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“Jon Batiste is not afraid of a jazzy suit,” writes André-Naquian Wheeler for Vogue. Photography by Visiting Artist in Residence Jasmine Clarke ’18 accompanies Wheeler’s article, showing Batiste preparing for his first performance at the White House. Batiste, who performed “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and France’s national anthem “La Marseillaise,” requested that his family be in attendance, and especially his wife, the writer Suleika Jaouad, who has written about her diagnosis of an aggressive form of leukemia. “Seeing Suleika step out for her first public outing in a year after her cancer treatment meant a lot,” Batiste said. Batiste’s 89-year-old grandfather, an activist, also in attendance, commented on the symbolism of Batiste’s inclusion in the state dinner. “Discussing with [him] how the original builders of the White House were enslaved Americans whilst walking into the State Dinner as honored guests was quite a moment,” Batiste said. Clarke’s photography captures Batiste and guests preparing for the event, the musician’s excitement clear from Clarke’s vulnerable candids and striking portraits.

Five Bard College students have been awarded highly competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships by the U.S. Department of State. Gilman Scholars receive up to $5,000, or up to $8,000 if also a recipient of the Gilman Critical Need Language Award, to apply toward their study abroad or internship program costs. The recipients of this cycle’s Gilman scholarships are American undergraduate students attending 452 U.S. colleges and represent 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. These Gilman Scholars will study or intern in 81 countries through October 2023.
 
Written Arts major Havvah Keller ’24, from Montpelier, Vermont, has been awarded a $4,000 Gilman scholarship to study in Valparaíso, Chile, on CEA’s Spanish Language and Latin American Studies program at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, for spring 2023. “Receiving this scholarship means that I will be able to fulfill my dream of studying Spanish in total immersion, living with a local family in an art-filled, exuberant city, and studying Latin American and Chilean poetry and literature, as well as many other subjects such as Latin American history, Indigenous dances and arts of the Mapuche people, and making international friends of all backgrounds. I am eternally grateful to Gilman for helping me plant the seeds which will open many incredible doors for me in my life this spring, and beyond,” said Keller.
 
Philosophy and German Studies joint major Bella Bergen ’24, from Broomfield, Colorado, has been awarded a $5,000 Gilman-DAAD scholarship to study at Bard College Berlin for spring 2023. “The Gilman Scholarship allows me to pursue studying abroad in Berlin, Germany. I have never left the country despite a deep desire to do so, and the Gilman Scholarship helps me finally accomplish this goal. As a joint major in Philosophy and German Studies, my studies and language proficiency will both benefit greatly from my time in Germany. Ich freue mich auf Berlin,” said Bergen.
 
Art History and Visual Culture major Elsa Joiner ’24, from Dunwoody, Georgia, has been awarded a $5,000 Gilman-DAAD scholarship to study at Bard College Berlin for spring 2023. “The Gilman scholarship will enable me to study the subject of my dreams, sound art, in the city of my greatest fantasies, Berlin, Germany. With the scholarship, I plan to explore the role of sound in identity formation and develop my skills as a deep listener, eventually returning to America with the strongest ears in the world and, perhaps, the sharpest mind,” said Joiner.
 
Art History and Visual Culture and Film Studies joint major Sasha Alcocer ’24, from New York, New York, has been awarded a $5,000 Gilman-DAAD scholarship to study at Bard College Berlin for spring 2023. “As a first-generation American, I am incredibly honored and humbled by the support from the Gilman scholarship to pursue this unique opportunity to learn from and connect with like-minded international students and Berlin-based creatives. Having grown up in New York City, I’ve always been interested in artistic communities and cultural history, therefore Berlin could not be a better place to be immersed in for my studies abroad,” said Alcocer.
 
Asian Studies and GIS joint major Kelany De La Cruz ’24, from Bronx, New York, has been awarded a $5,000 Gilman scholarship, in addition to a $5,000 Fund for Education Abroad (FEA) scholarship and a $5,000 Freeman ASIA scholarship, to study in Taipei, Taiwan, on the CET Taiwan program for spring 2023. “To me these scholarships mean encouragement to follow my academic and professional dreams because I would not have been able to study abroad without them,” said De La Cruz.
 
Since the program’s establishment in 2001, over 1,350 U.S. institutions have sent more than 36,000 Gilman Scholars of diverse backgrounds to 155 countries around the globe. The program has successfully broadened U.S. participation in study abroad, while emphasizing countries and regions where fewer Americans traditionally study. 
 
As Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, “People-to-people exchanges bring our world closer together and convey the best of America to the world, especially to its young people.”
 
The late Congressman Gilman, for whom the scholarship is named, served in the House of Representatives for 30 years and chaired the House Foreign Relations Committee. When honored with the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Medal in 2002, he said, “Living and learning in a vastly different environment of another nation not only exposes our students to alternate views but adds an enriching social and cultural experience. It also provides our students with the opportunity to return home with a deeper understanding of their place in the world, encouraging them to be a contributor, rather than a spectator in the international community.”
 
The Gilman Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and is supported in its implementation by the Institute of International Education (IIE). To learn more, visit: gilmanscholarship.org

At the 66th Evening Standard Theatre Awards celebration in London, Daniel Fish’s UK iteration of his Tony Award–winning re-orchestrated revival of Oklahoma! was named Best Musical, and Patrick Vaill ’07 took home the Best Musical Performance Award for his role as Jud Fry in the play. Vaill originated the role 15 years ago as a theater and performance senior in Fish’s 2007 Bard staging, which had been commissioned by the then Director of Bard’s Theater Program JoAnne Akalaitis. When Fish adapted the production for Bard’s 2015 SummerScape season, Vaill was cast again as Jud Fry and stayed in this role as the production went from off-Broadway to Broadway. The only remaining original cast member, Vaill joins a mixed British and American cast for the London production. “To be received by the audience and the city in this way is beyond anybody’s reasonable expectation of life,” Vaill said.

In November 2023, the Museum of Modern Art will present the first exhibition of Professor An-My Lê’s powerful photographs alongside her forays into film, video, textiles, and sculpture. “For 30 years, the photographs of artist An-My Lê have engaged the complex fictions that inform how we justify, represent, and mythologize warfare and other forms of conflict,” reads MoMA’s announcement of the exhibition. “Lê does not take a straightforward photojournalistic approach to depicting combat. Rather, with poetic attention to politics and landscape, she meditates on the meaning of perpetual violence, war’s environmental impact, and the significance of diaspora.” 

An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers will include ever-before-seen embroideries and rarely shown photographs from her Delta and Gabinetto series, which explore the relationship between mass media, gender, labor, and violence. And an immersive installation created especially for the exhibition attests to the artist’s long-standing consideration of the cinematic dimensions of photography and war.

An-My Lê is the Charles Franklin Kellogg and Grace E. Ramsey Kellogg Professor in the Arts at Bard College. She is a recipient the MacArthur Fellowship (2012), New York State Foundation for the Arts grant (1996), and Guggenheim Fellowship (1997). She has been a member of the faculty since 1998. 

This exhibition is organized by Roxana Marcoci, The David Dechman Senior Curator of Photography; with Caitlin Ryan, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography.

After the liberation of Kherson in November 2022, residents could be heard in the streets singing the Ukrainian national anthem. Alongside it, however, another song was being sung. “‘Oi u luzi chervona kalyna,’ or ‘Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow,’ has become a symbol of resistance against Russian aggression,” writes Daniel Ofman for The World. Maria Sonevystky, associate professor of anthropology and music, told Ofman the song “is closely identified with Ukrainian poetry and music,” and that Ukrainian folk songs often employ naturalistic imagery. “Oi u luzi chervona kalyna” is no different, using the “red viburnum” from which the song takes its name as a grounding metaphor for liberation. “From that kind of opening image, you unspool a kind of metaphor, or a story about politics, or the complexity of life, and that’s the case here, too,” said Sonevystky.

On the podcast A Small Voice: Conversations With Photographers, Stephen Shore, Susan Weber Professor in the Arts and director of the Photography Program at Bard, discusses his recently published book, a memoir, Modern Instances: The Craft of Photography, with the host, fellow photographer, Ben Smith. In the interview, Shore talks about the nature of the visual medium of photographs, the flow state of capturing images with a camera, his teaching practice, and the three stages of mastering the discipline of photography, among many other topics. “Photography does something else that words can’t do. It’s not a limitation. It is what the medium is,” he says about the adage: a photograph is worth a thousand words.

This year, various media outlets are selecting works by Bard faculty members for their Best of 2022 lists. Some notable mentions include: 

Assistant Professor of Music Angelica Sanchez’s album Sparkle Beings is named one of the Best Jazz Albums of 2022 by the New York Times.

Professor of Literature Hua Hsu’s memoir Stay True is named one of the 10 Best Books of 2022 by the New York Times Book Review and The Best Books of 2022 by the New Yorker.

Professor of Comparative Literature Joseph Luzzi’s Botticelli’s Secret is named one of the Best Books of 2022 So Far in nonfiction by the New Yorker. 

James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities Walter Russell Mead’s The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People is named among 100 Notable Books of 2022 by the New York Times Book Review. 

Bard Graduate Center's Threads of Power: Lace From the Textilmuseum St. Gallen featured in the New York Times Best Art Books of 2022.
 

Renée Anne Louprette, assistant professor of music, director of the Bard Baroque Ensemble, and College organist, is spending her fall semester sabbatical conducting research supported by a Fulbright US Scholar Award in Brașov, Romania. Hosted by Transylvania University, Louprette’s project focuses on the rich cultural heritage of historic pipe organs in the Transylvanian region and the efforts of local artisans to rescue, preserve, and restore these instruments. She has given recital performances in the urban centers of Brașov and Sibiu, completed audio and video recordings of 18th-century instruments in fortified churches of Mediaș, Saschiz, and Hărman, and of the 1930 Wegenstein organ in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Bucharest. She is also conducting interviews and collecting critical documentation related to notable 18th-century organ builders and recent restorations. She hopes that these efforts will help cast new light on this precious musical heritage unique to Romania as a cross-cultural center of Eastern Europe.

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. 

Lexi Parra majored in human rights and photography at Bard College.

Further Reading

• As gang, police violence rages, a neighborhood tries to connect (Washington Post)
• Venezuelan-American Photographer Lexi Parra ’18 Named Recipient of a 2022 Getty Images Annual Inclusion Grant
• Bard College Student Wins Davis Projects for Peace Prize

Jessie Montgomery, composer in residence at Bard, has been named Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year. “Jessie Montgomery grew up surrounded by jazz and activism. A  Juilliard-trained violinist, she gravitated towards composition in her 20s, and later learned to associate her own Black identity with her music. The resulting body of work has been embraced all around the world for its freshness and energy,” writes Musical America. The 62nd annual Musical America awards will be presented at an awards ceremony in New York City on December 4.

Bard composer in residence Missy Mazzoli (2022) and Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts Joan Tower (2020) were recent recipients of this award.

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.”

The MacArthur Fellowship is a no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential. There are three criteria for selection of MacArthur Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or those in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations. Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential.

MacArthur Fellows receive $800,000 stipends that are bestowed with no conditions; recipients may use the money as they see fit. Nominated anonymously by leaders in their respective fields and considered by an anonymous selection committee, recipients learn of their selection only when they receive a call from the MacArthur Foundation just before the public announcement. Thirteen Bard faculty members have previously been honored with a MacArthur Fellowship.

Sky Hopinka received a BA (2012) from Portland State University and an MFA (2016) from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. He is currently an assistant professor in the Film and Electronic Arts Program at Bard College. His work has been shown at numerous film festivals including Sundance, Park City and Salt Lake City, UT; Courtisane, Ghent; Punto de Vista, Pamplona; Milwaukee Film Festival; Chicago Underground Film Festival; Toronto International Film Festival; and Ann Arbor Film Festival. He has also exhibited work at venues including Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York City; Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. Hopinka is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and a descendent of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians.

Bard alumnus and artist Paul Chan MFA '03 has also 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, making those realities more immediately available to the mind for contemplation and critical reflection," stated the MacArthur Foundation.

Paul Chan received a BFA (1996) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA (2003) from Bard College. His work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at such national and international venues as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Drawing Center, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Schaulager, Basel. He is also the founder and publisher of Badlands Unlimited (established 2010). He received the Bard College Alumni/ae Association’s Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters in 2021.

Further Reading

Bard Alumnus Paul Chan MFA ’03 Named 2022 MacArthur Fellow
More about Sky Hopinka's Award from the MacArthur Foundation

Alex Kitnick, assistant professor of art history and visual culture at Bard, writes about the art of Wolfgang Tillmans for Artforum. The German photographer’s career is the subject of “Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear,” a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. “I think we can describe much of Tillmans’s work as at once utopian and deeply presentist. Liberal in spirit, it makes room for many things,” Kitnick writes. “The utopian seems like the wrong designation for his work. The utopian is always ahead of us. But there is no future here—everything is right now.” 

Sarah Hennies, visiting assistant professor of music, reviewed Codeine’s lost album, Dessau, for NPR. Recorded in June 1992 at Harold Dessau Recording studio in New York City, the album consists mostly of songs that appeared on later albums, some in similar form and others considerably changed. For Hennies, the recordings evoke teenage memories of her band sharing a bill with Codeine at a daylong concert in Louisville, Kentucky in 1993. Listening to the album years later, Hennies writes, “Dessau feels like a ghost.” 

The Chicago-based Floating Museum, an art collective codirected by Bard alumnus Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford ’07, will serve as the artistic team leading the fifth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, or CAB 5. Titled This is a Rehearsal, CAB 5 “will build on and expand the collective’s ongoing work,” writes Matt Hickman for the Architect’s Newspaper. “Floating Museum is organized to work at the intersection of disciplines, where civic participation inspires and shapes our process. It’s both a thrill and challenge to collaborate with the CAB as the artistic team of the 2023 edition,” said the members of Floating Museum. With This is a Rehearsal, the collective hopes to showcase work that demonstrates the ways in which “contemporary environmental, political, and economic issues are shared across national boundaries but are addressed differently around the world through art, architecture, infrastructure, and civic participation.” CAB 5, This is a Rehearsal, is scheduled to open September 2023.

Assistant Professor of Music Angelica Sanchez’s newest acoustic-trio album Sparkle Beings will be released by Sunnyside Records on September 23 and is featured in the New York Times culture section’s fall preview. “This pianist and composer has yet to receive her full due, but at 50 she continues to churn out fabulous acoustic free jazz recordings at an unfettered clip,” writes Giovanni Russonello for the New York Times.

Novelist Stephanie LaCava profiles her friend, multidisciplinary artist, and Bard studio arts alumna Carolee Shneemann ’59 for the Guardian. Shneemann (1939–2019) was among the founding artists of the Judson Dance Theater, alongside the late Trisha Brown and Aileen Passloff (Professor Emerita of Dance at Bard). Shneemann created boundary-breaking, embodied art that included kinetic theater, film, photography, sculpture, and writing, however, she always considered herself a painter. While in her lifetime, gallery representation and critical recognition was elusive, her legacy is receiving more attention. “Postmortem, the accolades come fast for Carolee. They were never so forthcoming when she was still pushing the limits of earthbound energy, inhabiting her body,” writes LaCava. “Body Politics,” the first UK survey of Schneemann’s work, is on view at the Barbican in London until January 8, 2023. 

An exhibition in Catskill features work by the Columbia Collective, a multimedia arts group of female and trans incarcerated artists that was founded by Maggie Hazen, visiting artist in residence at Bard College. Anna Schupack ’22 helped Hazen organize the exhibition to promote the artists in the collective while bringing attention to problems in the juvenile justice system. Sofia Thieu D’Amico CCS ’22 curated the show. The exhibition was funded by Bard’s Margarita Kuchma Project Award, which Schupack and Sarah Soucek ’22 won in July. Talking Back: Artists of the Columbia Collective, runs through September 25 at Foreland Contemporary Arts Campus in Catskill.

The Foreland galleries will host an artist talk and panel discussion for the exhibition on September 14 at 6:30 pm, in person and on Zoom, moderated by D'Amico:
This event is free and open to the public, with Alison Cornyn of the Incorrigibles Project and Mark Loughney, artist of Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, focusing on the intersections of cultural and carceral systems, tapping our prison history archives, the crisis of youth incarceration, and visions of a decarcerated future. They will ask: How do we identify modes of abolition and advocacy, create critical projects, and identify the reaches of our prison industrial complex? Following artist presentations and discussion will be a Q&A session with panelists and Columbia Collective founder Maggie Hazen.

After a nearly decade-long break, the trio that helped spark New York’s early 2000s rock revival is back with Cool It Down, “an expansive album that dares to imagine a bold, fresh future.” The New York Times profiles the band, featuring Bard alum Nick Zinner ’98 on guitar, as they return to the studio and the stage with a new perspective in their 40s, after moving cross-country, starting families, and years pursuing their own musical and artistic projects. The new album tackles serious themes such as climate change and the longing for closeness in the aftermath of the pandemic, but ultimately the band is on a mission to bring a sense of joy and hope to audiences.
 

Sky Hopinka, assistant professor of film and electronic arts, talks with the BBC about his new documentary, Kicking the Clouds, which has been shortlisted for the BBC's LongShots film festival. Hopinka, who is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño people, talks about how a 50-year-old recording of a language lesson between his mother and grandmother sparked the film, which the BBC calls “dreamy and soulful ... a poetic road trip into the history of a family and the disappearing language of a tribe.”

From September 8 to September 19, viewers can vote for their favorite film and choose the winner of the LongShots Audience Award. Dedicated this year to the theme of “Journeys,” LongShots spotlights the best short documentaries from the most interesting emerging filmmakers worldwide, handpicked by some of the most prestigious film festivals around the world.

Visiting Artist in Residence Andy Robert’s first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom, Ti Zwazo Clarendon: You Can Go Home Again; You Just Can’t Stay, opens September 16 at the Michael Werner Gallery in London. His paintings challenge a static understanding of history. Describing his method, Robert says “in questioning how an image comes into the world, and into being, I want to own up, to admit at any point, a painting, an image can change direction and isn’t fixed.” Robert’s work will also be shown at the 58th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh. Established in 1896 by the Carnegie Museum of Art and organized every three to four years, the Carnegie International is the longest-running North American exhibition of international art and presents an overview of how art and artists respond to the critical questions of our time. The 58th Carnegie International, which is titled Is it morning for you yet?, runs from September 24, 2022, to April 2, 2023.