Sandra Terdjman Named 2026-27 Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism

Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (October 28, 2026) — The Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) and Bard College’s Human Rights Project announce that curator and cultural leader Sandra Terdjman has been named the 2026-27 Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism. Established in 2014, the initiative brings leading scholars, activists, and artists into an endowed faculty position to teach and conduct research within the CCS Bard graduate program and the undergraduate Human Rights Program. The position represents Bard College and the Keith Haring Foundation’s shared longstanding commitment to advancing scholarship and creative practices at the intersection of art and social justice.

Based in France, Sandra Terdjman is a curator whose research-driven work emphasizes collaboration and artist-led social transformation across the globe. As the co-founder of KADIST, a nonprofit organization that collects and exhibits the work of contemporary artists from more than 100 countries across five continents, and AFIELD, an international network supporting artist-led initiatives through grantmaking as well as peer-to-peer and public programming. Terdjman has created an expansive and inclusive arts ecosystem that sustains networks of exchange, solidarity, and collective action across geographic and institutional boundaries.

“Sandra’s long-standing record of leading groundbreaking nonprofit cultural platforms demonstrates how institution building can be a mode of activism in its own right. Through her impressive work with a transnational perspective, she has continued to shape the role of the arts,” said Mariano López Seoane, Director of the Graduate Program and ISLAA Fellow in Latin American Art at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. “Her inclusive support of artists and advancement of the contemporary art landscape deeply aligns with the mission of CCS Bard and the Keith Haring Chair initiative to advance new perspectives in contemporary art.”

“Sandra’s current work on artist-led transitional justice perfectly reflects the ethos of the Haring Chair,” said Thomas Keenan, Director of Bard’s Human Rights Project. “She is exploring the intersection of human rights and the arts at a profound level. She is not interested in art-with-a-conscience or in making justice more attractive; she is asking what happens when artists actively intervene, as artists, in situations of injustice in order to transform them. We are grateful to Sandra for inviting our students into this research process with her."

“The Keith Haring Foundation is delighted by Sandra Terdjman’s appointment as the 2026–27 Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism at CCS. Her record of championing artists and artist-led community initiatives reflects the Foundation’s history and mission. She joins a distinguished group of past Chairs who, since the position’s founding in 2014, have advanced Keith Haring’s firmly held belief that ‘the contemporary artist has a responsibility to [oppose] the dehumanization of our culture,’” said Simon Castets, Executive Director of the Keith Haring Foundation.

About Sandra Terdjman
Sandra Terdjman has spent two decades building platforms where artists, thinkers, and communities meet across borders and disciplines. She supports the role of arts and culture in society through organizations she co-founded: KADIST, one of the largest collections and platforms for contemporary art where she now serves as Vice President; Council that supported multidisciplinary projects at the crossroads of art, science, and civil society (from 2013 until 2023); and AFIELD, an international network supporting artists and cultural practitioners whose social initiatives are creating long-term, tangible change within their communities, which she chairs. Her recent curatorial work includes a 2025 public forum on “transitional justice” and “systems change” by artists at KANAL Centre Pompidou in Brussels, and Résidence Tallard, a new residency for ideas in Paris. She is co-editor of Autonomous Agents: Artists on Human–Machine Interaction (Pacific, 2026, with Simon Castets, Taeyoon Choi, and Joseph del Pesco) and of the forthcoming Artist-Led Transitional Justice (AFIELD and Mousse Publishing, 2027, with Taeyoon Choi and Chantal Wong). She is recognized for her long-term, research-driven support for artists and for imagining frameworks that are expansive, inclusive, and generative of artist-led social transformation. She has collaborated with institutions worldwide, including the Musée de l’Homme (Paris), Centre Pompidou (Paris), KANAL (Brussels), Bergen Assembly (Norway), Garage (Moscow), Ashkal Alwan (Beirut) and documenta fifteen (Kassel). Sandra received the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award in 2019, and the Art Basel Visionary Award in 2025.

About The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College
The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is the leading institution dedicated to curatorial studies, a field exploring the conditions that inform contemporary exhibition-making and artistic practice. Through its Graduate Program, Library and Archives, and the Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard serves as an incubator for interdisciplinary practices, advances new and underrepresented perspectives in contemporary art, and cultivates a student body from diverse backgrounds in a broad effort to transform the curatorial field. CCS Bard’s dynamic and multifaceted program includes exhibitions, symposia, publications, and public events, which explore the critical potential of the practice of exhibition-making.

About the Human Rights Project
The Human Rights Project, founded at Bard in 1999, introduced the first freestanding interdisciplinary undergraduate degree program in Human Rights in the United States. Through teaching, research, and public programs, the Project is committed to exploring the too often neglected cultural, aesthetic, and representational dimensions of human rights discourse. Since 2009, the Human Rights Project has collaborated with CCS Bard on the development of seminars, workshops, research projects, and symposia aimed at exploring the intersections between human rights and the arts. While academic in nature, this research and teaching 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 during his life. 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 communities impacted by systemic inequity. In 1989, Haring established a foundation to ensure that his philanthropic and artistic 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 HIV/AIDS education, prevention, and care. The Foundation additionally maintains a collection of Haring’s art and archives and supports exhibitions, programming, conservation projects, and publications that serve to contextualize and illuminate the artist’s work and philosophy. www.haring.com.

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This event was last updated on 10-30-2026

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