Bard Faculty Member Julia Weist Awarded a MacDowell Fellowship
Julia Weist, visiting artist in residence in studio arts. Photo by Adam T. Deen.
Julia Weist, visiting artist in residence in studio arts at Bard College, has been awarded a MacDowell Fellowship to the MacDowell Residency Program in the Visual Arts category for spring/summer 2026. While in residence from August 6–20, Julia will complete postproduction work on her project, Questioning, to be presented as a live work of theater debuting at New Theater Hollywood in July 2026. Located in Peterborough, New Hampshire, MacDowell is one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious artist residency programs, and fellowships are distributed by seven discipline-specific admissions panels that make their selections solely based on the excellence of the applicant's work.
Questioning re-enacts an exchange that occurred between Weist and New York's Department of State, which investigated her artistic use of a private investigator license. After leveraging her research-based artistic practice to earn PI credentials in 2022, Weist had gained access to restricted tools that aggregate sensitive, non-public data about American citizens. She used the data to create photographs that arranged and obscured information she purchased about herself, her spouse, and neighbors. When the work was exhibited, New York's Department of State opened an inquiry into her licensure, raising fundamental questions about artistic authority, investigative methodology, and the financial systems that value artistic labor. The state ultimately determined that none of Weist's work violated the rules of the credential, and dropped its case. In residence at MacDowell, she will edit video documentation of Questioning, which restages her interrogation with NY's deputy chief investigator, thereby closing the case on her own terms.
The Studio Arts Program at Bard provides a breadth of expanded offerings while retaining a strong core of courses that provide a firm grounding in basic techniques and principles, in an era when much contemporary art cannot be contained within the traditional categories and technology is transforming the production of visual images.
Post Date: 04-07-2026
Questioning re-enacts an exchange that occurred between Weist and New York's Department of State, which investigated her artistic use of a private investigator license. After leveraging her research-based artistic practice to earn PI credentials in 2022, Weist had gained access to restricted tools that aggregate sensitive, non-public data about American citizens. She used the data to create photographs that arranged and obscured information she purchased about herself, her spouse, and neighbors. When the work was exhibited, New York's Department of State opened an inquiry into her licensure, raising fundamental questions about artistic authority, investigative methodology, and the financial systems that value artistic labor. The state ultimately determined that none of Weist's work violated the rules of the credential, and dropped its case. In residence at MacDowell, she will edit video documentation of Questioning, which restages her interrogation with NY's deputy chief investigator, thereby closing the case on her own terms.
The Studio Arts Program at Bard provides a breadth of expanded offerings while retaining a strong core of courses that provide a firm grounding in basic techniques and principles, in an era when much contemporary art cannot be contained within the traditional categories and technology is transforming the production of visual images.
Post Date: 04-07-2026