibility and atrocity merge, clash, and are reshaped by the logic of public engagement.
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer Calls from an Unseen Chorus is a sound installation that resists the passive consumption of Palestine as an image of suffering, instead demanding engagement through the act of listening. Centering the auditory as a site of resistance, the work immerses audiences in the sonic realities of occupation and defiance—from the oppressive stasis of colonial checkpoints to the collective force of protest chants, resistance music, and the recorded wills of martyrs. These layered soundscapes challenge static representations of Palestinian struggle, asserting a mobilized, dissenting presence and an unceasing fight for liberation. By stripping away the visual, Calls from an Unseen Chorus transforms listening into an entry point for solidarity, where sound becomes both testimony and a call to resistance.
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden Conducting Empire is a research article and an installation-performance investigating the material history of the undersea cable network: the physical ‘backbone’ of the internet. The project explores what lies beneath Google’s marketing strategies for their new transatlantic cables, tracing the genealogy of this infrastructure to 19th-century Britain and the era of so-called abolition. A live activation of a sound sculpture exposes the metallic substance of the cable network and its transmission of historical records into the present. By linking claims of technological progress to imperial control, the work reframes the utopian ideal of global connectivity with evidence found in the British National Archives, from the Birmingham copper industry to a mass of colonial correspondences. Conducting Empire removes the network’s insulation to uncover how telecommunications were produced through a violent historical circuit.
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung This written thesis explores the question of morality and conscience in the anti-authoritarian revolution that took shape in response to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. The term late pyar lone chin refers to the pride of performing a just action or the shame and guilt of not doing so, and the question, late pyar lone lar?, means roughly “do you have a clear conscience?” It is now widely used to testify to (or question) one’s stance and involvement in the revolution. Examining the digital artifacts and lived experiences of protestors, resistance fighters, and activist fundraisers, the thesis studies the role of calls to conscience in political mobilization and investigates how affect and morality have been activated through aesthetic means to shape the trajectory of the Spring Revolution in Myanmar.
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South. Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona The public policy known as Areas of Protection for Food Production was launched in July of 2024 in the south of La Guajira, Colombia. It aims to focus land use on agricultural production and prohibit any type of mining exploitation. This transition is based on concepts such as the human right to food and food security. This written thesis explores the origins of these concepts, their scope, and their limitations. This is particularly relevant at a time when the La Guajira Corporation is about to grant approval to the mining company Best Coal Company to exploit millions of tons of coal in the Cañaverales Community. This thesis responds to the crisis and the difficulties of the energy transition from an epistemological point of view, through an analysis of archives and geopoetics.
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada This hybrid project interrogates the role of Arab cultural production—particularly Egyptian songs and films about the Aswan High Dam—in shaping public history and contributing to Nubian dispossession. Building on an ongoing collaboration with Nubian activists, one component of this project is a research article that critiques nationalism and encourages a reflection on the power of cultural memory to perpetuate erasure or resist it. The second component of this project is an interactive installation titled The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine, which examines state propaganda and confronts the failures of Arab liberation movements, while centering a Nubian narrative and presents a speculative grassroots response.
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya Despite the secular image often associated with modern nationalism, the Russian state’s sacralization of war reveals the enduring power of religious symbols, rituals, and narratives in shaping national identity. This written thesis examines how the concept of sacred war has become central to the Russian national idea through a fusion of Orthodox theology, state power, and militarized aesthetics. It focuses on two key phenomena: the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, which presents war as a timeless and divine foundation of Russian identity; and front-line baptismal rituals, which transform soldiers into metaphysical agents of a civilizational mission. I analyze these practices through the writings of Aleksandr Dugin, whose metaphysical theory of civilizational conflict (noomachy) frames war not as a geopolitical act but as an ontological necessity. Dugin’s thought provides the ideological architecture through which Russia is positioned as a sacred civilization resisting Western nihilism, where war is not simply justified, but ritually and cosmologically required. In doing so, the study challenges secular readings of nationalism and highlights how authoritarian regimes can mobilize religious metaphysics to render war not only legitimate, but liturgically necessary.
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in a Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih Aftermaths are deceptive. They obscure and conceal. This text, weaved along a photographic inquiry, troubles the notion of quietude. Together, they try to point to what lurks and haunts in the crevices of a wounded urbanscape. Twenty-one years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, what litter and refuse remain in Baghdad today? In a time of rapid urban reconfiguration, what do the residual wartime rubble and the paraphernalia of security regimes tell us of the present, its politics, and relationship to the past? Put differently, what forces and apparatuses obstruct an Iraqi’s walk? Standing by the ruins is an old tradition dating to pre-Islamic poetry and the laments of ancient Mesopotamia. This essay follows suit but goes beyond. Its fragments narrate my auto-ethnographic and ethnographic walks and rides in Baghdad, where I investigate the constellations of rubble, the affects they discharge, and the memories they awaken in a given locale. Much ink and blood were spilled on the streets of Baghdad and world newspapers; this endeavor asks what Iraqis are left with today. The photographs aspire to a private archive for public loss, each being an obstinate interlocutor tested for what eludes vision and what is thought to be seen.
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli Prisons are not just spaces of deprivation and submission but environments where survival gives rise to new forms of expression and interaction. Despite spatial, social, and political constraints, prisoners cultivate communication networks through sound, imagery, and handmade tools. This installation reframes prison life by focusing on acquired culture and produced knowledge rather than narratives of marginalization. Prison Rule 113.11 highlights both clandestine tools of disobedience—tattoo guns, fishing lines, and makeshift speakers—and the coercion tools manufactured through prison labor. These objects are not merely functional but symbolic of defiance and connection. By amplifying sound rather than retreating into silence, prisoners reclaim their lives and assert their resistance to isolation. Positioning these tools as ‘fugitive objects’, this work reveals how incarcerated individuals are not merely passive subjects but a challenge to the very structures designed to contain them.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights and the Arts, 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts is pleased to announce its Class of 2025 MA thesis exhibition.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3 – 7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
EXPLORATION AND RESONANCE: Chinese Music in the West
7th Annual International Conference of the US-China Music Institute
Thursday, May 1, 2025 – Saturday, May 3, 2025
Various Campus Locations The seventh annual conference of the US-China Music Institute is a three-day series of scholarly, interactive, and musical events exploring intercultural exchange while drawing on the rich tapestry of Chinese musical heritage and its resonance in the West. Topics discussed will focus on the following three pivotal areas:
Leadership on Chinese music development in Western society
Expanding the approaches and perspectives on Chinese music research
Successes and challenges in Chinese music teaching in the West
The conference is presented in partnership with the Central Conservatory of Music, China, and in collaboration with China Institute of America. View the conference website for more information about specific events and participants. Registration in advance is kindly requested. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Weis Cinema Come see the short documentary Freshman. Again. currently making its stunning debut on the film festival circuit! The film is headed to the American Black Film Festival in Miami, where it was selected as a winner of the Director's Competition for the Black and Unlimited Fatherhood Project.
Freshman. Again. is an uplifting and heartwarming film about Lenny Bass, a 50-year-old African American man who fulfills his lifelong dream of going to college through the BardBac program, an opportunity he discovered through his daughter, a student at Bard College. Directed by Aji Bass, the filmmaker and Lenny’s son, the documentary offers a deeply personal and candid look at their loving and one-of-a-kind shared journey. Blending intimate interviews with cinéma vérité storytelling, the film vividly captures Lenny’s resilience and determination as he defies expectations and reinvents himself through education. A moving reminder that it’s never too late to start again and that learning has no age limit. For more information, call 917-771-8038, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
A dynamic evening of choreography by the distinguished faculty of the Bard College Dance Program, performed by students in the program and guests of the faculty.
Choreography by Souleymane Badolo Jean Churchill Dedrick “D.Banks” Gray Yuval Pick Maria Simpson
Concert Coordinator Tara Lorenzen Lighting Designer Brian Aldous Costume Designer Alicia Austin Stage Manager Daniel Nelson Assistant Stage Manager Emily Shores
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce the thesis exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts, Class of 2025.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3–7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard College. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students. They make interventions at both the analytic and methodological levels of analysis.
Below is the program for the thesis exhibition, including a list of events and showcased works :
Opening Reception Friday, 25 April 2025 4pm–7pm Exhibition opening and food-for-purchase provided by Samosa Shack.
Lecture Performance Conducting Empire by Elinor Arden Friday 25 April, Sunday 27 April, Saturday 3 May 6:30 pm–7pm
Panel Presentation Featuring Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona, Pyae Phyo Aung, and Arina Pshenichnaya Saturday, May 3 4 pm–5 pm
Written Theses Excerpts of these works are on display in the exhibition
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in A Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih
Installations Open daily, 3–7:30 pm
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli
Thesis Project Abstracts
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant This installation features a docufiction video and explores the role of an unofficial taxi vehicle vital to mobility in occupied Palestine, using the cases of Abu Dis and Al-Eizariya, two towns located in Area C of the West Bank. Manufactured by Ford Motor Company, this US vehicle has unintentionally functioned as the connective tissue of a fragmented landscape, navigating an apartheid system reinforced by the Oslo Accords. Operating illegally for over thirty years, the Ford Transit has not only sustained movement but also emerged as a tool of cultural sovereignty, community-structured infrastructure, and self-governance. A time capsule of Oslo’s failures, this vehicle offers a lens into the lived realities of Palestinian daily resistance and the unyielding struggle for the right to move.
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya This hybrid project, comprised of an interactive, web-based installation and research article, examines how “history’s first livestreamed genocide” in Gaza has been presented on TikTok LIVE. The work explores these streams, characterized by their low viewership as well as scattered and disorienting nature, arguing that they reshape our understanding of “livestreamed genocide” as a historical media paradigm. The installation foregrounds the tensions between a gamified platform and the realities of war on the Gaza Strip. In doing so, it examines the uneasy rise of TikTok’s algorithmically-driven platform as a space where social media visibility and atrocity merge, clash, and are reshaped by the logic of public engagement.
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer Calls from an Unseen Chorus is a sound installation that resists the passive consumption of Palestine as an image of suffering, instead demanding engagement through the act of listening. Centering the auditory as a site of resistance, the work immerses audiences in the sonic realities of occupation and defiance—from the oppressive stasis of colonial checkpoints to the collective force of protest chants, resistance music, and the recorded wills of martyrs. These layered soundscapes challenge static representations of Palestinian struggle, asserting a mobilized, dissenting presence and an unceasing fight for liberation. By stripping away the visual, Calls from an Unseen Chorus transforms listening into an entry point for solidarity, where sound becomes both testimony and a call to resistance.
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden Conducting Empire is a research article and an installation-performance investigating the material history of the undersea cable network: the physical ‘backbone’ of the internet. The project explores what lies beneath Google’s marketing strategies for their new transatlantic cables, tracing the genealogy of this infrastructure to 19th-century Britain and the era of so-called abolition. A live activation of a sound sculpture exposes the metallic substance of the cable network and its transmission of historical records into the present. By linking claims of technological progress to imperial control, the work reframes the utopian ideal of global connectivity with evidence found in the British National Archives, from the Birmingham copper industry to a mass of colonial correspondences. Conducting Empire removes the network’s insulation to uncover how telecommunications were produced through a violent historical circuit.
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung This written thesis explores the question of morality and conscience in the anti-authoritarian revolution that took shape in response to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. The term late pyar lone chin refers to the pride of performing a just action or the shame and guilt of not doing so, and the question, late pyar lone lar?, means roughly “do you have a clear conscience?” It is now widely used to testify to (or question) one’s stance and involvement in the revolution. Examining the digital artifacts and lived experiences of protestors, resistance fighters, and activist fundraisers, the thesis studies the role of calls to conscience in political mobilization and investigates how affect and morality have been activated through aesthetic means to shape the trajectory of the Spring Revolution in Myanmar.
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South. Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona The public policy known as Areas of Protection for Food Production was launched in July of 2024 in the south of La Guajira, Colombia. It aims to focus land use on agricultural production and prohibit any type of mining exploitation. This transition is based on concepts such as the human right to food and food security. This written thesis explores the origins of these concepts, their scope, and their limitations. This is particularly relevant at a time when the La Guajira Corporation is about to grant approval to the mining company Best Coal Company to exploit millions of tons of coal in the Cañaverales Community. This thesis responds to the crisis and the difficulties of the energy transition from an epistemological point of view, through an analysis of archives and geopoetics.
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada This hybrid project interrogates the role of Arab cultural production—particularly Egyptian songs and films about the Aswan High Dam—in shaping public history and contributing to Nubian dispossession. Building on an ongoing collaboration with Nubian activists, one component of this project is a research article that critiques nationalism and encourages a reflection on the power of cultural memory to perpetuate erasure or resist it. The second component of this project is an interactive installation titled The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine, which examines state propaganda and confronts the failures of Arab liberation movements, while centering a Nubian narrative and presents a speculative grassroots response.
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya Despite the secular image often associated with modern nationalism, the Russian state’s sacralization of war reveals the enduring power of religious symbols, rituals, and narratives in shaping national identity. This written thesis examines how the concept of sacred war has become central to the Russian national idea through a fusion of Orthodox theology, state power, and militarized aesthetics. It focuses on two key phenomena: the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, which presents war as a timeless and divine foundation of Russian identity; and front-line baptismal rituals, which transform soldiers into metaphysical agents of a civilizational mission. I analyze these practices through the writings of Aleksandr Dugin, whose metaphysical theory of civilizational conflict (noomachy) frames war not as a geopolitical act but as an ontological necessity. Dugin’s thought provides the ideological architecture through which Russia is positioned as a sacred civilization resisting Western nihilism, where war is not simply justified, but ritually and cosmologically required. In doing so, the study challenges secular readings of nationalism and highlights how authoritarian regimes can mobilize religious metaphysics to render war not only legitimate, but liturgically necessary.
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in a Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih Aftermaths are deceptive. They obscure and conceal. This text, weaved along a photographic inquiry, troubles the notion of quietude. Together, they try to point to what lurks and haunts in the crevices of a wounded urbanscape. Twenty-one years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, what litter and refuse remain in Baghdad today? In a time of rapid urban reconfiguration, what do the residual wartime rubble and the paraphernalia of security regimes tell us of the present, its politics, and relationship to the past? Put differently, what forces and apparatuses obstruct an Iraqi’s walk? Standing by the ruins is an old tradition dating to pre-Islamic poetry and the laments of ancient Mesopotamia. This essay follows suit but goes beyond. Its fragments narrate my auto-ethnographic and ethnographic walks and rides in Baghdad, where I investigate the constellations of rubble, the affects they discharge, and the memories they awaken in a given locale. Much ink and blood were spilled on the streets of Baghdad and world newspapers; this endeavor asks what Iraqis are left with today. The photographs aspire to a private archive for public loss, each being an obstinate interlocutor tested for what eludes vision and what is thought to be seen.
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli Prisons are not just spaces of deprivation and submission but environments where survival gives rise to new forms of expression and interaction. Despite spatial, social, and political constraints, prisoners cultivate communication networks through sound, imagery, and handmade tools. This installation reframes prison life by focusing on acquired culture and produced knowledge rather than narratives of marginalization. Prison Rule 113.11 highlights both clandestine tools of disobedience—tattoo guns, fishing lines, and makeshift speakers—and the coercion tools manufactured through prison labor. These objects are not merely functional but symbolic of defiance and connection. By amplifying sound rather than retreating into silence, prisoners reclaim their lives and assert their resistance to isolation. Positioning these tools as ‘fugitive objects’, this work reveals how incarcerated individuals are not merely passive subjects but a challenge to the very structures designed to contain them.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights and the Arts, 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts is pleased to announce its Class of 2025 MA thesis exhibition.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3 – 7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
EXPLORATION AND RESONANCE: Chinese Music in the West
7th Annual International Conference of the US-China Music Institute
Thursday, May 1, 2025 – Saturday, May 3, 2025
Various Campus Locations The seventh annual conference of the US-China Music Institute is a three-day series of scholarly, interactive, and musical events exploring intercultural exchange while drawing on the rich tapestry of Chinese musical heritage and its resonance in the West. Topics discussed will focus on the following three pivotal areas:
Leadership on Chinese music development in Western society
Expanding the approaches and perspectives on Chinese music research
Successes and challenges in Chinese music teaching in the West
The conference is presented in partnership with the Central Conservatory of Music, China, and in collaboration with China Institute of America. View the conference website for more information about specific events and participants. Registration in advance is kindly requested. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Online Event We're reading The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt’s unfinished final work. In it, she focuses on three basic mental activities—thinking, willing, and judging—and their relation to the world of appearances and to the human capacity for moral and political action. The new critical edition makes available in print, for the first time, the text of the typescripts as Arendt left them, complemented by a wealth of previously unpublished material, detailed annotations, and extensive scholarly commentary. We will also be referring to Mary McCarthy's edition for increased accessibility.
Free to HAC members and to Bard students, staff, and faculty! Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.
Find the full Virtural Reading Group schedule: hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/ Get the new critical edition of The Life of the Mindhere.
Don't worry if you miss a VRG meeting! We post them all on our YouTube channel the week after they're recorded. Or tune in to an edited version of the chapter readings plus bonus episodes on our podcast, Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
Studio Art Senior Project Exhibition Opening Performance
Acolyte Training
Friday, May 2, 2025 2–6 pm
Memorial Hall (Old Gym) Exhibition and Performance by Senior Student Marissa Salett. Performance times: May 2nd - 4pm May 3rd - 12:30pm and 5:30pm May 4th - 12:30pmSponsored by: Studio Arts Program.
Degree Recital: Luca Sakon, violin, with Neilson Chen, piano
Works by Debussy, Chausson, Saint-Saëns, and Respighi.
Friday, May 2, 2025 4 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Olin Hall The Bard Chinese Ensemble performs its final concert of the year as part of the US-China Music Institute’s annual conference, Exploration and Resonance: Chinese Music in the West. The ensemble will be joined by soloists Jing Xia (guzheng) and Jin Yang (pipa), both members of the Chinese instrument faculty at the Bard Conservatory of Music.
FREE and open to the public. Advanced registration is kindly requested. Please register on the Conference Registration Form here. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
A dynamic evening of choreography by the distinguished faculty of the Bard College Dance Program, performed by students in the program and guests of the faculty.
Choreography by Souleymane Badolo Jean Churchill Dedrick “D.Banks” Gray Yuval Pick Maria Simpson
Concert Coordinator Tara Lorenzen Lighting Designer Brian Aldous Costume Designer Alicia Austin Stage Manager Daniel Nelson Assistant Stage Manager Emily Shores
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce the thesis exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts, Class of 2025.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3–7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard College. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students. They make interventions at both the analytic and methodological levels of analysis.
Below is the program for the thesis exhibition, including a list of events and showcased works :
Opening Reception Friday, 25 April 2025 4pm–7pm Exhibition opening and food-for-purchase provided by Samosa Shack.
Lecture Performance Conducting Empire by Elinor Arden Friday 25 April, Sunday 27 April, Saturday 3 May 6:30 pm–7pm
Panel Presentation Featuring Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona, Pyae Phyo Aung, and Arina Pshenichnaya Saturday, May 3 4 pm–5 pm
Written Theses Excerpts of these works are on display in the exhibition
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in A Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih
Installations Open daily, 3–7:30 pm
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli
Thesis Project Abstracts
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant This installation features a docufiction video and explores the role of an unofficial taxi vehicle vital to mobility in occupied Palestine, using the cases of Abu Dis and Al-Eizariya, two towns located in Area C of the West Bank. Manufactured by Ford Motor Company, this US vehicle has unintentionally functioned as the connective tissue of a fragmented landscape, navigating an apartheid system reinforced by the Oslo Accords. Operating illegally for over thirty years, the Ford Transit has not only sustained movement but also emerged as a tool of cultural sovereignty, community-structured infrastructure, and self-governance. A time capsule of Oslo’s failures, this vehicle offers a lens into the lived realities of Palestinian daily resistance and the unyielding struggle for the right to move.
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya This hybrid project, comprised of an interactive, web-based installation and research article, examines how “history’s first livestreamed genocide” in Gaza has been presented on TikTok LIVE. The work explores these streams, characterized by their low viewership as well as scattered and disorienting nature, arguing that they reshape our understanding of “livestreamed genocide” as a historical media paradigm. The installation foregrounds the tensions between a gamified platform and the realities of war on the Gaza Strip. In doing so, it examines the uneasy rise of TikTok’s algorithmically-driven platform as a space where social media visibility and atrocity merge, clash, and are reshaped by the logic of public engagement.
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer Calls from an Unseen Chorus is a sound installation that resists the passive consumption of Palestine as an image of suffering, instead demanding engagement through the act of listening. Centering the auditory as a site of resistance, the work immerses audiences in the sonic realities of occupation and defiance—from the oppressive stasis of colonial checkpoints to the collective force of protest chants, resistance music, and the recorded wills of martyrs. These layered soundscapes challenge static representations of Palestinian struggle, asserting a mobilized, dissenting presence and an unceasing fight for liberation. By stripping away the visual, Calls from an Unseen Chorus transforms listening into an entry point for solidarity, where sound becomes both testimony and a call to resistance.
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden Conducting Empire is a research article and an installation-performance investigating the material history of the undersea cable network: the physical ‘backbone’ of the internet. The project explores what lies beneath Google’s marketing strategies for their new transatlantic cables, tracing the genealogy of this infrastructure to 19th-century Britain and the era of so-called abolition. A live activation of a sound sculpture exposes the metallic substance of the cable network and its transmission of historical records into the present. By linking claims of technological progress to imperial control, the work reframes the utopian ideal of global connectivity with evidence found in the British National Archives, from the Birmingham copper industry to a mass of colonial correspondences. Conducting Empire removes the network’s insulation to uncover how telecommunications were produced through a violent historical circuit.
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung This written thesis explores the question of morality and conscience in the anti-authoritarian revolution that took shape in response to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. The term late pyar lone chin refers to the pride of performing a just action or the shame and guilt of not doing so, and the question, late pyar lone lar?, means roughly “do you have a clear conscience?” It is now widely used to testify to (or question) one’s stance and involvement in the revolution. Examining the digital artifacts and lived experiences of protestors, resistance fighters, and activist fundraisers, the thesis studies the role of calls to conscience in political mobilization and investigates how affect and morality have been activated through aesthetic means to shape the trajectory of the Spring Revolution in Myanmar.
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South. Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona The public policy known as Areas of Protection for Food Production was launched in July of 2024 in the south of La Guajira, Colombia. It aims to focus land use on agricultural production and prohibit any type of mining exploitation. This transition is based on concepts such as the human right to food and food security. This written thesis explores the origins of these concepts, their scope, and their limitations. This is particularly relevant at a time when the La Guajira Corporation is about to grant approval to the mining company Best Coal Company to exploit millions of tons of coal in the Cañaverales Community. This thesis responds to the crisis and the difficulties of the energy transition from an epistemological point of view, through an analysis of archives and geopoetics.
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada This hybrid project interrogates the role of Arab cultural production—particularly Egyptian songs and films about the Aswan High Dam—in shaping public history and contributing to Nubian dispossession. Building on an ongoing collaboration with Nubian activists, one component of this project is a research article that critiques nationalism and encourages a reflection on the power of cultural memory to perpetuate erasure or resist it. The second component of this project is an interactive installation titled The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine, which examines state propaganda and confronts the failures of Arab liberation movements, while centering a Nubian narrative and presents a speculative grassroots response.
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya Despite the secular image often associated with modern nationalism, the Russian state’s sacralization of war reveals the enduring power of religious symbols, rituals, and narratives in shaping national identity. This written thesis examines how the concept of sacred war has become central to the Russian national idea through a fusion of Orthodox theology, state power, and militarized aesthetics. It focuses on two key phenomena: the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, which presents war as a timeless and divine foundation of Russian identity; and front-line baptismal rituals, which transform soldiers into metaphysical agents of a civilizational mission. I analyze these practices through the writings of Aleksandr Dugin, whose metaphysical theory of civilizational conflict (noomachy) frames war not as a geopolitical act but as an ontological necessity. Dugin’s thought provides the ideological architecture through which Russia is positioned as a sacred civilization resisting Western nihilism, where war is not simply justified, but ritually and cosmologically required. In doing so, the study challenges secular readings of nationalism and highlights how authoritarian regimes can mobilize religious metaphysics to render war not only legitimate, but liturgically necessary.
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in a Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih Aftermaths are deceptive. They obscure and conceal. This text, weaved along a photographic inquiry, troubles the notion of quietude. Together, they try to point to what lurks and haunts in the crevices of a wounded urbanscape. Twenty-one years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, what litter and refuse remain in Baghdad today? In a time of rapid urban reconfiguration, what do the residual wartime rubble and the paraphernalia of security regimes tell us of the present, its politics, and relationship to the past? Put differently, what forces and apparatuses obstruct an Iraqi’s walk? Standing by the ruins is an old tradition dating to pre-Islamic poetry and the laments of ancient Mesopotamia. This essay follows suit but goes beyond. Its fragments narrate my auto-ethnographic and ethnographic walks and rides in Baghdad, where I investigate the constellations of rubble, the affects they discharge, and the memories they awaken in a given locale. Much ink and blood were spilled on the streets of Baghdad and world newspapers; this endeavor asks what Iraqis are left with today. The photographs aspire to a private archive for public loss, each being an obstinate interlocutor tested for what eludes vision and what is thought to be seen.
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli Prisons are not just spaces of deprivation and submission but environments where survival gives rise to new forms of expression and interaction. Despite spatial, social, and political constraints, prisoners cultivate communication networks through sound, imagery, and handmade tools. This installation reframes prison life by focusing on acquired culture and produced knowledge rather than narratives of marginalization. Prison Rule 113.11 highlights both clandestine tools of disobedience—tattoo guns, fishing lines, and makeshift speakers—and the coercion tools manufactured through prison labor. These objects are not merely functional but symbolic of defiance and connection. By amplifying sound rather than retreating into silence, prisoners reclaim their lives and assert their resistance to isolation. Positioning these tools as ‘fugitive objects’, this work reveals how incarcerated individuals are not merely passive subjects but a challenge to the very structures designed to contain them.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights and the Arts, 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts is pleased to announce its Class of 2025 MA thesis exhibition.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3 – 7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
EXPLORATION AND RESONANCE: Chinese Music in the West
7th Annual International Conference of the US-China Music Institute
Thursday, May 1, 2025 – Saturday, May 3, 2025
Various Campus Locations The seventh annual conference of the US-China Music Institute is a three-day series of scholarly, interactive, and musical events exploring intercultural exchange while drawing on the rich tapestry of Chinese musical heritage and its resonance in the West. Topics discussed will focus on the following three pivotal areas:
Leadership on Chinese music development in Western society
Expanding the approaches and perspectives on Chinese music research
Successes and challenges in Chinese music teaching in the West
The conference is presented in partnership with the Central Conservatory of Music, China, and in collaboration with China Institute of America. View the conference website for more information about specific events and participants. Registration in advance is kindly requested. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Degree Recital: Ya-Yin Yu, violin, with Pei-Hsuan Shen, piano
Works by Tyzen Hsiao, Ching-Ju Shih, Beethoven, Schumann, and Saint-Saëns.
Saturday, May 3, 2025 12 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
A dynamic evening of choreography by the distinguished faculty of the Bard College Dance Program, performed by students in the program and guests of the faculty.
Choreography by Souleymane Badolo Jean Churchill Dedrick “D.Banks” Gray Yuval Pick Maria Simpson
Concert Coordinator Tara Lorenzen Lighting Designer Brian Aldous Costume Designer Alicia Austin Stage Manager Daniel Nelson Assistant Stage Manager Emily Shores
Montgomery Place Estate Bard Nature Rx invites you to a nature walk! Join us at the South Woods trail, 55 Gardener Way, at Montgomery Place for a walk to slow down, observe, and reflect on the season's renewal. Led by Dr. Jana Mader.Sponsored by: Montgomery Place.
Studio Art Senior Project Exhibition Opening Reception
Bard Exhibition Center, UBS Exhibition #3
Saturday, May 3, 2025 3–6 pm
Bard Exhibition Center Please join us to celebrate the thesis work by our third group of senior students exhibiting in Red Hook at the Bard Exhibition Center: Rubi Rhoades, Ella Perkel, Nico Goldstein, Eva Rose Askew, Ezra Hawk-Weintraub, Precious Star, Sohanaa Oswal, Oscar Backes, Zoya Kirmani, Zahra Haidari, Nicole Hazen. For more information, call 845-758-7674, or e-mail [email protected].
Degree Recital: Jacob Hunter, tenor, with Yi-Hsuan Hsia, piano
"Fugitive Echoes"
Saturday, May 3, 2025 4 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Featuring Christian Midy, flute and Malena Verduga Martínez, violin. Works by Krystian Neścior, François Morel, J. S. Bach, Robert Owens, and Arnold Schoenberg.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Studio Art Senior Thesis Exhibition Opening Reception
Fisher Studio Art Galleries #3
Saturday, May 3, 2025 4–7 pm
Fisher Studio Arts Building Please join us to celebrate the thesis work of our senior students Dana Debro (in the Center Gallery) and Pamela Zhang (in the Lobby Gallery). For more information, call 845-758-7674, e-mail [email protected], or visit https://fisherexhibition#3.
Degree Recital: Nisha Patel Caiozzi, soprano, with Kyeongji Koh, piano
"The Space Between"
Saturday, May 3, 2025 7 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Works by Ives, Walker, Webern, Wolf, Bonds, Debussy, Rachmaninov, Violeta Parra, Reena Esmail, and Jule Styne.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bard East/West Ensemble and USCMI Faculty Showcase Concert
Saturday, May 3, 2025 7–9 pm
Chapel of the Holy Innocents
The Bard East/West Ensemble (BE/WE) and guest soloists will grace Bard’s historic chapel with a program of Chinese musical compositions specially arranged for the unique instrumentation of a Western string quintet, seven traditional Chinese instruments, and percussion. Faculty members Yazhi Guo, Jing Xia, and Jin Yang from the US-China Music Institute will showcase their unique approaches to combining Western and Chinese musical forms, along with other special guests. This concert is part of the US-China Music Institute’s annual conference, Exploration and Resonance: Chinese Music in the West.
FREE and open to the public. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
A dynamic evening of choreography by the distinguished faculty of the Bard College Dance Program, performed by students in the program and guests of the faculty.
Choreography by Souleymane Badolo Jean Churchill Dedrick “D.Banks” Gray Yuval Pick Maria Simpson
Concert Coordinator Tara Lorenzen Lighting Designer Brian Aldous Costume Designer Alicia Austin Stage Manager Daniel Nelson Assistant Stage Manager Emily Shores
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce the thesis exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts, Class of 2025.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3–7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard College. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students. They make interventions at both the analytic and methodological levels of analysis.
Below is the program for the thesis exhibition, including a list of events and showcased works :
Opening Reception Friday, 25 April 2025 4pm–7pm Exhibition opening and food-for-purchase provided by Samosa Shack.
Lecture Performance Conducting Empire by Elinor Arden Friday 25 April, Sunday 27 April, Saturday 3 May 6:30 pm–7pm
Panel Presentation Featuring Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona, Pyae Phyo Aung, and Arina Pshenichnaya Saturday, May 3 4 pm–5 pm
Written Theses Excerpts of these works are on display in the exhibition
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in A Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih
Installations Open daily, 3–7:30 pm
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli
Thesis Project Abstracts
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant This installation features a docufiction video and explores the role of an unofficial taxi vehicle vital to mobility in occupied Palestine, using the cases of Abu Dis and Al-Eizariya, two towns located in Area C of the West Bank. Manufactured by Ford Motor Company, this US vehicle has unintentionally functioned as the connective tissue of a fragmented landscape, navigating an apartheid system reinforced by the Oslo Accords. Operating illegally for over thirty years, the Ford Transit has not only sustained movement but also emerged as a tool of cultural sovereignty, community-structured infrastructure, and self-governance. A time capsule of Oslo’s failures, this vehicle offers a lens into the lived realities of Palestinian daily resistance and the unyielding struggle for the right to move.
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya This hybrid project, comprised of an interactive, web-based installation and research article, examines how “history’s first livestreamed genocide” in Gaza has been presented on TikTok LIVE. The work explores these streams, characterized by their low viewership as well as scattered and disorienting nature, arguing that they reshape our understanding of “livestreamed genocide” as a historical media paradigm. The installation foregrounds the tensions between a gamified platform and the realities of war on the Gaza Strip. In doing so, it examines the uneasy rise of TikTok’s algorithmically-driven platform as a space where social media visibility and atrocity merge, clash, and are reshaped by the logic of public engagement.
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer Calls from an Unseen Chorus is a sound installation that resists the passive consumption of Palestine as an image of suffering, instead demanding engagement through the act of listening. Centering the auditory as a site of resistance, the work immerses audiences in the sonic realities of occupation and defiance—from the oppressive stasis of colonial checkpoints to the collective force of protest chants, resistance music, and the recorded wills of martyrs. These layered soundscapes challenge static representations of Palestinian struggle, asserting a mobilized, dissenting presence and an unceasing fight for liberation. By stripping away the visual, Calls from an Unseen Chorus transforms listening into an entry point for solidarity, where sound becomes both testimony and a call to resistance.
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden Conducting Empire is a research article and an installation-performance investigating the material history of the undersea cable network: the physical ‘backbone’ of the internet. The project explores what lies beneath Google’s marketing strategies for their new transatlantic cables, tracing the genealogy of this infrastructure to 19th-century Britain and the era of so-called abolition. A live activation of a sound sculpture exposes the metallic substance of the cable network and its transmission of historical records into the present. By linking claims of technological progress to imperial control, the work reframes the utopian ideal of global connectivity with evidence found in the British National Archives, from the Birmingham copper industry to a mass of colonial correspondences. Conducting Empire removes the network’s insulation to uncover how telecommunications were produced through a violent historical circuit.
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung This written thesis explores the question of morality and conscience in the anti-authoritarian revolution that took shape in response to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. The term late pyar lone chin refers to the pride of performing a just action or the shame and guilt of not doing so, and the question, late pyar lone lar?, means roughly “do you have a clear conscience?” It is now widely used to testify to (or question) one’s stance and involvement in the revolution. Examining the digital artifacts and lived experiences of protestors, resistance fighters, and activist fundraisers, the thesis studies the role of calls to conscience in political mobilization and investigates how affect and morality have been activated through aesthetic means to shape the trajectory of the Spring Revolution in Myanmar.
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South. Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona The public policy known as Areas of Protection for Food Production was launched in July of 2024 in the south of La Guajira, Colombia. It aims to focus land use on agricultural production and prohibit any type of mining exploitation. This transition is based on concepts such as the human right to food and food security. This written thesis explores the origins of these concepts, their scope, and their limitations. This is particularly relevant at a time when the La Guajira Corporation is about to grant approval to the mining company Best Coal Company to exploit millions of tons of coal in the Cañaverales Community. This thesis responds to the crisis and the difficulties of the energy transition from an epistemological point of view, through an analysis of archives and geopoetics.
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada This hybrid project interrogates the role of Arab cultural production—particularly Egyptian songs and films about the Aswan High Dam—in shaping public history and contributing to Nubian dispossession. Building on an ongoing collaboration with Nubian activists, one component of this project is a research article that critiques nationalism and encourages a reflection on the power of cultural memory to perpetuate erasure or resist it. The second component of this project is an interactive installation titled The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine, which examines state propaganda and confronts the failures of Arab liberation movements, while centering a Nubian narrative and presents a speculative grassroots response.
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya Despite the secular image often associated with modern nationalism, the Russian state’s sacralization of war reveals the enduring power of religious symbols, rituals, and narratives in shaping national identity. This written thesis examines how the concept of sacred war has become central to the Russian national idea through a fusion of Orthodox theology, state power, and militarized aesthetics. It focuses on two key phenomena: the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, which presents war as a timeless and divine foundation of Russian identity; and front-line baptismal rituals, which transform soldiers into metaphysical agents of a civilizational mission. I analyze these practices through the writings of Aleksandr Dugin, whose metaphysical theory of civilizational conflict (noomachy) frames war not as a geopolitical act but as an ontological necessity. Dugin’s thought provides the ideological architecture through which Russia is positioned as a sacred civilization resisting Western nihilism, where war is not simply justified, but ritually and cosmologically required. In doing so, the study challenges secular readings of nationalism and highlights how authoritarian regimes can mobilize religious metaphysics to render war not only legitimate, but liturgically necessary.
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in a Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih Aftermaths are deceptive. They obscure and conceal. This text, weaved along a photographic inquiry, troubles the notion of quietude. Together, they try to point to what lurks and haunts in the crevices of a wounded urbanscape. Twenty-one years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, what litter and refuse remain in Baghdad today? In a time of rapid urban reconfiguration, what do the residual wartime rubble and the paraphernalia of security regimes tell us of the present, its politics, and relationship to the past? Put differently, what forces and apparatuses obstruct an Iraqi’s walk? Standing by the ruins is an old tradition dating to pre-Islamic poetry and the laments of ancient Mesopotamia. This essay follows suit but goes beyond. Its fragments narrate my auto-ethnographic and ethnographic walks and rides in Baghdad, where I investigate the constellations of rubble, the affects they discharge, and the memories they awaken in a given locale. Much ink and blood were spilled on the streets of Baghdad and world newspapers; this endeavor asks what Iraqis are left with today. The photographs aspire to a private archive for public loss, each being an obstinate interlocutor tested for what eludes vision and what is thought to be seen.
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli Prisons are not just spaces of deprivation and submission but environments where survival gives rise to new forms of expression and interaction. Despite spatial, social, and political constraints, prisoners cultivate communication networks through sound, imagery, and handmade tools. This installation reframes prison life by focusing on acquired culture and produced knowledge rather than narratives of marginalization. Prison Rule 113.11 highlights both clandestine tools of disobedience—tattoo guns, fishing lines, and makeshift speakers—and the coercion tools manufactured through prison labor. These objects are not merely functional but symbolic of defiance and connection. By amplifying sound rather than retreating into silence, prisoners reclaim their lives and assert their resistance to isolation. Positioning these tools as ‘fugitive objects’, this work reveals how incarcerated individuals are not merely passive subjects but a challenge to the very structures designed to contain them.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights and the Arts, 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts is pleased to announce its Class of 2025 MA thesis exhibition.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3 – 7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Church of St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Road, Barrytown Join us for services (Holy Communion) at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist (1114 River Road) in Barrytown. Rides to the church are provided every Sunday throughout the academic year. Please be at the Bard Chapel at 9:45 am to get picked up.
All are welcome!
Christians, non-Christians, spiritual but not religious, agnostics, believers, doubters, seekers, those who have questions about faith and religion, those struggling to understand where God is in our challenging world—anyone wanting to use their faith to change and act in the world! For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Catholic Mass will be available at 11:30 in the Holy Innocents Chapel. All are welcome! For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Degree Recital: Joseph Breslau, baritone, with Gabriele Zemaityte, piano
"Yours until death: Love letters of a soldier"
Sunday, May 4, 2025 4 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space A story told through the songs of Korngold, Venables, Boulanger, and many more.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Degree Recital: Sam Warshauer, voice, with Nomin Samdan, piano
"Metamorphosis"
Sunday, May 4, 2025 7 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Works by Wolf, Poulenc, Schumann, Bellini, Drew Frankenberg, and Dylan Trần.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Reem-Kayden Center Please consider taking part in our group's final project for PSY 201 in RKC 101A. The experiment will take about twenty minutes. All participants will automatically be entered into a raffle for a chance to win one of three gift cards! Anyone is eligible to participate. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hosted by Rethinking Place and Center for Indigenous Studies
Monday, May 5, 2025 2–5 pm
Blithewood Manor Join us for a day of remembrance. The schedule is as follows:
2 pm: Poetry Reading with Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians) 3 pm: Shared Food and Drink 3:30 pm: Collective Art Making Activity led by Rachel Martin (Tlingit/Tsaagweidei) and Moonoka Begay (Ndéé + Diné) For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Albee Basement (Chaplaincy Offices) Come by the Chaplaincy office (Albee Basement) to knit or learn how to knit! Crocheters and needleworkers are also invited. Materials including yarn and knitting needles are provided. Everyone is welcome.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Studio Art Senior Thesis Exhibition Opening Reception
Old Gym Exhibition #1
Tuesday, May 6, 2025 5–7 pm
Memorial Hall (Old Gym) Please join us to celebrate the thesis work of senior student Kaylah Lewis. For more information, call 845-758-7674, or e-mail [email protected].
A Talk With Podcaster and Historian, Dominic Sandbrook
Tuesday, May 6, 2025 5:30–7 pm
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium
Dominic Sandbrook, one of Britain’s most distinguished historians and popular broadcasters, will talk about Britain in the Eighties. “The story of these years is bitterly contested,” he has written. “There is no consensus about the 1980s and there never will be.” From the conservative revolution and inner-city riots, to Princess Diana, Chariots of Fire and multiculturalism, this was a time of great cultural originality, political ambition and controversy, and wide scale social change—and all set to a soundtrack by The Specials, Bananarama, and The Clash. This event is part of the Eugene Meyer Series established in 2010.
Dominic Sandbrook is one Britain's best and best-known historians. Educated at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, he taught at the University of Sheffield before becoming a full-time writer. He is the author of eight books, including five volumes of a bestselling and critically acclaimed history of Britain from the 1960s to the 1980s. He has presented numerous BBC documentaries and is co-host of The Rest is History—the most popular history podcast in the world. He is currently working on an opera about Margaret Thatcher with the composer Joseph Phibbs.
Coffee, tea and cookies will be available at 5:15pm before the lecture outside RKC 103 We hope to see you there!
Sponsored by: Eugene Meyer Series.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Works by Cage, Schoenberg, Ravel, and Steven Bonacci.
Tuesday, May 6, 2025 6 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Bard Hall Featuring: Adriana Rivera Corujo, Sophia Cotrotsios, and Bibi Nguyen, sopranos; Elizabeth Bayer, alto; Sam Warshauer, tenor; Garrick Neuner, baritone; and Javy Polanco, bass. Free and open to the public.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
STINK HORN: A Mycological Musical Performance-Lecture by Siôn Parkinson
Presented by Bard Conservatory, in Partnership with the John Cage Trust
Thursday, May 8, 2025 4 pm
Edith C. Blum Institute
Join musician, artist, performer, and author Siôn Parkinson for an intimate performance-lecture– part talk, part live musical experiment– exploring the strange, multi-sensory world of the stinkhorn fungus. Drawing from his book Stinkhorn: How Nature’s Most Foul-Smelling Mushroom Can Change the Way We Listen, Siôn will lead an afternoon of music and mycology. Like composer John Cage, his twin passions for music and mushrooms have shaped a radical approach to sound. Yet while Cage sought silence in his fungal forays, Siôn finds Stink, an element that links sound and smell, the real and the hallucinated, opening up new ways of listening and composing. Siôn’s performance will be accompanied by a recording of John Cage’s "Child of Tree" (1975), a work for amplified plant materials, performed by D’Arcy Philip Gray and presented courtesy of Mode Records.
The performance is open to the public with free access. A reception featuring “John Cage Cookies” will follow at the John Cage Trust (Wilson House).
Event address: Edith C. Blum Institute, Blum Hall, 60 Blithewood Avenue, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY 12504.
Choreographed by rising artists in the Bard College Dance Program, this concert of Senior Projects represents the culmination of four years of intensive choreographic inquiry and research. Their concepts have been realized with the support of a professional staff of designers.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Online Event We're reading The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt’s unfinished final work. In it, she focuses on three basic mental activities—thinking, willing, and judging—and their relation to the world of appearances and to the human capacity for moral and political action. The new critical edition makes available in print, for the first time, the text of the typescripts as Arendt left them, complemented by a wealth of previously unpublished material, detailed annotations, and extensive scholarly commentary. We will also be referring to Mary McCarthy's edition for increased accessibility.
Free to HAC members and to Bard students, staff, and faculty! Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.
Find the full Virtural Reading Group schedule: hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/ Get the new critical edition of The Life of the Mindhere.
Don't worry if you miss a VRG meeting! We post them all on our YouTube channel the week after they're recorded. Or tune in to an edited version of the chapter readings plus bonus episodes on our podcast, Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
Stevenson Athletic Center, Soccer Field The Men's Soccer team is hosting its second Unity Cup. The team will participate with displaced students from Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Puerto Rico. All donations will help the displaced students. Food and drinks will be provided. For more information, call 845-758-6822.
The flute studio of Tara Helen O'Connor present works by Schumann, Pamela Zhang, Lowell Liebermann, Amanda Harberg, André Jolivet, Greg Pattillo, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Herman Beeftink.
Friday, May 9, 2025 3 pm
Olin Hall Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Choreographed by rising artists in the Bard College Dance Program, this concert of Senior Projects represents the culmination of four years of intensive choreographic inquiry and research. Their concepts have been realized with the support of a professional staff of designers.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Choreographed by rising artists in the Bard College Dance Program, this concert of Senior Projects represents the culmination of four years of intensive choreographic inquiry and research. Their concepts have been realized with the support of a professional staff of designers.
Degree Recital: Megan Maloney, soprano, with Gabrielė Žemaitytė, piano
"Finding the Light: Songs of Hope and Healing"
Saturday, May 10, 2025 2 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Works by Lili Boulanger, Moses Milner, Nobert Glanzberg, Osvaldo Golijov, Ricky Ian Gordon, Rosephanye Powell, and Mason Bynes. Featuring Jalen Mims, clarinet; Mingyue Xia, violin; Maisy Fisher, violin; Sky Metting, viola; and Alex Steketee, cello.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Studio Art Senior Thesis Exhibition Opening Reception
Fisher Studio Art Galleries Exhibition #4
Saturday, May 10, 2025 4–7 pm
Fisher Studio Arts Building Please join us to celebrate the thesis work of our senior students Mabel Kim (in the Center Gallery) and Xeno Szalla (in the Lobby Gallery). For more information, call 845-758-7674, or e-mail [email protected].
Campus Center, Multipurpose Room Come dance, mingle, and eat Palestinian food! Join us for an evening of Palestinian cultural appreciation. For more information, call 347-551-4483, or e-mail [email protected].
Degree Recital: Jaclyn Hopping, soprano, with Nomin Samdan, piano
"Transfiguration… and the labor of forgetting"
Saturday, May 10, 2025 5 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Works by Samuel Barber, Katherine Balch, Emilie Mayer, and Olivier Messiaen.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
“I have two goals in my heart: I don’t just want to establish a musical idea…I want to develop a cross-cultural idea that brings nature and classical music, ancient and modern, together.” —Tan Dun
Dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and UNESCO Global Goodwill Ambassador, Tan Dun, has made an indelible mark on the world’s music scene with a repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical music, multimedia performance, and Eastern and Western traditions.
Bard College Conservatory of Music Tan Dun, Dean Frank Corliss, Director
Presents Bard Conservatory Orchestra Leon Botstein, Music Director Tan Dun, Conductor
Maurice Ravel
Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose Suite)
1. Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant 2. Petit Poucet 3. Laideronnette, Impératrice des Pagodes 4. Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête 5. Le Jardin féerique
Claude Debussy
Première rhapsodie pour orchestre avec clarinette principale (First rhapsody for orchestra with solo clarinet)
Mohammad AbdNikfarjam ’26, clarinet
Maurice Ravel
Boléro
Modest Mussorgsky
Pictures at an Exhibition (orch. Maurice Ravel)
Promenade— I. Gnomus Promenade— II. The Old Castle Promenade— III. Tuileries IV. Bydlo Promenade— V. Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells VI. “Samuel” Goldenberg and “Schmuÿle” VII. Limoges: The Market— VIII. Catacombs: Sepulcrum romanum—Cum mortuis in lingua mortua IX. The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga)— X. The Great Gate at Kiev
Choreographed by rising artists in the Bard College Dance Program, this concert of Senior Projects represents the culmination of four years of intensive choreographic inquiry and research. Their concepts have been realized with the support of a professional staff of designers.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Church of St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Road, Barrytown Join us for services (Holy Communion) at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist (1114 River Road) in Barrytown. Rides to the church are provided every Sunday throughout the academic year. Please be at the Bard Chapel at 9:45 am to get picked up.
All are welcome!
Christians, non-Christians, spiritual but not religious, agnostics, believers, doubters, seekers, those who have questions about faith and religion, those struggling to understand where God is in our challenging world—anyone wanting to use their faith to change and act in the world! For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Catholic Mass will be available at 11:30 in the Holy Innocents Chapel. All are welcome! For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Blum Hall Please join us for a student open concert!
This is an opportunity for the many different “currents” in the Music Program to share an informal concert and to hear and perform for each other and you! From year to year it can feature classical & jazz groups, chamber groups, violinists, oboists, flutists, pianists, musical saw artists, and more!
The program for this year will feature:
J. S. Bach, Prelude from E Major Violin Partita, BWV 1006 J. S. Bach, Chorale “Der du bist drei in Einigkeit” Johannes Brahms, Violin Sonata in G Major, 1st movement Aaron Copland, Duo for Flute and Piano, 1st movement Frederic Rzewski, Attica Arnold Schoenberg, Canon “O dass der Sinnen doch so viele sind! Tchaikovsky, Selection from “Swan Lake” (arr. P. Lightburn) Stefan Wolpe, Hasty (“on thirds”) and more!
Performed by: Leo Belsky, Julien Franchot, Graham Hall-Keough Sasha Vesensky and Ji-Sian Chen Santiago Mieres Asher Longdon-Stewart and Coulson Matto Phoebe Lightburn and Najla Nazari Claire Sheffler and Sam Daly-Short
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Join us afterward for light refreshments!Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Join us for a musical journey and celebration of life honoring our loved ones and ancestors.Sponsored by: Division of the Arts; Music Program.
For more information, call 617-584-1350, or e-mail [email protected].
Degree Recital: Georgia Perdikoulias, soprano, with Lara Saldanha, piano
"Refuge"
Sunday, May 11, 2025 7 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Featuring Schuyler Lillian, cello. Works by Kostas Rekleitis, Emilios Riadis, Manolis Kalomiris, Haydn, and Saariaho.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Albee Basement (Chaplaincy Offices) Come by the Chaplaincy office (Albee Basement) to knit or learn how to knit! Crocheters and needleworkers are also invited. Materials including yarn and knitting needles are provided. Everyone is welcome.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
"Limeys, Yanks, and Krauts": Rufus Müller's Performance Class Recital
Monday, May 12, 2025 6 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Before the semester finally ends, hear the beauty of voices singing British, American, and German art song in a final recital.Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
CCS Bard, Classroom 102 Each semester CCS Bard hosts a program of lectures by leading artists, curators, art historians, and critics, situating the school and museum’s concerns within the larger context of contemporary art production and discourse. Speakers are selected primarily by second-year graduate students and also by faculty and staff. All lectures are free and open, and are documented through audio recordings that reside in the CCS Bard Library & Archives and online here.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Featuring Jiani Dong, violin; Elizabeth Bennett, flute, Minghui Mia Wu, dizi; Yuling Nan, ruan; Dari Batsaikhan, cello; Colby Bond, clarinet; and Pei-Hsuan Shen, Nelson Chen, and Ji-Sian Chan, piano. Free and open to the public.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
A Talk by Theresa Law, Asst. Professor of Computer Science
Wednesday, May 14, 2025 4–5 pm
Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library, First Floor Is AI new? How do machine learning models (like ChatGPT) generate answers? Why do these models have the limitations that they do? This talk will step through a high level overview of how popular AI models today work, and why that methodology leads to commonly seen problems like AI hallucinations. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
The Graduate Vocal Arts Program Presents: "Hispanic Bridges"
Curated by Dr. Javier Arrebola
Wednesday, May 14, 2025 4 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space "Hispanic Bridges" is a vibrant concert showcasing the musical and linguistic ties between Spain and Hispanic America. Come join Bard’s VAP singers and Collaborative Piano fellows on a journey across the Atlantic through song as we celebrate shared heritage and cultural connection.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
The Graduate Vocal Arts Program and Collaborative Piano Fellows present an evening of opera scenes you have never seen. Spanning multiple styles, languages, and genres, each artist presents their chosen opera aria with a companion song that reveals the inner life of each character.
Thursday, May 15, 2025 5 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Camp Kingston, 36 St. James St, Kingston, NY To cap their third year of study, all masters of music candidates are required to create their own thesis project. This performance is the Capstone Project of TŌN clarinetist Colby Bond.
Camp Kingston welcomes clarinetist Colby Bond alongside other TŌN musicians curating a unique experience pairing drinks and chamber music. The casual evening will feature live classical music performance and discussion of how different pieces of music pair well with varied beer and cocktails. Come for a good time to have some drinks, hear great music, and socialize with musicians afterwards!Sponsored by: The Orchestra Now.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Online Event We're reading The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt’s unfinished final work. In it, she focuses on three basic mental activities—thinking, willing, and judging—and their relation to the world of appearances and to the human capacity for moral and political action. The new critical edition makes available in print, for the first time, the text of the typescripts as Arendt left them, complemented by a wealth of previously unpublished material, detailed annotations, and extensive scholarly commentary. We will also be referring to Mary McCarthy's edition for increased accessibility.
Free to HAC members and to Bard students, staff, and faculty! Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.
Find the full Virtural Reading Group schedule: hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/ Get the new critical edition of The Life of the Mindhere.
Don't worry if you miss a VRG meeting! We post them all on our YouTube channel the week after they're recorded. Or tune in to an edited version of the chapter readings plus bonus episodes on our podcast, Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
The Mutual Influence of Sheng and Free-Reed Instruments in Europe
Friday, May 16, 2025 12 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
"Pipa and Buddhism: The Connection Through Liu Dehai's Buddhist-Themed Pipa Works"
Friday, May 16, 2025 2 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Dutilleux, Gubaidulina, Kodaly, Ligeti, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Messiaen, Mozart, Schoenberg, Schubert and Schumann.
Friday, May 16, 2025 7 pm
Olin Hall Featuring the students of Rieko Aizawa's piano studio, this recital will have four sections based on distinct themes: "Kaleidoscopic Pianism," featuring fantasy-like music and innovative, pianistic writing; "Nature with Music," for some creative yet natural and picturesque works; “Rhapsodic Breeze from Austria-Hungary,” which leads us to the Hungarian and Viennese worlds connected by a little gem by Schubert called Hungarian Melody; "Con anima (with soul)," incorporating a selection of gorgeous works which melt our hearts.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
And Kaethe & Marié , the violin & accordion super-duo
Friday, May 16, 2025 8:30–10 pm
Bard Hall
Please join us at Bard Hall on May 16th, 8:30 PM for the debut performance of the Bard Accordion Orchestra featuring the students enrolled in Prof. Sonevytsky’s Accordionology class, and special guest singer Eva Salina. This will be followed super duo Marié Abe and Kaethe Hostetter, who will play accordion and violin arrangements of tunes from Ethiopia, Japan, the US and more.
This event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Works by Zhou Yuguo, Pamela Zhang, and Simon Kong Su Leong.
Saturday, May 17, 2025 3 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Join Olivia Chaikin of The Orchestra Now (TŌN) for an evening of classic flute repertoire and new transcriptions, including Dvořàk's American Quartet reimagined for Flute and String Trio.
Recital details:
G.P. Telemann Fantasia No. 2 in A Minor Henri Dutilleux Sonatine George Enesco Cantabile et Presto W.A. Mozart Rondo in D Major Beethoven Violin Sonata No. 8 in G Major, arr. Sigfried Karg-Elert Sonata Appassionata Dvořàk String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, “American”, arr. François Borne/Georges BizetCarmen FantasieSponsored by: The Orchestra Now.
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Church of St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Road, Barrytown Join us for services (Holy Communion) at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist (1114 River Road) in Barrytown. Rides to the church are provided every Sunday throughout the academic year. Please be at the Bard Chapel at 9:45 am to get picked up.
All are welcome!
Christians, non-Christians, spiritual but not religious, agnostics, believers, doubters, seekers, those who have questions about faith and religion, those struggling to understand where God is in our challenging world—anyone wanting to use their faith to change and act in the world! For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Catholic Mass will be available at 11:30 in the Holy Innocents Chapel. All are welcome! For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Works by Stojan Stojkov, Tomasi, Hindemith, and James Naigus.
Sunday, May 18, 2025 1 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Schubert, Messiaen, Gubaidulina, Dutilleux, Schoenberg, and Brahms.
Sunday, May 18, 2025 7 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Works by Lila Meretzky, Meredith Monk, Torū Takemitsu, Per Nørgård, Emmanuel Sejourne, Krystian Skubała, Michael Laurello, and Joseph Schwantner.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Massena Campus This gathering will bring together our small research community, especially our Steering Committee, for a presentation of our research projects, an open research discussion, and a brainstorming session for the future. We’ll discuss dreaming as a methodology, reflect on the evolving work of the Center, and celebrate the ongoing contributions of our collaborators.
We hope you’ll join us in community, care, and celebration. Wopila, The Wíhanble S’a Center For more information, call 518-249-8778, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Reunion 2025!Friday, May 23, 2025 – Sunday, May 25, 2025
15: The 2025 Graduate Student Curated Exhibitions
Saturday, May 24, 2025 11 am – 5 pm
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Reunion 2025!Friday, May 23, 2025 – Sunday, May 25, 2025
15: The 2025 Graduate Student Curated Exhibitions
Sunday, May 25, 2025 11 am – 5 pm
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce the thesis exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts, Class of 2025.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3–7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard College. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students. They make interventions at both the analytic and methodological levels of analysis.
Below is the program for the thesis exhibition, including a list of events and showcased works :
Opening Reception Friday, 25 April 2025 4pm–7pm Exhibition opening and food-for-purchase provided by Samosa Shack.
Lecture Performance Conducting Empire by Elinor Arden Friday 25 April, Sunday 27 April, Saturday 3 May 6:30 pm–7pm
Panel Presentation Featuring Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona, Pyae Phyo Aung, and Arina Pshenichnaya Saturday, May 3 4 pm–5 pm
Written Theses Excerpts of these works are on display in the exhibition
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in A Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih
Installations Open daily, 3–7:30 pm
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli
Thesis Project Abstracts
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant This installation features a docufiction video and explores the role of an unofficial taxi vehicle vital to mobility in occupied Palestine, using the cases of Abu Dis and Al-Eizariya, two towns located in Area C of the West Bank. Manufactured by Ford Motor Company, this US vehicle has unintentionally functioned as the connective tissue of a fragmented landscape, navigating an apartheid system reinforced by the Oslo Accords. Operating illegally for over thirty years, the Ford Transit has not only sustained movement but also emerged as a tool of cultural sovereignty, community-structured infrastructure, and self-governance. A time capsule of Oslo’s failures, this vehicle offers a lens into the lived realities of Palestinian daily resistance and the unyielding struggle for the right to move.
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya This hybrid project, comprised of an interactive, web-based installation and research article, examines how “history’s first livestreamed genocide” in Gaza has been presented on TikTok LIVE. The work explores these streams, characterized by their low viewership as well as scattered and disorienting nature, arguing that they reshape our understanding of “livestreamed genocide” as a historical media paradigm. The installation foregrounds the tensions between a gamified platform and the realities of war on the Gaza Strip. In doing so, it examines the uneasy rise of TikTok’s algorithmically-driven platform as a space where social media visibility and atrocity merge, clash, and are reshaped by the logic of public engagement.
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer Calls from an Unseen Chorus is a sound installation that resists the passive consumption of Palestine as an image of suffering, instead demanding engagement through the act of listening. Centering the auditory as a site of resistance, the work immerses audiences in the sonic realities of occupation and defiance—from the oppressive stasis of colonial checkpoints to the collective force of protest chants, resistance music, and the recorded wills of martyrs. These layered soundscapes challenge static representations of Palestinian struggle, asserting a mobilized, dissenting presence and an unceasing fight for liberation. By stripping away the visual, Calls from an Unseen Chorus transforms listening into an entry point for solidarity, where sound becomes both testimony and a call to resistance.
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden Conducting Empire is a research article and an installation-performance investigating the material history of the undersea cable network: the physical ‘backbone’ of the internet. The project explores what lies beneath Google’s marketing strategies for their new transatlantic cables, tracing the genealogy of this infrastructure to 19th-century Britain and the era of so-called abolition. A live activation of a sound sculpture exposes the metallic substance of the cable network and its transmission of historical records into the present. By linking claims of technological progress to imperial control, the work reframes the utopian ideal of global connectivity with evidence found in the British National Archives, from the Birmingham copper industry to a mass of colonial correspondences. Conducting Empire removes the network’s insulation to uncover how telecommunications were produced through a violent historical circuit.
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung This written thesis explores the question of morality and conscience in the anti-authoritarian revolution that took shape in response to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. The term late pyar lone chin refers to the pride of performing a just action or the shame and guilt of not doing so, and the question, late pyar lone lar?, means roughly “do you have a clear conscience?” It is now widely used to testify to (or question) one’s stance and involvement in the revolution. Examining the digital artifacts and lived experiences of protestors, resistance fighters, and activist fundraisers, the thesis studies the role of calls to conscience in political mobilization and investigates how affect and morality have been activated through aesthetic means to shape the trajectory of the Spring Revolution in Myanmar.
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South. Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona The public policy known as Areas of Protection for Food Production was launched in July of 2024 in the south of La Guajira, Colombia. It aims to focus land use on agricultural production and prohibit any type of mining exploitation. This transition is based on concepts such as the human right to food and food security. This written thesis explores the origins of these concepts, their scope, and their limitations. This is particularly relevant at a time when the La Guajira Corporation is about to grant approval to the mining company Best Coal Company to exploit millions of tons of coal in the Cañaverales Community. This thesis responds to the crisis and the difficulties of the energy transition from an epistemological point of view, through an analysis of archives and geopoetics.
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada This hybrid project interrogates the role of Arab cultural production—particularly Egyptian songs and films about the Aswan High Dam—in shaping public history and contributing to Nubian dispossession. Building on an ongoing collaboration with Nubian activists, one component of this project is a research article that critiques nationalism and encourages a reflection on the power of cultural memory to perpetuate erasure or resist it. The second component of this project is an interactive installation titled The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine, which examines state propaganda and confronts the failures of Arab liberation movements, while centering a Nubian narrative and presents a speculative grassroots response.
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya Despite the secular image often associated with modern nationalism, the Russian state’s sacralization of war reveals the enduring power of religious symbols, rituals, and narratives in shaping national identity. This written thesis examines how the concept of sacred war has become central to the Russian national idea through a fusion of Orthodox theology, state power, and militarized aesthetics. It focuses on two key phenomena: the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, which presents war as a timeless and divine foundation of Russian identity; and front-line baptismal rituals, which transform soldiers into metaphysical agents of a civilizational mission. I analyze these practices through the writings of Aleksandr Dugin, whose metaphysical theory of civilizational conflict (noomachy) frames war not as a geopolitical act but as an ontological necessity. Dugin’s thought provides the ideological architecture through which Russia is positioned as a sacred civilization resisting Western nihilism, where war is not simply justified, but ritually and cosmologically required. In doing so, the study challenges secular readings of nationalism and highlights how authoritarian regimes can mobilize religious metaphysics to render war not only legitimate, but liturgically necessary.
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in a Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih Aftermaths are deceptive. They obscure and conceal. This text, weaved along a photographic inquiry, troubles the notion of quietude. Together, they try to point to what lurks and haunts in the crevices of a wounded urbanscape. Twenty-one years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, what litter and refuse remain in Baghdad today? In a time of rapid urban reconfiguration, what do the residual wartime rubble and the paraphernalia of security regimes tell us of the present, its politics, and relationship to the past? Put differently, what forces and apparatuses obstruct an Iraqi’s walk? Standing by the ruins is an old tradition dating to pre-Islamic poetry and the laments of ancient Mesopotamia. This essay follows suit but goes beyond. Its fragments narrate my auto-ethnographic and ethnographic walks and rides in Baghdad, where I investigate the constellations of rubble, the affects they discharge, and the memories they awaken in a given locale. Much ink and blood were spilled on the streets of Baghdad and world newspapers; this endeavor asks what Iraqis are left with today. The photographs aspire to a private archive for public loss, each being an obstinate interlocutor tested for what eludes vision and what is thought to be seen.
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli Prisons are not just spaces of deprivation and submission but environments where survival gives rise to new forms of expression and interaction. Despite spatial, social, and political constraints, prisoners cultivate communication networks through sound, imagery, and handmade tools. This installation reframes prison life by focusing on acquired culture and produced knowledge rather than narratives of marginalization. Prison Rule 113.11 highlights both clandestine tools of disobedience—tattoo guns, fishing lines, and makeshift speakers—and the coercion tools manufactured through prison labor. These objects are not merely functional but symbolic of defiance and connection. By amplifying sound rather than retreating into silence, prisoners reclaim their lives and assert their resistance to isolation. Positioning these tools as ‘fugitive objects’, this work reveals how incarcerated individuals are not merely passive subjects but a challenge to the very structures designed to contain them.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights and the Arts, 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts is pleased to announce its Class of 2025 MA thesis exhibition.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3 – 7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
EXPLORATION AND RESONANCE: Chinese Music in the West
7th Annual International Conference of the US-China Music Institute
Thursday, May 1, 2025 – Saturday, May 3, 2025
Various Campus Locations The seventh annual conference of the US-China Music Institute is a three-day series of scholarly, interactive, and musical events exploring intercultural exchange while drawing on the rich tapestry of Chinese musical heritage and its resonance in the West. Topics discussed will focus on the following three pivotal areas:
Leadership on Chinese music development in Western society
Expanding the approaches and perspectives on Chinese music research
Successes and challenges in Chinese music teaching in the West
The conference is presented in partnership with the Central Conservatory of Music, China, and in collaboration with China Institute of America. View the conference website for more information about specific events and participants. Registration in advance is kindly requested. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Weis Cinema Come see the short documentary Freshman. Again. currently making its stunning debut on the film festival circuit! The film is headed to the American Black Film Festival in Miami, where it was selected as a winner of the Director's Competition for the Black and Unlimited Fatherhood Project.
Freshman. Again. is an uplifting and heartwarming film about Lenny Bass, a 50-year-old African American man who fulfills his lifelong dream of going to college through the BardBac program, an opportunity he discovered through his daughter, a student at Bard College. Directed by Aji Bass, the filmmaker and Lenny’s son, the documentary offers a deeply personal and candid look at their loving and one-of-a-kind shared journey. Blending intimate interviews with cinéma vérité storytelling, the film vividly captures Lenny’s resilience and determination as he defies expectations and reinvents himself through education. A moving reminder that it’s never too late to start again and that learning has no age limit. For more information, call 917-771-8038, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
A dynamic evening of choreography by the distinguished faculty of the Bard College Dance Program, performed by students in the program and guests of the faculty.
Choreography by Souleymane Badolo Jean Churchill Dedrick “D.Banks” Gray Yuval Pick Maria Simpson
Concert Coordinator Tara Lorenzen Lighting Designer Brian Aldous Costume Designer Alicia Austin Stage Manager Daniel Nelson Assistant Stage Manager Emily Shores
EXPLORATION AND RESONANCE: Chinese Music in the West
7th Annual International Conference of the US-China Music Institute
Thursday, May 1, 2025 – Saturday, May 3, 2025
Various Campus Locations The seventh annual conference of the US-China Music Institute is a three-day series of scholarly, interactive, and musical events exploring intercultural exchange while drawing on the rich tapestry of Chinese musical heritage and its resonance in the West. Topics discussed will focus on the following three pivotal areas:
Leadership on Chinese music development in Western society
Expanding the approaches and perspectives on Chinese music research
Successes and challenges in Chinese music teaching in the West
The conference is presented in partnership with the Central Conservatory of Music, China, and in collaboration with China Institute of America. View the conference website for more information about specific events and participants. Registration in advance is kindly requested. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Online Event We're reading The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt’s unfinished final work. In it, she focuses on three basic mental activities—thinking, willing, and judging—and their relation to the world of appearances and to the human capacity for moral and political action. The new critical edition makes available in print, for the first time, the text of the typescripts as Arendt left them, complemented by a wealth of previously unpublished material, detailed annotations, and extensive scholarly commentary. We will also be referring to Mary McCarthy's edition for increased accessibility.
Free to HAC members and to Bard students, staff, and faculty! Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.
Find the full Virtural Reading Group schedule: hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/ Get the new critical edition of The Life of the Mindhere.
Don't worry if you miss a VRG meeting! We post them all on our YouTube channel the week after they're recorded. Or tune in to an edited version of the chapter readings plus bonus episodes on our podcast, Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
Studio Art Senior Project Exhibition Opening Performance
Acolyte Training
Friday, May 2, 2025 2–6 pm
Memorial Hall (Old Gym) Exhibition and Performance by Senior Student Marissa Salett. Performance times: May 2nd - 4pm May 3rd - 12:30pm and 5:30pm May 4th - 12:30pmSponsored by: Studio Arts Program.
Degree Recital: Luca Sakon, violin, with Neilson Chen, piano
Works by Debussy, Chausson, Saint-Saëns, and Respighi.
Friday, May 2, 2025 4 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Olin Hall The Bard Chinese Ensemble performs its final concert of the year as part of the US-China Music Institute’s annual conference, Exploration and Resonance: Chinese Music in the West. The ensemble will be joined by soloists Jing Xia (guzheng) and Jin Yang (pipa), both members of the Chinese instrument faculty at the Bard Conservatory of Music.
FREE and open to the public. Advanced registration is kindly requested. Please register on the Conference Registration Form here. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
A dynamic evening of choreography by the distinguished faculty of the Bard College Dance Program, performed by students in the program and guests of the faculty.
Choreography by Souleymane Badolo Jean Churchill Dedrick “D.Banks” Gray Yuval Pick Maria Simpson
Concert Coordinator Tara Lorenzen Lighting Designer Brian Aldous Costume Designer Alicia Austin Stage Manager Daniel Nelson Assistant Stage Manager Emily Shores
EXPLORATION AND RESONANCE: Chinese Music in the West
7th Annual International Conference of the US-China Music Institute
Thursday, May 1, 2025 – Saturday, May 3, 2025
Various Campus Locations The seventh annual conference of the US-China Music Institute is a three-day series of scholarly, interactive, and musical events exploring intercultural exchange while drawing on the rich tapestry of Chinese musical heritage and its resonance in the West. Topics discussed will focus on the following three pivotal areas:
Leadership on Chinese music development in Western society
Expanding the approaches and perspectives on Chinese music research
Successes and challenges in Chinese music teaching in the West
The conference is presented in partnership with the Central Conservatory of Music, China, and in collaboration with China Institute of America. View the conference website for more information about specific events and participants. Registration in advance is kindly requested. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Degree Recital: Ya-Yin Yu, violin, with Pei-Hsuan Shen, piano
Works by Tyzen Hsiao, Ching-Ju Shih, Beethoven, Schumann, and Saint-Saëns.
Saturday, May 3, 2025 12 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
A dynamic evening of choreography by the distinguished faculty of the Bard College Dance Program, performed by students in the program and guests of the faculty.
Choreography by Souleymane Badolo Jean Churchill Dedrick “D.Banks” Gray Yuval Pick Maria Simpson
Concert Coordinator Tara Lorenzen Lighting Designer Brian Aldous Costume Designer Alicia Austin Stage Manager Daniel Nelson Assistant Stage Manager Emily Shores
Montgomery Place Estate Bard Nature Rx invites you to a nature walk! Join us at the South Woods trail, 55 Gardener Way, at Montgomery Place for a walk to slow down, observe, and reflect on the season's renewal. Led by Dr. Jana Mader.Sponsored by: Montgomery Place.
Studio Art Senior Project Exhibition Opening Reception
Bard Exhibition Center, UBS Exhibition #3
Saturday, May 3, 2025 3–6 pm
Bard Exhibition Center Please join us to celebrate the thesis work by our third group of senior students exhibiting in Red Hook at the Bard Exhibition Center: Rubi Rhoades, Ella Perkel, Nico Goldstein, Eva Rose Askew, Ezra Hawk-Weintraub, Precious Star, Sohanaa Oswal, Oscar Backes, Zoya Kirmani, Zahra Haidari, Nicole Hazen. For more information, call 845-758-7674, or e-mail [email protected].
Degree Recital: Jacob Hunter, tenor, with Yi-Hsuan Hsia, piano
"Fugitive Echoes"
Saturday, May 3, 2025 4 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Featuring Christian Midy, flute and Malena Verduga Martínez, violin. Works by Krystian Neścior, François Morel, J. S. Bach, Robert Owens, and Arnold Schoenberg.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Studio Art Senior Thesis Exhibition Opening Reception
Fisher Studio Art Galleries #3
Saturday, May 3, 2025 4–7 pm
Fisher Studio Arts Building Please join us to celebrate the thesis work of our senior students Dana Debro (in the Center Gallery) and Pamela Zhang (in the Lobby Gallery). For more information, call 845-758-7674, e-mail [email protected], or visit https://fisherexhibition#3.
Degree Recital: Nisha Patel Caiozzi, soprano, with Kyeongji Koh, piano
"The Space Between"
Saturday, May 3, 2025 7 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Works by Ives, Walker, Webern, Wolf, Bonds, Debussy, Rachmaninov, Violeta Parra, Reena Esmail, and Jule Styne.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bard East/West Ensemble and USCMI Faculty Showcase Concert
Saturday, May 3, 2025 7–9 pm
Chapel of the Holy Innocents
The Bard East/West Ensemble (BE/WE) and guest soloists will grace Bard’s historic chapel with a program of Chinese musical compositions specially arranged for the unique instrumentation of a Western string quintet, seven traditional Chinese instruments, and percussion. Faculty members Yazhi Guo, Jing Xia, and Jin Yang from the US-China Music Institute will showcase their unique approaches to combining Western and Chinese musical forms, along with other special guests. This concert is part of the US-China Music Institute’s annual conference, Exploration and Resonance: Chinese Music in the West.
FREE and open to the public. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
A dynamic evening of choreography by the distinguished faculty of the Bard College Dance Program, performed by students in the program and guests of the faculty.
Choreography by Souleymane Badolo Jean Churchill Dedrick “D.Banks” Gray Yuval Pick Maria Simpson
Concert Coordinator Tara Lorenzen Lighting Designer Brian Aldous Costume Designer Alicia Austin Stage Manager Daniel Nelson Assistant Stage Manager Emily Shores
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Church of St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Road, Barrytown Join us for services (Holy Communion) at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist (1114 River Road) in Barrytown. Rides to the church are provided every Sunday throughout the academic year. Please be at the Bard Chapel at 9:45 am to get picked up.
All are welcome!
Christians, non-Christians, spiritual but not religious, agnostics, believers, doubters, seekers, those who have questions about faith and religion, those struggling to understand where God is in our challenging world—anyone wanting to use their faith to change and act in the world! For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Catholic Mass will be available at 11:30 in the Holy Innocents Chapel. All are welcome! For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Degree Recital: Joseph Breslau, baritone, with Gabriele Zemaityte, piano
"Yours until death: Love letters of a soldier"
Sunday, May 4, 2025 4 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space A story told through the songs of Korngold, Venables, Boulanger, and many more.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Degree Recital: Sam Warshauer, voice, with Nomin Samdan, piano
"Metamorphosis"
Sunday, May 4, 2025 7 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Works by Wolf, Poulenc, Schumann, Bellini, Drew Frankenberg, and Dylan Trần.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Reem-Kayden Center Please consider taking part in our group's final project for PSY 201 in RKC 101A. The experiment will take about twenty minutes. All participants will automatically be entered into a raffle for a chance to win one of three gift cards! Anyone is eligible to participate. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hosted by Rethinking Place and Center for Indigenous Studies
Monday, May 5, 2025 2–5 pm
Blithewood Manor Join us for a day of remembrance. The schedule is as follows:
2 pm: Poetry Reading with Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians) 3 pm: Shared Food and Drink 3:30 pm: Collective Art Making Activity led by Rachel Martin (Tlingit/Tsaagweidei) and Moonoka Begay (Ndéé + Diné) For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Albee Basement (Chaplaincy Offices) Come by the Chaplaincy office (Albee Basement) to knit or learn how to knit! Crocheters and needleworkers are also invited. Materials including yarn and knitting needles are provided. Everyone is welcome.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Studio Art Senior Thesis Exhibition Opening Reception
Old Gym Exhibition #1
Tuesday, May 6, 2025 5–7 pm
Memorial Hall (Old Gym) Please join us to celebrate the thesis work of senior student Kaylah Lewis. For more information, call 845-758-7674, or e-mail [email protected].
A Talk With Podcaster and Historian, Dominic Sandbrook
Tuesday, May 6, 2025 5:30–7 pm
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium
Dominic Sandbrook, one of Britain’s most distinguished historians and popular broadcasters, will talk about Britain in the Eighties. “The story of these years is bitterly contested,” he has written. “There is no consensus about the 1980s and there never will be.” From the conservative revolution and inner-city riots, to Princess Diana, Chariots of Fire and multiculturalism, this was a time of great cultural originality, political ambition and controversy, and wide scale social change—and all set to a soundtrack by The Specials, Bananarama, and The Clash. This event is part of the Eugene Meyer Series established in 2010.
Dominic Sandbrook is one Britain's best and best-known historians. Educated at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, he taught at the University of Sheffield before becoming a full-time writer. He is the author of eight books, including five volumes of a bestselling and critically acclaimed history of Britain from the 1960s to the 1980s. He has presented numerous BBC documentaries and is co-host of The Rest is History—the most popular history podcast in the world. He is currently working on an opera about Margaret Thatcher with the composer Joseph Phibbs.
Coffee, tea and cookies will be available at 5:15pm before the lecture outside RKC 103 We hope to see you there!
Sponsored by: Eugene Meyer Series.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Works by Cage, Schoenberg, Ravel, and Steven Bonacci.
Tuesday, May 6, 2025 6 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Bard Hall Featuring: Adriana Rivera Corujo, Sophia Cotrotsios, and Bibi Nguyen, sopranos; Elizabeth Bayer, alto; Sam Warshauer, tenor; Garrick Neuner, baritone; and Javy Polanco, bass. Free and open to the public.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
STINK HORN: A Mycological Musical Performance-Lecture by Siôn Parkinson
Presented by Bard Conservatory, in Partnership with the John Cage Trust
Thursday, May 8, 2025 4 pm
Edith C. Blum Institute
Join musician, artist, performer, and author Siôn Parkinson for an intimate performance-lecture– part talk, part live musical experiment– exploring the strange, multi-sensory world of the stinkhorn fungus. Drawing from his book Stinkhorn: How Nature’s Most Foul-Smelling Mushroom Can Change the Way We Listen, Siôn will lead an afternoon of music and mycology. Like composer John Cage, his twin passions for music and mushrooms have shaped a radical approach to sound. Yet while Cage sought silence in his fungal forays, Siôn finds Stink, an element that links sound and smell, the real and the hallucinated, opening up new ways of listening and composing. Siôn’s performance will be accompanied by a recording of John Cage’s "Child of Tree" (1975), a work for amplified plant materials, performed by D’Arcy Philip Gray and presented courtesy of Mode Records.
The performance is open to the public with free access. A reception featuring “John Cage Cookies” will follow at the John Cage Trust (Wilson House).
Event address: Edith C. Blum Institute, Blum Hall, 60 Blithewood Avenue, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY 12504.
Choreographed by rising artists in the Bard College Dance Program, this concert of Senior Projects represents the culmination of four years of intensive choreographic inquiry and research. Their concepts have been realized with the support of a professional staff of designers.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Online Event We're reading The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt’s unfinished final work. In it, she focuses on three basic mental activities—thinking, willing, and judging—and their relation to the world of appearances and to the human capacity for moral and political action. The new critical edition makes available in print, for the first time, the text of the typescripts as Arendt left them, complemented by a wealth of previously unpublished material, detailed annotations, and extensive scholarly commentary. We will also be referring to Mary McCarthy's edition for increased accessibility.
Free to HAC members and to Bard students, staff, and faculty! Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.
Find the full Virtural Reading Group schedule: hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/ Get the new critical edition of The Life of the Mindhere.
Don't worry if you miss a VRG meeting! We post them all on our YouTube channel the week after they're recorded. Or tune in to an edited version of the chapter readings plus bonus episodes on our podcast, Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
Stevenson Athletic Center, Soccer Field The Men's Soccer team is hosting its second Unity Cup. The team will participate with displaced students from Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Puerto Rico. All donations will help the displaced students. Food and drinks will be provided. For more information, call 845-758-6822.
The flute studio of Tara Helen O'Connor present works by Schumann, Pamela Zhang, Lowell Liebermann, Amanda Harberg, André Jolivet, Greg Pattillo, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Herman Beeftink.
Friday, May 9, 2025 3 pm
Olin Hall Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Choreographed by rising artists in the Bard College Dance Program, this concert of Senior Projects represents the culmination of four years of intensive choreographic inquiry and research. Their concepts have been realized with the support of a professional staff of designers.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Choreographed by rising artists in the Bard College Dance Program, this concert of Senior Projects represents the culmination of four years of intensive choreographic inquiry and research. Their concepts have been realized with the support of a professional staff of designers.
Degree Recital: Megan Maloney, soprano, with Gabrielė Žemaitytė, piano
"Finding the Light: Songs of Hope and Healing"
Saturday, May 10, 2025 2 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Works by Lili Boulanger, Moses Milner, Nobert Glanzberg, Osvaldo Golijov, Ricky Ian Gordon, Rosephanye Powell, and Mason Bynes. Featuring Jalen Mims, clarinet; Mingyue Xia, violin; Maisy Fisher, violin; Sky Metting, viola; and Alex Steketee, cello.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Studio Art Senior Thesis Exhibition Opening Reception
Fisher Studio Art Galleries Exhibition #4
Saturday, May 10, 2025 4–7 pm
Fisher Studio Arts Building Please join us to celebrate the thesis work of our senior students Mabel Kim (in the Center Gallery) and Xeno Szalla (in the Lobby Gallery). For more information, call 845-758-7674, or e-mail [email protected].
Campus Center, Multipurpose Room Come dance, mingle, and eat Palestinian food! Join us for an evening of Palestinian cultural appreciation. For more information, call 347-551-4483, or e-mail [email protected].
Degree Recital: Jaclyn Hopping, soprano, with Nomin Samdan, piano
"Transfiguration… and the labor of forgetting"
Saturday, May 10, 2025 5 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Works by Samuel Barber, Katherine Balch, Emilie Mayer, and Olivier Messiaen.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
“I have two goals in my heart: I don’t just want to establish a musical idea…I want to develop a cross-cultural idea that brings nature and classical music, ancient and modern, together.” —Tan Dun
Dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and UNESCO Global Goodwill Ambassador, Tan Dun, has made an indelible mark on the world’s music scene with a repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical music, multimedia performance, and Eastern and Western traditions.
Bard College Conservatory of Music Tan Dun, Dean Frank Corliss, Director
Presents Bard Conservatory Orchestra Leon Botstein, Music Director Tan Dun, Conductor
Maurice Ravel
Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose Suite)
1. Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant 2. Petit Poucet 3. Laideronnette, Impératrice des Pagodes 4. Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête 5. Le Jardin féerique
Claude Debussy
Première rhapsodie pour orchestre avec clarinette principale (First rhapsody for orchestra with solo clarinet)
Mohammad AbdNikfarjam ’26, clarinet
Maurice Ravel
Boléro
Modest Mussorgsky
Pictures at an Exhibition (orch. Maurice Ravel)
Promenade— I. Gnomus Promenade— II. The Old Castle Promenade— III. Tuileries IV. Bydlo Promenade— V. Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells VI. “Samuel” Goldenberg and “Schmuÿle” VII. Limoges: The Market— VIII. Catacombs: Sepulcrum romanum—Cum mortuis in lingua mortua IX. The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga)— X. The Great Gate at Kiev
Choreographed by rising artists in the Bard College Dance Program, this concert of Senior Projects represents the culmination of four years of intensive choreographic inquiry and research. Their concepts have been realized with the support of a professional staff of designers.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Church of St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Road, Barrytown Join us for services (Holy Communion) at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist (1114 River Road) in Barrytown. Rides to the church are provided every Sunday throughout the academic year. Please be at the Bard Chapel at 9:45 am to get picked up.
All are welcome!
Christians, non-Christians, spiritual but not religious, agnostics, believers, doubters, seekers, those who have questions about faith and religion, those struggling to understand where God is in our challenging world—anyone wanting to use their faith to change and act in the world! For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Catholic Mass will be available at 11:30 in the Holy Innocents Chapel. All are welcome! For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Blum Hall Please join us for a student open concert!
This is an opportunity for the many different “currents” in the Music Program to share an informal concert and to hear and perform for each other and you! From year to year it can feature classical & jazz groups, chamber groups, violinists, oboists, flutists, pianists, musical saw artists, and more!
The program for this year will feature:
J. S. Bach, Prelude from E Major Violin Partita, BWV 1006 J. S. Bach, Chorale “Der du bist drei in Einigkeit” Johannes Brahms, Violin Sonata in G Major, 1st movement Aaron Copland, Duo for Flute and Piano, 1st movement Frederic Rzewski, Attica Arnold Schoenberg, Canon “O dass der Sinnen doch so viele sind! Tchaikovsky, Selection from “Swan Lake” (arr. P. Lightburn) Stefan Wolpe, Hasty (“on thirds”) and more!
Performed by: Leo Belsky, Julien Franchot, Graham Hall-Keough Sasha Vesensky and Ji-Sian Chen Santiago Mieres Asher Longdon-Stewart and Coulson Matto Phoebe Lightburn and Najla Nazari Claire Sheffler and Sam Daly-Short
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Join us afterward for light refreshments!Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Join us for a musical journey and celebration of life honoring our loved ones and ancestors.Sponsored by: Division of the Arts; Music Program.
For more information, call 617-584-1350, or e-mail [email protected].
Degree Recital: Georgia Perdikoulias, soprano, with Lara Saldanha, piano
"Refuge"
Sunday, May 11, 2025 7 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Featuring Schuyler Lillian, cello. Works by Kostas Rekleitis, Emilios Riadis, Manolis Kalomiris, Haydn, and Saariaho.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Albee Basement (Chaplaincy Offices) Come by the Chaplaincy office (Albee Basement) to knit or learn how to knit! Crocheters and needleworkers are also invited. Materials including yarn and knitting needles are provided. Everyone is welcome.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
"Limeys, Yanks, and Krauts": Rufus Müller's Performance Class Recital
Monday, May 12, 2025 6 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Before the semester finally ends, hear the beauty of voices singing British, American, and German art song in a final recital.Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
CCS Bard, Classroom 102 Each semester CCS Bard hosts a program of lectures by leading artists, curators, art historians, and critics, situating the school and museum’s concerns within the larger context of contemporary art production and discourse. Speakers are selected primarily by second-year graduate students and also by faculty and staff. All lectures are free and open, and are documented through audio recordings that reside in the CCS Bard Library & Archives and online here.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Featuring Jiani Dong, violin; Elizabeth Bennett, flute, Minghui Mia Wu, dizi; Yuling Nan, ruan; Dari Batsaikhan, cello; Colby Bond, clarinet; and Pei-Hsuan Shen, Nelson Chen, and Ji-Sian Chan, piano. Free and open to the public.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
A Talk by Theresa Law, Asst. Professor of Computer Science
Wednesday, May 14, 2025 4–5 pm
Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library, First Floor Is AI new? How do machine learning models (like ChatGPT) generate answers? Why do these models have the limitations that they do? This talk will step through a high level overview of how popular AI models today work, and why that methodology leads to commonly seen problems like AI hallucinations. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
The Graduate Vocal Arts Program Presents: "Hispanic Bridges"
Curated by Dr. Javier Arrebola
Wednesday, May 14, 2025 4 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space "Hispanic Bridges" is a vibrant concert showcasing the musical and linguistic ties between Spain and Hispanic America. Come join Bard’s VAP singers and Collaborative Piano fellows on a journey across the Atlantic through song as we celebrate shared heritage and cultural connection.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
The Graduate Vocal Arts Program and Collaborative Piano Fellows present an evening of opera scenes you have never seen. Spanning multiple styles, languages, and genres, each artist presents their chosen opera aria with a companion song that reveals the inner life of each character.
Thursday, May 15, 2025 5 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Camp Kingston, 36 St. James St, Kingston, NY To cap their third year of study, all masters of music candidates are required to create their own thesis project. This performance is the Capstone Project of TŌN clarinetist Colby Bond.
Camp Kingston welcomes clarinetist Colby Bond alongside other TŌN musicians curating a unique experience pairing drinks and chamber music. The casual evening will feature live classical music performance and discussion of how different pieces of music pair well with varied beer and cocktails. Come for a good time to have some drinks, hear great music, and socialize with musicians afterwards!Sponsored by: The Orchestra Now.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Online Event We're reading The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt’s unfinished final work. In it, she focuses on three basic mental activities—thinking, willing, and judging—and their relation to the world of appearances and to the human capacity for moral and political action. The new critical edition makes available in print, for the first time, the text of the typescripts as Arendt left them, complemented by a wealth of previously unpublished material, detailed annotations, and extensive scholarly commentary. We will also be referring to Mary McCarthy's edition for increased accessibility.
Free to HAC members and to Bard students, staff, and faculty! Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.
Find the full Virtural Reading Group schedule: hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/ Get the new critical edition of The Life of the Mindhere.
Don't worry if you miss a VRG meeting! We post them all on our YouTube channel the week after they're recorded. Or tune in to an edited version of the chapter readings plus bonus episodes on our podcast, Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
The Mutual Influence of Sheng and Free-Reed Instruments in Europe
Friday, May 16, 2025 12 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
"Pipa and Buddhism: The Connection Through Liu Dehai's Buddhist-Themed Pipa Works"
Friday, May 16, 2025 2 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Dutilleux, Gubaidulina, Kodaly, Ligeti, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Messiaen, Mozart, Schoenberg, Schubert and Schumann.
Friday, May 16, 2025 7 pm
Olin Hall Featuring the students of Rieko Aizawa's piano studio, this recital will have four sections based on distinct themes: "Kaleidoscopic Pianism," featuring fantasy-like music and innovative, pianistic writing; "Nature with Music," for some creative yet natural and picturesque works; “Rhapsodic Breeze from Austria-Hungary,” which leads us to the Hungarian and Viennese worlds connected by a little gem by Schubert called Hungarian Melody; "Con anima (with soul)," incorporating a selection of gorgeous works which melt our hearts.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
And Kaethe & Marié , the violin & accordion super-duo
Friday, May 16, 2025 8:30–10 pm
Bard Hall
Please join us at Bard Hall on May 16th, 8:30 PM for the debut performance of the Bard Accordion Orchestra featuring the students enrolled in Prof. Sonevytsky’s Accordionology class, and special guest singer Eva Salina. This will be followed super duo Marié Abe and Kaethe Hostetter, who will play accordion and violin arrangements of tunes from Ethiopia, Japan, the US and more.
This event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Works by Zhou Yuguo, Pamela Zhang, and Simon Kong Su Leong.
Saturday, May 17, 2025 3 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Join Olivia Chaikin of The Orchestra Now (TŌN) for an evening of classic flute repertoire and new transcriptions, including Dvořàk's American Quartet reimagined for Flute and String Trio.
Recital details:
G.P. Telemann Fantasia No. 2 in A Minor Henri Dutilleux Sonatine George Enesco Cantabile et Presto W.A. Mozart Rondo in D Major Beethoven Violin Sonata No. 8 in G Major, arr. Sigfried Karg-Elert Sonata Appassionata Dvořàk String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, “American”, arr. François Borne/Georges BizetCarmen FantasieSponsored by: The Orchestra Now.
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Church of St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Road, Barrytown Join us for services (Holy Communion) at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist (1114 River Road) in Barrytown. Rides to the church are provided every Sunday throughout the academic year. Please be at the Bard Chapel at 9:45 am to get picked up.
All are welcome!
Christians, non-Christians, spiritual but not religious, agnostics, believers, doubters, seekers, those who have questions about faith and religion, those struggling to understand where God is in our challenging world—anyone wanting to use their faith to change and act in the world! For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Catholic Mass will be available at 11:30 in the Holy Innocents Chapel. All are welcome! For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Works by Stojan Stojkov, Tomasi, Hindemith, and James Naigus.
Sunday, May 18, 2025 1 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Schubert, Messiaen, Gubaidulina, Dutilleux, Schoenberg, and Brahms.
Sunday, May 18, 2025 7 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Works by Lila Meretzky, Meredith Monk, Torū Takemitsu, Per Nørgård, Emmanuel Sejourne, Krystian Skubała, Michael Laurello, and Joseph Schwantner.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Massena Campus This gathering will bring together our small research community, especially our Steering Committee, for a presentation of our research projects, an open research discussion, and a brainstorming session for the future. We’ll discuss dreaming as a methodology, reflect on the evolving work of the Center, and celebrate the ongoing contributions of our collaborators.
We hope you’ll join us in community, care, and celebration. Wopila, The Wíhanble S’a Center For more information, call 518-249-8778, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 MA candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
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