Xaviera Simmons ’05 at the Queens Museum. Photo by Jasmine Clarke ’18 for the New York Times

Crisis Makes a Book Club, A New Exhibition by Xaviera Simmons ’05, Reviewed in the New York Times

“Everybody loves a Toni Morrison, an Audre Lorde, a James Baldwin,” Bard alumna Xaviera Simmons ’05 said to the New York Times. “Books are fabulous, but you can’t stay in a book club or a reading circle or a listening stance and expect things to miraculously change.” Simmons’s new exhibition, Crisis Makes a Book Club, puts the question of the efficacy of reading groups as a means of accomplishing systemic change at the fore.

Nayreth holds her newborn daughter, Salomé, in her home in La Vega. Photo by Lexi Parra ’18

Bard Alumna Lexi Parra ’18 for the Washington Post: As Gang, Police Violence Rages, a Caracas Neighborhood Tries to Connect

On January 7, 2021, Venezuela’s Special Action Forces raided the La Vega neighborhood of Caracas, leaving 23 people dead in what the community calls the “La Vega massacre.” The special police unit has been accused of targeting working-class neighborhoods, criminalizing young men for where they live as it attempts to root out gang activity. As part of an ongoing project supported by the Pulitzer Center and a Getty Images Inclusion Grant, Bard alumna Lexi Parra ’18 gets to know the women of La Vega who are maintaining their community and pushing back against state and gang violence. 

Mujtaba Naqib ’24 and teammates. Photo courtesy Bard Athletics

Mujtaba Naqib ’24 On His Journey from Kabul to Annandale

For Mujtaba Naqib ’24, it all started in the Cruger entryway one winter night. His first night at Bard, he couldn’t sleep. “I just decided to go outside,” Naqib said. “I saw some boys kicking a soccer ball around, and I just leaned up against the wall and was watching them.” Five Bard students had set up two trash cans as goals. “We saw this guy was watching us for a while so we just asked him if he wanted to play,” said Reed Campbell ’25. “And he immediately started cooking us.” Within a few months, Naqib would join them on the Bard men’s soccer team. In a wide-ranging profile by Bard Athletics, Naqib, known as “Muji” to his teammates, talks openly about his transition to the United States and Bard after the fall of Kabul, his connection with Coach TJ Kostecky, and his summer internship with Pfizer, as well as what it means to play with “heart.”

Paul Chan MFA ’03. Photo courtesy MacArthur Foundation

Bard Alumnus Paul Chan MFA ’03 Named 2022 MacArthur Fellow

Artist, publisher, and Bard College alumnus Paul Chan MFA ’03 has been named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow. "He draws on a wealth of cultural touchstones—from classical philosophy to modern literature, critical theory, and hip-hop culture—to produce works that respond to our current political and social realities,” the MacArthur Foundation says, “making those realities more immediately available to the mind for contemplation and critical reflection.” Chan’s work, which “[strives] to express humanity’s complexities and contradictions through an artistic practice that moves across media,” has been exhibited in the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, the Guggenheim Museum, and others. Chan received the Bard College Alumni/ae Association’s Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters in 2021. 

Sky Hopinka, Artist and Filmmaker, 2022 MacArthur Fellow, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Bard Professor Sky Hopinka Named 2022 MacArthur Fellow

Bard College Assistant Professor of Film and Electronic Arts Sky Hopinka has been named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow. Hopinka, a filmmaker, video artist, and photographer, is one of this year’s 25 recipients of the prestigious “genius grant” awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In a statement about his work, the MacArthur Foundation says, “Hopinka layers imagery, sound, and text to create an innovative cinematic language. His short and feature-length films traverse both Indigenous histories and contemporary experiences . . . Hopinka is creating a body of work that not only represents the lives of Indigenous peoples but incorporates their worldviews into the strategies of representation itself.”

Rendering of new performing arts studio building for the Fisher Center at Bard, designed by Maya Lin in partnership with architects Bialosky and Partners and theater and acoustic consultants Charcoalblue. Photo credit: Maya Lin Studio with Bialosky New York  |  Courtesy of Maya Lin Studio © 2022 

Bard College Selects Artist and Architect Maya Lin to Design New Performing Arts Studio Building for Fisher Center at Bard

Bard College is pleased to announce that Maya Lin, renowned worldwide for her art, architecture, landscapes, and memorials, has been chosen to design a new performing arts studio building for the Fisher Center at Bard, in partnership with architects Bialosky and Partners and theater and acoustic consultants Charcoalblue. Situated in meadows to the west of the Fisher Center and overlooking woodlands and the Catskill mountains, the building will provide a home for Fisher Center LAB, the center’s acclaimed residency and commissioning program for professional artists. It will also house rehearsal and teaching facilities for Bard’s undergraduate programs in Dance and in Theater and Performance.