Bard News

The Chamber Foundation Inc. and the Women’s Leadership Alliance of the Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce have named Cammie Jones, Bard associate dean of experiential learning and civic engagement, a 2020 ATHENA honoree. The ATHENA award honors those who strive toward the highest levels of professional accomplishment by excelling in their chosen profession, devoting time and energy to their community in meaningful ways, and actively guiding or mentoring women to become great leaders.

“The ATHENA Award honors individuals in the community who are making an impact in the lives of women both personally and professionally, and I'm beyond humbled and honored to join such a phenomenal global group of women leaders,” said Jones. “I truly thank all of the women who stand by me, especially the numerous BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities who continuously make an impact in my life and the communities in which we live. Congratulations to all of the honorees!”
 

The Washington Post says, “Conjunctions offers a showplace for some of the most exciting and demanding writers now at work.”

Edited by Bradford Morrow and published twice yearly by Bard College, Conjunctions publishes innovative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by emerging voices and contemporary masters. For nearly four decades, Conjunctions has challenged accepted forms and styles, with equal emphasis on groundbreaking experimentation and rigorous execution. In 2020, Conjunctions received the prestigious Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. The judges noted, “Every issue of Conjunctions is a feat of curatorial invention, continuing the Modernist project of dense, economical writing, formal innovation, and an openness to history and the world.” Named a “Top Literary Magazine 2019” by Reedsy, the journal was a finalist for both the 2018 and 2019 ASME Award for Fiction and the 2018 CLMP Firecracker Award for General Excellence. In addition, contributions to recent issues have been selected for The Best American Essays (2018, 2019), The Pushcart Prize XLIV: Best of the Small Presses, Best American Experimental Writing 2020, Best Small Fictions 2019, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2019.

For more information on the latest issue, please visit conjunctions.com/print/archive/conjunctions75. To order a copy, go to annandaleonline.org/conjunctions, call the Conjunctions office at 845-758-7054, e-mail conjunctions@bard.edu, or write to Conjunctions, Bard College, PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000. Visit the Conjunctions website at conjunctions.com.

[Note to editors: To obtain review copies, please call Mark Primoff at 845-758-7412 or e-mail primoff@bard.edu](12.1.20)
 

In conjunction with Day With(out) Art 2020, CCS Bard will host a discussion with artist, filmmaker, and activist George Stanley Nsamba on Friday, December 4, at 11:00 am EST. Day With(out) Art is an international day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis. Nsamba has directed a number of films throughout his career that touch upon the lives of those living with HIV and AIDS. In Finding Purpose (2020), the artist reflects on the experience of producing a film about teens born HIV positive in Uganda and the pervasive stigma they face. Nsamba is also a devoted mentor, and in 2013 he founded The Ghetto Film Project in the slums of Naguru, as a way to train and empower youth in socially engaged film production. 

Acclaimed filmmaker and S. William Senfeld Artist in Residence Kelly Reichardt’s film First Cow was named the best movie of 2020 by Time magazine. The film is set in the wilds of an early 19th-century Columbia River settlement, in what is now Oregon, and focuses on the business partnership and friendship of an Anglo cook and an entrepreneurial Chinese immigrant. “Both tranquil and dazzling,” writes Stephanie Zacharek, “First Cow is a song of this weird, rough-edged stretch of stolen land we call America, a place where tenderness is still the most precious commodity.”

Blanca Lista ’01 has won the EMMY for Outstanding Children's Program as co-executive producer on Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance for Netflix. “Graduation from Bard College in Film Studies was a privilege,” Lista says, “and it shaped me to be the producer I am today.”

Dance critic Brian Seibert lists Pam Tanowitz’s “sublime” Four Quartets, from 2018, and Ronald K. Brown’s Grace, from 2019, as “best dance retrospectives.” “Those were dances I had seen and loved live in the theater,” Seibert writes. “But seeing them again, at home in 2020, I loved them more—for themselves, and for preserving what I love most about dance, keeping that spark alive, at least digitally, in these extraordinarily challenging times.”

Premiering December 9, the new film United We Play features three world premieres of works for strings, jazz instrumentals, and piano composed by Marcus Roberts, distinguished visiting professor of music at Bard College, and commissioned by the American Symphony Orchestra. It includes commentary by the composer and ASO Music Director and Bard College President Leon Botstein. “The chance to hear Mr. Roberts’s orchestral language, not yet represented on recordings, is a welcome development,” writes Seth Colter Walls.

Award-winning opera diva and Bard Conservatory Vocal Arts Program alumna Julia Bullock MM ’11 talks with host Lara Downes on Amplify, a series highlighting visionary Black musicians who are shaping the art form. In this intimate conversation, Bullock and Downes share common ground. “Our search for self has informed our navigation of the classical music landscape,” says Downes, “driven by a desire to reveal the voices of artists of color who came before us, and to build a more diverse and equitable future for those who will come after. Julia's choices—the music she sings, the places where she sings it and the people she sings it for—are deliberate and courageous.”

“Given the unprecedented assault on American democracy by the Trump administration, it is far too risky to fall back on the default mode of letting bygones be bygones,” writes Encarnación. “The most important take-away from the 2020 general election is that while Trump was defeated, Trumpism was not. But harnessing the resources and prestige of the U.S. government to expose the whole truth about Trumpism, especially its contempt for basic human rights, will go a long way towards ensuring its passing.”
 

“In an expansive and revealing new biography, Sometimes You Have to Lie, Leslie Brody assembles the clues to the personal history that shaped Fitzhugh’s conscience and creative convictions,” writes Liesl Schillinger in the New York Times. “Brody, a biographer and playwright who adapted Harriet the Spy for the stage in 1988, has pored through correspondence, memoirs and court documents, and conducted dozens of interviews to reveal the trail that Fitzhugh left unmarked.”

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The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh features Tyrant Star, a 16-minute video work by Bard MFA alumna Diane Severin Nguyen, in its online exhibition series. On view through February 14, 2021, this marks the first time that the work, a new acquisition, will be exhibited at the museum. Nguyen made the piece, which the Post-Gazette calls “visually poetic,” while studying at Bard.  

 

“Also to be admired is the evocative period cinematography by Lyle Vincent—you can practically feel the dust smart in your eyes—and the sure-handed direction by Joris-Peyrafitte, all the more noteworthy in that it’s only his second feature and he’s still in his 20s,” writes AP’s Jocelyn Noveck.

“Before the pandemic there was a lot of utopian talk that online education would replace classrooms. It was kind of an easy fix for the failures of education thinking that technology would come to the rescue as kind of a white knight,” Botstein tells CNN International Host Christiane Amanpour. “We’ve never believed this and the one lesson from the pandemic is that there’s no replacement for teaching and learning in real time and a real place with fellow students and with faculty.”

Azikiwe Mohammed ’05 observed that drop-in painting classes focused largely on white, Western artists. He’s working to create a free space that will shift the paradigm. The Black Painters Academy, located in Lower Manhattan, is set to open early next year, as a school where aspiring painters can learn from the rich history of Black art. Classes will be entirely free of charge and open to students of all ages. Mohammed especially hopes to engage those who may not have access to painting classes or feel unwelcome in such spaces, including many people of color. “You’re seeing a lot more Black identifying painters in the field moving around, more Black objects. It’s incredible, it’s absolutely beautiful to see,” he told Hyperallergic. “But where are the other ones? What if we had a building where we could help make some more?”

Staffs at Lil Deb’s Oasis and Kitty’s Market have joined forces to establish two community refrigerators that will be co-managed by a group of local activist volunteers. The fridges are meant to be self-sustaining, with produce and other goods provided by local donors. Lil Deb’s Perez-Gallardo is committed to making up any shortfall in donations. “I feel it’s especially important right now, when so much is up in the air and so many people have lost their jobs, to keep food accessible,” she says. “Community fridges are a really beautiful and simple way to address food access in communities that don’t have direct access to fresh produce all the time.”

“‘Gifts’ is the word that stands out in trying to label or describe Chapter and Verse: The Gospel of James Baldwin,” writes Joseph Dalton for the Times Union. Created by singer/songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello, the multiplatform work blends Ndegeocello’s music with writings and speeches by Baldwin; informal meditations on religion, identity, and power; short animated videos; and artistically rendered broadsheets into what Ndegeocello describes as “a 21st-century ritual tool kit for justice.

Fifty years ago, Fouad Chehab tried to create a state out of Lebanon and failed. Today Lebanon is no closer to his vision of real statehood but needs it more than ever, writes Bard Diplomat in Residence Fred Hof. “On Aug. 4, 1970,” Hof writes, “the man who had served from 1958 to 1964 as the third president of the independent Lebanese Republic, Gen. Fouad Chehab, issued a written statement declining to stand for the presidency again. [...] Fifty years later – to the day – a massive explosion nearly vaporized Beirut’s port, inflicting widespread death, injury, and wreckage throughout Lebanon’s capital. Lebanon’s so-called government had, with breathtaking negligence, permitted nearly 3,000 tons of extremely volatile ammonium nitrate to be stored in a warehouse; it had done so with barely a thought for public safety. Chehab’s understated rendering of fact in August 1970 – that Lebanon was not a state, thus making the presidency itself irrelevant – manifested itself exactly 50 years later as the deadly indictment of a ravenous, incompetent, and terminally useless political class.”
 

“We don’t know how to give and receive,” Seneca writes in the opening statement of De Beneficiis, newly edited and translated by Professor James Romm as How to Give: An Ancient Guide to Giving and Receiving (Princeton University Press, 2020). Seneca counsels givers to be anonymous and forget they’ve given, and urges recipients to be grateful and remember. How to Give is the latest entry in a series from Princeton University Press called Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers. James Romm is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics and director of the Classical Studies Program at Bard. 

“The Women’s Strike organizers are thinking well beyond abortion restrictions. They have called together a Consultative Council of experts,” writes Gessen. “[Organizers have] conducted a survey of protesters, identified thirteen topics of greatest concern to them, and created working groups of experts for every one, including abortion rights, education, work and the pandemic, health care, climate change, and the separation of church and state; there is also a group called No Pasarán, which focuses on the ‘defascization of Poland.’”

CFR writes that Blinken, Deputy Secretary of State at the time, “discusses the benefits of an open-facing United States and how acting multilaterally with other countries has made the country’s leadership more effective. He also shares opinions on how the country should strengthen the liberal international order it built over the decades and adapt it to new global realities.” Walter Russell Mead is the James Clarke Chace Professor in Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College.
 

Bard alumnus and philosophy major Adam Conover ’04 will host the new Netflix series The G Word with Adam Conover, which will be produced by Barack and Michelle Obama. The show—loosely based on Michael Lewis’s best-selling 2018 book The Fifth Risk—will blend sketch comedy and documentary elements, focusing on the U.S. government in an effort to introduce viewers to the civil servants who make it work.

Bard College has named Miriam Felton-Dansky director of its undergraduate Theater and Performance Program. A longtime faculty member in the program as well as in Bard’s Experimental Humanities concentration, Felton-Dansky will take her position as director in spring 2021. Gideon Lester, who has served as director of the Theater and Performance Program since 2012, will become senior curator of the newly formed Center for Human Rights and the Arts, part of the Open Society University Network, alongside his work as artistic director of the Fisher Center at Bard. 

“Miriam Felton-Dansky steps into this key leadership role at a moment when the College's Theater and Performance Program is poised to enact important curricular changes,” said Dean of the College Deirdre d’Albertis. “The theater and performance faculty are engaged in collaborative work with students past and present to develop and strengthen opportunities for undergraduate theatermaking based in the program's affirmed commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.” She added, “Gideon Lester will join with Tania El Khoury in building the new Center for Human Rights and the Arts and its allied MA program, bringing his artistic vision and experience to this important new leadership position in Bard's graduate programs.”

Miriam Felton-Dansky is associate professor of theater and performance at Bard. She has also been a core faculty member of the Experimental Humanities concentration since 2012 and served as its interim director in 2015–16. A scholar and critic of contemporary performance, her first book, Viral Performance: Contagious Theaters from Modernism to the Digital Age, was published by Northwestern University Press in 2018. Her criticism has appeared in Theatre Survey, Theatre Journal, TDR, Theater, PAJ, ASAP/J, Artforum.com, and the Walker Art Center’s magazine; from 2009 to 2018 she was a theater critic for the Village Voice. She is a cohost of the theater studies podcast On TAP and a contributing editor to Theater, where she served as guest coeditor for the Digital Dramaturgies trilogy (2012-–18). Her current research focuses on the history and politics of spectatorship in experimental performance. She holds a BA summa cum laude in theater and history from Barnard College and a doctorate of fine arts from the Yale School of Drama.

Gideon Lester, artistic director of the Fisher Center at Bard, has been named senior curator, OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts. Through its public, research, and academic programs, the OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts seeks to confront the current practical and conceptual challenges of human rights discourse by stimulating new ways of thinking, developing new strategies of activism and engagement, and working meaningfully on a global scale. The Center is finalizing an MA program in human rights and the arts, which will unite artists, scholars, and activists in an international, comparative, and interdisciplinary curriculum. The MA program will be based at Bard College, a founding member of the Open Society University Network (OSUN), and is expected to welcome its first class in fall 2021.

A festival director, creative producer, and dramaturg, Lester has collaborated with and commissioned leading American and international artists across disciplines, including Romeo Castellucci, Justin Vivian Bond, Krystian Lupa, Brice Marden, Sarah Michelson, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Claudia Rankine, Kaija Saariaho, Peter Sellars, and Anna Deavere Smith. Recent projects include Where No Wall Remains, an international festival on borders (cocurated with Tania El Khoury); Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma! (Tony Award); Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets; and Ronald K. Brown and Meshell Ndegeocello’s Grace and Mercy. He founded and directs Live Arts Bard, the Fisher Center’s residency and commissioning program, and directed Bard’s undergraduate Theater and Performance Program from 2012 to 2020. He was previously cocurator of the Crossing the Line Festival and acting artistic director at the American Repertory Theatre. He has taught at Harvard and Columbia, has a BA in English literature from Oxford University, and was a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard’s Institute for Advanced Theater Training.
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About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 160-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.11/19/20
 

The Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program (BGIA) announces the appointment of journalist and award-winning author Suzy Hansen to its faculty. Hansen is the author of Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World, which was a 2018 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of the Overseas Press Club’s Cornelius Ryan Award for Best Nonfiction Book on International Affairs. She will teach writing on international affairs starting in the Spring 2021 semester.

Suzy Hansen is an author and a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine. Based in Turkey, she combined reportage, memoir, and history to write Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World, her award-winning non-fiction book about her first ten years in the Middle East that was a 2018 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Since 2000 her work has appeared in a host of major national magazines, including The New Republic, Vogue, and National Geographic. In 2020, she was a practitioner-in-residence at NYU’s Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University, and an Arizona State University Future Security Fellow at New America. In 2007, she was awarded a two-year fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs to live in and write about Turkey.

The Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program (BGIA) in New York City provides a unique opportunity for college students and recent college graduates from around the world to take advanced courses in international affairs while working in carefully selected internships based on individual interests. BGIA students engage in the study and practice of international law; international relations theory; global public health; political economy; international reporting; and other aspects of international affairs. BGIA has semester and summer programs. For more information, visit bgia.bard.edu.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 160-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.11/18/20
 

The Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) and the Human Rights Project announced today that Ama Josephine B. Johnstone has been selected as the seventh recipient of the Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism. Her appointment is made possible by the Keith Haring Foundation as part of the second series of a five year-grant supporting the Fellowship—an annual award for a scholar, activist, or artist to teach and conduct research at Bard College. Johnstone’s appointment marks the shared commitment of the College and the Foundation both to exploring the interaction between political engagement and artistic practices and to bringing leading practitioners from around the world into Bard's classrooms.

“The Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism is an ongoing dialogue with leading artists, writers and scholars, bringing new modes of thinking, pedagogical models and ways of working into the Bard community.  International in scope, the Fellowship continues to evolve, raising issues that are current and introducing innovative responses to the challenges of the present,” said Tom Eccles, executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.

Ama Josephine B. Johnstone is a speculative writer, artist, curator and pleasure activist whose work navigates intimate explorations of race, art, ecology and feminism, working to activate movements that catalyze human rights, environmental evolutions and queer identities. Johnstone is a PhD candidate in psychosocial studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She describes her research as taking “a queer, decolonial approach to challenging climate colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa with a particular focus on inherently environmentalist pleasure practices in Ghana and across the Black universe.”

“Ama says that her work 'thrives in the fecund liminal spaces between the museum and the academy, the gallery and the protest,' and in this sense, among many others, she exemplifies the spirit and practice of Keith Haring. Her fearless creativity, coupled with her relentless critical curiosity, especially about human rights discourse itself, are going to be essential guides in any journey through our perilous times,” said Thomas Keenan, director of Bard's Human Rights Project.

Johnstone will be in residence at Bard during the spring 2021 semester to teach and develop local collaborations in the Hudson Valley, succeeding Pelin Tan as the 2019–20 Fellow. Details on the Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism and previous fellows can be found at ccsbard.edu.

About the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College and the Human Rights Project at Bard College
Bard College seeks to realize the best features of American liberal arts education, enabling individuals to think critically and act creatively based on a knowledge and understanding of human history, society, and the arts. Two pioneering programs developed under this mission are the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) and the Human Rights Project.

CCS Bard was founded in 1990 as an exhibition and research center for the study of late 20th-century and contemporary art and culture and to explore experimental approaches to the presentation of these topics and their impact on our world. Since 1994, the Center for Curatorial Studies and its graduate program have provided one of the world’s most forward thinking teaching and learning environments for the research and practice of contemporary art and curatorship. Broadly interdisciplinary, CCS Bard encourages students, faculty, and researchers to question the critical and political dimension of art, its mediation, and its social significance.

The Human Rights Project, founded at Bard in 1999, developed the first interdisciplinary undergraduate degree program in Human Rights in the United States. The Project maintains a special interest in freedom of expression and the public sphere, and through teaching, research, and public programs is committed to exploring the too-often neglected cultural, aesthetic, and representational dimensions of human rights discourse.

Since 2009, CCS Bard and the Human Rights Project have collaborated on a series of seminars, workshops, research projects, and symposia aimed at exploring the intersections between human rights and the arts, and doing so in a manner that takes neither term for granted but in fact uses their conjunction to raise critical, foundational questions about each. While academic in nature, this research and teaching nevertheless draws heavily on the realm of practice, involving human rights advocates, artists, and curators.

About the Keith Haring Foundation
Keith Haring (1958-1990) generously contributed his talents and resources to numerous causes. He conducted art workshops with children, created logos and posters for public service agencies, and produced murals, sculptures, and paintings to benefit health centers and disadvantaged communities. In 1989, Haring established a foundation to ensure that his philanthropic legacy would continue indefinitely.

The Keith Haring Foundation makes grants to not-for-profit entities that engage in charitable and educational activities. In accordance with Keith’s wishes, the Foundation concentrates its giving in two areas: The support of organizations which enrich the lives of young people and the support of organizations which engage in education, prevention and care with respect to AIDS and HIV infection.

Keith Haring additionally charged the Foundation with maintaining and protecting his artistic legacy after his death. The Foundation maintains a collection of art along with archives that facilitate historical research about the artist and the times and places in which he lived and worked. The Foundation supports arts and educational institutions by funding exhibitions, programming, and publications that serve to contextualize and illuminate the artist’s work and philosophy. haring.com

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MEDIA CONTACTS:
For further information, images, or to arrange interviews, please contact:

BARD COLLEGE CONTACT:
Mark Primoff
Director of Communications
Tel: +1 845.758.7412
Email: primoff@bard.edu

CCS BARD CONTACT:
Ramona Rosenberg
Director of External Affairs
Tel: +1 (845) 758-7574
Email: rrosenberg@bard.edu
 

“Aileen used the body to understand life in a way that just kind of says hello to the world and celebrates all of what we can be,” Aviles said. “In Aileen’s classes, there was room for everyone to be just who they were,” said Hendrickson. “She would always say that we’re wonderfully well-made—like a sweet tiger or like a tree. She would create this environment where you were expected to do your best, of course, but you were also, more importantly, expected to, like, speak from your own point of view—to have the courage to know yourself and to share that.”

“A diagram is a perfect visual schema for posing impossible things, invisible forces, enigmas like the future—all posed as perfectly plausible vectors,” Sillman writes. “The diagram even outdid the camera as the early twentieth century’s best new thing because it could depict things in the universe that exceed the eye, like particles, waves, and quarks. A diagram’s scale is endless. It can indicate how dwarfed we are by the universe, or how busy the microscopic world is, all mapped out on the back of some envelope.”

“When we first heard the news, I couldn’t imagine getting through one day in the house, stuck and anxious without the energy to entertain. Like all of you—all of us—and yet, some of you will come out still married,” writes Sherman, who teaches in the MFA Program at Columbia University. “People say that when the virus ends there will be many divorces. Not yet, as the courts are still closed. All the couples are waiting for the doors to open, and then the numbers will go up. I can’t get my wedding ring off of my finger.”

“As a proud native New Yorker, to see my hometown in full flower, flexing and showing off as only New York can feels exultant. New York City is not, has never been, and never will be a ghost town,” writes Vaill, who plays an employee of the Strand bookstore in the series. “New York has a starring role, and in the show’s deft, kind hands, what could feel like loss feels like a promise of what can return.”

“I want people always to be thinking that every story that you enjoy, you need to stop and think, why am I enjoying this? What’s happening? What is the writer doing? What is the writer forcing me to look at?” Mendelsohn tells Donahue. “In this book I really want people to think about it, not least by pointing to the fact that amazing coincidences and sort of too-good-to-be-true narratives happen in history, in real life, as well as in stories.”

Bard College has joined the newly established Liberal Arts Colleges Racial Equity Leadership Alliance (LACRELA) to address racial inequities at liberal arts colleges. The Alliance, collaborating with the University of Southern California (USC) Race and Equity Center—led by founder and scholar Shaun Harper, a widely recognized expert in race, equity, and college student success—will provide resources to help member institutions develop and achieve equity goals, better understand and correct climate problems, avoid and recover from racial crises, and foster sustainable cultures of inclusion.

“Bard looks forward to working collaboratively with other institutions that share a commitment to addressing the issues of racial justice and equity in higher education,” said Bard College president Leon Botstein, who joined the alliance, along with 51 other college and university presidents. LACRELA was formed by a cohort of new liberal arts college presidents of color, including Carmen Twille Ambar of Oberlin College, Suzanne M. Rivera of Macalester College, G. Gabrielle Starr of Pomona College, Harry J. Elam, Jr. of Occidental College, and Lori S. White of DePauw University, to collectively address issues of racial diversity, equity, and inclusion on their campuses.

“In the midst of a reawakened reckoning on racial justice issues and other historical and contemporary inequalities, there is no more important time for liberal arts colleges, with our emphasis on critical thinking, deep inquiry and shaping diverse leaders, to work and stand together to transform teaching, scholarship and student experiences,” said White.

“The Alliance will situate Bard in immediate dialogue with peer institutions facing similar challenges and opportunities in advancing the work of equity and inclusion,” said Deirdre d'Albertis, Bard’s Dean of the College. “The resources, tools, and expertise available to member institutions through LACRELA are being developed within the specific context of small liberal arts colleges, addressing concerns often overlooked by researchers and diversity practitioners focused on large universities with very different organizational structures.”

The USC center will host monthly eConvenings throughout 2021, each focusing on a particular aspect of racial equity and offering strategies and practical approaches. Eight faculty or staff members from Bard and every member institution may participate in each session, which will be taught by leaders of national higher education organizations; tenured professors who study race relations; chief diversity officers and other administrators; and specialists from the center.

The center also is offering every Bard employee—facilities staff, food service workers, faculty members, and others—online access 24/7 to resources and tools, such as equity-related rubrics, case studies, videos, slide decks and conversational scripts. The portal is expected to launch in late spring, 2021.

In addition, Bard and other member schools will have access to a survey of more than 500,000 students at higher education institutions across the country, as well as the results of two surveys the center is planning to conduct at member institutions. The surveys will query faculty members and staff members at all levels about their perceptions of equitable opportunities for advancement and promotion; their sense of belonging; their experiences in the workplace; their encounters with racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia; their respective institution’s response to reports of abuse, unfair treatment and climate problems; and their appraisals of the institution’s commitment to equity.

For more information about the USC Race and Equity Center, visit race.usc.edu/colleges.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 160-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.11/16/20

 

Sky Hopinka, Assistant Professor of Film and Electronic Arts, was featured in the New York Times. His work “rivals in visual and linguistic beauty any new art I’ve seen in some time,” their critic writes.

By Holland Cotter for the New York Times

Between a spiking pandemic and a slugfest election, November has brought storm clouds to the nation. But to the art world it introduces two warm points of light in concurrent shows by the Indigenous American artist and filmmaker Sky Hopinka. One, in a new Manhattan gallery, is his New York City solo debut; the other, at Bard College in upstate New York, his first museum survey anywhere.

Mr. Hopinka is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and descended from the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians. His work, which he aptly calls “ethnopoetic,” is built on that biographical data, but expands outward from it. It’s steeped in Native American history but rejects the idea that history is confined to the past. Present tense and personal, it rivals in visual and linguistic beauty any new art I’ve seen in some time.

The fifth edition of the Photo Vogue Festival, entitled All In This Together, includes works by an international group of 30 photographers. Of her own work in the exhibition—the portrait Marissa—New York–based artist and Bard alumna Jasmine Clarke ’18 says, “When I look in the mirror, I want to believe that what I am seeing is an extension of myself even though I know that it isn’t. I’m seeing a reflection (an illusion) of me and my world. I can never quite trust a mirror; a picture creates a similar false sense of reality.” The exhibition will be available for viewing online beginning November 12.

Arseny Khakhalin grew up in a Soviet “science town” outside Moscow. He remembers playing in the mud as a child just days after the Chernobyl disaster, and being rushed to his father’s research institute so he could be checked for exposure to radioactivity. Through the collapse of the Soviet Union and years of hardship for his family, Arseny followed his own passion for the sciences, and a path that led him to Bard. “When we advocate for science, we advocate for ourselves, but we also genuinely hope that we can be useful to this world,” he says. “So as long as we keep trying to care about others, challenge each other, argue, and disagree, we’ll be doing the right thing.”

Bard alumna and biology major Maia Weisenhaus ’18 conducts the interview; she is currently a research assistant in the Behnia Lab at Columbia University and is continuing her education at the Columbia School of Professional Studies.

Wosner will begin his residency by taking part in the 121st season of the revered Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, which offers performances by some of the best artists in the world for as little as $8.33 a concert. Following an opening night performance with the Dover String Quartet on November 15, Wosner will curate and perform in a two-concert Schubertiade on the weekend of the composer's birthday (January 31). Described as a “Schubertian of unfaltering authority and character” by Gramophone, Wosner conceived these programs as part of a four-recital Schubert series that he is curating for the Bard College Conservatory of Music, where he is on the faculty. Learn more at pscny.org.

As an undergraduate, Cheyenne Young MS ’21 majored in environmental studies and minored in history and biology. “History ties into everything we are doing, so I think it’s really important to learn from the past and then improve,” she says. “You can see what worked in the past and then bring that into a future project.” A second-year in Bard’s master’s program in environmental policy, Cheyenne is currently interning with the International Centre for Environmental Education and Community Development, where she is working on grant proposals for a solar bakery project in Cameroon. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a solar oven, so the first thing I learned was how that works. I’m also learning about everything that goes into planning and implementing a community-based project.” After she graduates from Bard Cheyenne wants to take the skills she’s learning from her internship now, together with her knowledge of working in government agencies, and create a career in international community engagement and development. 

For all the apparent flailing and incompetence of his administration, Trump’s authoritarian aspirations have largely succeeded, says Gessen. “In four years, Trump has created a ‘vertical of vassalage’ that runs from him to Barr to the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, and to the courts. Its extension is Fox News, which has served as the fourth branch of Trump’s government. (Fox News has been notably noncompliant with Trump’s election narrative, starting with its early call of Arizona for Joe Biden, which incited the President’s rage.) Trump is trying to use his vertical of vassalage to thwart the electoral system. If he succeeds, his autocratic breakthrough will be complete. If he fails, Trump will leave—reluctantly, petulantly, perhaps after a litigious delay—but much of the vertical that he has put in place will remain.”

“When I imagine life without Donald Trump, what I’m picturing is something like the final scene of the disaster film: the zombies have been beaten back, the Martians have returned to their planet, the dinosaurs are extinct once again, the floods have receded, the wildfires safely extinguished. The sun is shining, the sky is clear, the birds—those birds that are left—are sweetly singing. The last living humans find one another, and we know what they are thinking even if they don’t speak. They are thinking: it’s over. We’ve survived. Our country has been restored to us. We can breathe again.”

Last week, Bard College hosted an on-campus polling site for the first time, following a lawsuit this fall against the Dutchess County Board of Elections. “It went really well,” says Jonathan Becker, executive vice president and director of the Center for Civic Engagement. “We had 20 people lined up to vote at 6 in the morning. It was particularly gratifying at around 9 a.m. when Bard President Leon Botstein and senior Sadia Saba, who are both plaintiffs in the lawsuit, came and voted together. To see that happen was really heartwarming.”

Bard College announces the appointment of internationally acclaimed interdisciplinary artist and educator Nayland Blake ’82 as the incoming chair of the Bard Studio Arts Program, beginning with the academic year 2021–2022. Blake is the chair of the ICP-Bard Program in Advanced Photographic Studies, a joint masters program run by Bard College and the International Center of Photography in New York City. They succeed Ellen Driscoll, who returns to the studio arts faculty. For more information about Bard’s Studio Arts Program, please visit studioarts.bard.edu.

“Nayland Blake has a long history with Bard and a significant appreciation for what makes the institution unique. At the same time, they bring an important new perspective to imagining the future of Bard's Studio Arts program,” said Bard’s Dean of the College, Deirdre D’Albertis. “What all members of the program have commented on and appreciate already about Nayland is their commitment to students, faculty, and staff in the program all being heard and considered in building toward that future.”

Nayland Blake is an internationally acclaimed interdisciplinary artist and educator whose work is included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Des Moines Art Center, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the University Art Museum, Berkeley. Their writing has been published in Artforum, Shift, Interview, Out, Outlook, and numerous exhibition catalogues. Blake has been on the faculty of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts (Bard MFA) and has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, the California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, Berkeley, Parsons School for Design, New York University, the School of Visual Arts, and Harvard University Department of Visual and Environmental Studies. They are represented by Matthew Marks Gallery in New York. Blake has a BA in sculpture from Bard and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 160-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.
 

Eliza Edge ’20, Stephanie Erwin ’20, and Lindsey Strange ’19 met in the Bard MBA in Sustainability Program. They were captivated by the idea of the circular economy and bonded over finding value in products that society deems “trash.” In particular—as an aunt, a teacher, and a mom—they saw an opportunity to develop a circular model for children's clothing, which can be outgrown so quickly. The team soon brought together their skills in apparel design, data, marketing, and operations to build Cahoots.

After a semester of working on the idea, the team pitched at the Bard MBA Disrupt to Sustain Competition and won. The panel of judges encouraged the three women to pilot the project, and the company took off. Cahoots now operates out of Kingston, New York.

Unlike other retail and rental models, Cahoots focuses on quality over new. Cahoots is the first ever closed-loop children’s clothing membership that artfully repairs and shares clothing to achieve a net positive impact. Through artful repair, they can extend the life of clothes and reduce the community’s need for new clothing production, where the worst environmental and social impact in the fashion supply chain occurs. Cahoots offers subscribing families access to their shared closet and the ability to borrow clothing as needed for up to a year.

The Bard community was thrilled and proud to welcome voters to an on-campus polling site for the first time last week. Why not make campus voting available to every college student? Read commentary in the Times Union from Bard’s Jonathan Becker and Assemblywoman Nily Rozic on removing obstacles to student voting statewide, including proposed legislation that would require polling stations on college campuses with large numbers of voters.

New York Times critic Robin Pogrebin interviews Self ahead of her solo exhibition at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Lower Manhattan, opening November 6. “The colorful works display Ms. Self’s signature combination of painting and collage,” writes Pogrebin. “She does not use glue or adhesive; in homage to her mother’s facility as a seamstress as well as the quilting tradition, Ms. Self integrates swatches of fabric into her paintings by deploying the sewing machine as well as the paintbrush: She draws with stitches. … These paintings speak to what Ms. Self said is the show’s main theme: ‘understanding and naming the institution of American slavery as the origin of Black American identity.’ ‘For me, it’s clarifying what I mean when I refer to Blackness,’ she added. ‘Without the institution of slavery, this country could never have been built to be what it is today. The Black American is almost a mascot for modernism. The Black American represents the modern world, the new world.’” Cotton Mouth is on view through December 19.

Firelight Media has named Bard alumni Adam Khalil ’11 and Zack Khalil ’14 among the 14 Fellows selected for the 2020–22 Firelight Documentary Lab. The 18-month program supporting Black, indigenous, and other filmmakers of color is now in its 11th year. The two brothers will receive support for their film Aanikoobijigan (ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild), of which they write, “Locked away in the sterile storage of museums and archives, our ancestor’s remains struggle to find their way home. This film follows eleven Indigenous repatriation specialists that make up MACPRA (Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation & Repatriation Alliance), fighting to rebury and return ancestors from settler-colonial libraries, archives, and museums.”

“Russet is the color of November in Maine. The color that emerges when all the more spectacular leaves have fallen: the yellow coins of the white birch, the big, hand-shaped crimson leaves of the red maple, the papery pumpkin-hued spears of the beech trees. The oaks are always the last to shed their plumage, and their leaves are the dullest color. They’re the darkest, the closest to brown. But if you pay attention, you’ll see that they’re actually quite pretty. . . . I’ve been thinking on russet lately, this color of oak and Rembrandt and austerity. Its terra-cotta earthiness fits my mood. I’m hunkering down for winter, making paprika-spiked stews and big pots of beans with bacon, always dutifully freezing a portion for later. I’ve been readying myself not for hibernation, but for months of social isolation.”

“The experience of ‘Centers of Somewhere’ is profound and revelatory,” writes Dan Fisher in Chronogram. “On the one hand there is the bucolic beauty and lyricism of the imagery, and on the other, a palpable tension and longing inherent in the words, both spoken and written, used to attempt to convey how the visualized landscapes are seen, felt and experienced by the Indigenous peoples who inhabit them.”

The coronavirus pandemic and new requirements in Republican-led states created voting obstacles for college students this year. Yet youth participation appears to be on the rise: “At Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., students and the school sued in September to get a polling site on campus; the closest place to vote was at a church located down a dirt road in the nearby town of Red Hook. A New York State Supreme Court judge originally denied their petition, citing a Republican member of the Dutchess County Board of Elections who said it was too close to the election to change polling locations. Yet the very next day, the board moved two other polling sites in Red Hook.

“On Friday, the judge reversed her decision and ordered the polling site to be moved to Bard’s main student center.

“‘For the first time on this campus,’” said Sadia Saba, 21, a senior who was a plaintiff in the case, ‘students feel like their voices are being heard in the political process.’”

The new Bard College voting site will be open to all Town of Red Hook District 5 voters on Election Day, Tuesday, November 3, after the Dutchess County Board of Elections withdrew its appeal to the Appellate Court. In addition to confirming the Bard College voting site, a compromise will allow the existing voting site at Church of St. John’s to also operate for the 2020 election.

“Judge Rosa’s order moving the District 5 voting site to Bard is a wonderful victory for student voters and all voters of the district, including those with disabilities,” said Jonathan Becker, executive vice president of Bard. “Our original petition to the Supreme Court asked for a polling site at Bard instead of, or in addition to, the Church, and that is what we have achieved,” he said. “The decision is a blow to student voter suppression, which has taken place in Dutchess County for decades. It is a great lesson for our students about the importance of persistence and the rule of law. Now they will have to learn how to safeguard victories.”

See On-Campus Voting FAQs for Election 2020

“The Election@Bard Team is so proud of the generations of student leaders who have worked to secure this polling place for the Bard community,” said Kathy Gaweda ’21, director of Election@Bard. “We are so excited that on Election Day students and on-campus faculty can vote safely on our very own campus thanks to the efforts off the Andrew Goodman Foundation, the entire Election@Bard Team, the plaintiffs in the case, and our fantastic legal team.”

“The court's decision to move the polling place to Bard College's campus is a move to listen to years of demands from young voters,” said Sadia Saba, a Bard College senior and plaintiff in the lawsuit. “Young voters, especially first-time voters, are historically disadvantaged by the political system, so this polling place is just one step to mitigating voter suppression in this county. Bard students are thrilled to get out the vote, and we are so excited to have our voices heard in this upcoming election!”

The voting site at Bard, in the Bertelsmann Campus Center, will be open to all District 5 voters from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday Nov. 3. New signs are posted at the College’s entrances and along Annandale Rd. welcoming voters and directing them to the Campus Center and parking in North Ravine Rd. parking lot. Voters are expected to follow COVID safety protocols, as they are at all polling sites. Bard Security, campus personnel, and volunteers will be available throughout the day to assist voters and poll workers.

“This court victory and settlement demonstrates that students are a powerful force in our democracy. The opening of a new polling location on the Bard College campus redresses two decades of student voter suppression in Dutchess County. Students and community members can finally rest assured that they have access to a safe, accessible, and ADA-compliant polling location.  A healthy democracy requires participation from all citizens, especially younger voters whose future is most impacted in this election,” explained Yael Bromberg, Esq. Chief Counsel for Voting Rights at The Andrew Goodman Foundation. “As we’re witnessing at polling sites all over New York, people are energized to vote and are willing to endure long longs to ensure that their voice is heard this election season. I want to thank our partners at Bard College — President Leon Botstein, Executive Vice President Jonathan Becker, Vice President Erin Cannan, Andrew Goodman Campus Champion Sarah deVeer, and generations of Bard students and Andrew Goodman Student Ambassadors including but not limited to Sadia Saba, Ava Mazzye, Kathy Gaweda, Eva Quinones, and Jonian Rafti—for their commitment to ensuring every voter in District 5 has fair and equal access to the ballot box.”

“Students nationwide are excited and motivated about exercising their right to vote,“ Becker added. “We’re proud that Bard students have set an example for others that persistence in advancing student voting rights through the legal system, even in the face of widespread voter suppression, can succeed in gaining equal access. We thank our colleagues at the Andrew Goodman Foundation, Venable LLP, Bromberg Law LLC, and Caring Majority Rising for their support and congratulate all of the Bard students who have worked tirelessly on behalf of student voting rights.”About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 160-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.

About The Andrew Goodman Foundation 
The Andrew Goodman Foundation’s mission is to make young voices and votes a powerful force in democracy by training the next generation of leaders, engaging young voters, and challenging restrictive voter suppression laws. The Foundation’s Vote Everywhere program partners with America’s colleges and universities to provide resources, visibility, and mentoring to a national network of student leaders who involve their peers in participatory democracy through long-term voter engagement, public policy, and social justice initiatives. The organization is named after Andrew Goodman, a 20-year old Freedom Summer volunteer, and champion of equality and voting rights who was murdered by the KKK in 1964 while registering Black Americans to vote in Mississippi. For more information visit www.andrewgoodman.org.

“Four days of hearings contained not a single substantive exchange. . . . Barrett surely doesn’t think that her future position on the Supreme Court is a bullshit job; Senate Republicans don’t think that packing the courts with conservatives is bullshit work, either,” writes Gessen. “But, like the people who are rushing her onto the bench, Barrett does seem to believe that the nomination and confirmation process are bullshit—she shares the Trump Republican Party’s contempt for the norms and processes of the government in which she has risen so far, so fast.”

“Martine Syms has earned wide recognition for a practice that combines conceptual grit, humour and social commentary. For her short-form moving image artwork, Kita’s World, Martine introduces viewers into her personal mythology; equal parts biological, psychological and sociological,” writes FAD Magazine. “My world is a strange combination of core material, broken samples, seductive loops, and heavy theory. Kita’s World considers the problem of the psychosomatic slip in the digital era,” says Syms.

Stephanie Blythe is the featured artist on the cover of the November 2020 Diva Issue of Opera News. Blythe is a renowned mezzo-soprano and artistic director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program in the Bard College Conservatory of Music. “For more than 20 years, Stephanie Blythe’s career has been shaped by her ability to sustain her own definition of herself—as a singer, as an educator and as a woman,” writes F. Paul Driscoll.