All Bard News by Date
December 2018
12-12-2018
The New York Times named Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets at Bard the best dance production of 2018, calling it “the most sublime new work of dance theater this year.”
12-11-2018
Bard SummerScape's production of Oklahoma!, widely acclaimed as one of the year's best, heads to the Circle in the Square Theatre following a highly touted run at St. Ann’s Warehouse.
12-11-2018
The Conditions of Being Art: Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co. (1983-2004) at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College is lauded as one of the best exhibitions of the year.
12-11-2018
An intimately staged and darkly revisionist revival of Oklahoma! that enjoyed a critically acclaimed and sold-out Off Broadway run will transfer to Broadway this season.
The production, which originated in 2015 at Bard College’s SummerScape festival and then was staged this fall at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, will begin previews on March 19 and open on April 7 at Circle in the Square, which is the only theater-in-the-round on Broadway. Read the full story in the New York Times.
Bard's Oklahoma! has been lauded as one of the top theater productions of 2018. Time magazine calls Oklahoma! the best play of the year—a “provocative” new take on the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. The production also made best theater lists from the New York Times and Vulture. Time writes, “The painfully relevant production lands at the exact right moment in a country where demonization of immigrants and outsiders is on the rise and mass shootings are an everyday occurrence.”
The production, which originated in 2015 at Bard College’s SummerScape festival and then was staged this fall at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, will begin previews on March 19 and open on April 7 at Circle in the Square, which is the only theater-in-the-round on Broadway. Read the full story in the New York Times.
Bard's Oklahoma! has been lauded as one of the top theater productions of 2018. Time magazine calls Oklahoma! the best play of the year—a “provocative” new take on the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. The production also made best theater lists from the New York Times and Vulture. Time writes, “The painfully relevant production lands at the exact right moment in a country where demonization of immigrants and outsiders is on the rise and mass shootings are an everyday occurrence.”
12-11-2018
In this interview, Distinguished Professor of Literature Nuruddin Farah discusses his new novel about a Somali exile living in Norway whose son turns to Islamic extremism.
12-10-2018
Artforum’s Year in Review highlights The Conditions of Being Art: Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co. (1983–2004) at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College. Art in America publishes a review and an editor’s letter lauding the exhibition. Bookforum lists the exhibition catalogue among the best art books of the season.
Curated by Jeannine Tang, Ann E. Butler, and Lia Gangitano, The Conditions of Being Art is the first exhibition in the United States to examine the shared histories, art, and programming activities of Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co., Colin de Land Fine Art. The exhibition features works of art shown at or associated with these New York galleries by over 40 artists. The show opened in June and closes this Friday, December 14.
David Rimanelli writes on the Bard exhibition in Artforum’s Year in Review issue, listing it among the Best of 2018. Hearn and de Land were “explorers,” he observes, not professionals, “cosmonauts of the art world and the world of art.” Their influential gallery practices were more focused on bringing important artists to light rather than making a commercial success. Rimanelli concludes, “The two of them were both too much of their time and too singular in themselves for us to ever expect to see their likes again.” View selections from Artforum here (PDF).
In the Artforum Best of 2018 Artists’ Artists section, Alex Carver chooses The Conditions of Being Art for his pick of the year. “In staging this inspiring show,” he observes, “the curators ... have presented a poetic constellation of concept-rich artworks.”
“The shifting sands of the 1980s and ’90s thus make ‘The Conditions of Being Art’ ... an intriguing object of study,” writes Domenick Ammirati in his review for the December issue of Art in America, “with the milieux of the Hearn/de Land scenes unfolding at a peculiar, significant moment of transition in perceptions of the past, present, and future.... The curators, Jeannine Tang, Ann E. Butler, and Lia Gangitano, have let the diversity of works in their subjects’ histories live, even as they tailor the installation to present clear points.”
In the editor’s letter for this month’s Art in America, William S. Smith notes that Hearn’s and de Land’s galleries exhibited work that was “prescient in its critique of American power.”
Bookforum also listed the exhibition catalogue for The Conditions of Being Art among the most outstanding art books of the season in a section called Artful Volumes, in which Bookforum contributors selected their favorite works.
Curated by Jeannine Tang, Ann E. Butler, and Lia Gangitano, The Conditions of Being Art is the first exhibition in the United States to examine the shared histories, art, and programming activities of Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co., Colin de Land Fine Art. The exhibition features works of art shown at or associated with these New York galleries by over 40 artists. The show opened in June and closes this Friday, December 14.
David Rimanelli writes on the Bard exhibition in Artforum’s Year in Review issue, listing it among the Best of 2018. Hearn and de Land were “explorers,” he observes, not professionals, “cosmonauts of the art world and the world of art.” Their influential gallery practices were more focused on bringing important artists to light rather than making a commercial success. Rimanelli concludes, “The two of them were both too much of their time and too singular in themselves for us to ever expect to see their likes again.” View selections from Artforum here (PDF).
In the Artforum Best of 2018 Artists’ Artists section, Alex Carver chooses The Conditions of Being Art for his pick of the year. “In staging this inspiring show,” he observes, “the curators ... have presented a poetic constellation of concept-rich artworks.”
“The shifting sands of the 1980s and ’90s thus make ‘The Conditions of Being Art’ ... an intriguing object of study,” writes Domenick Ammirati in his review for the December issue of Art in America, “with the milieux of the Hearn/de Land scenes unfolding at a peculiar, significant moment of transition in perceptions of the past, present, and future.... The curators, Jeannine Tang, Ann E. Butler, and Lia Gangitano, have let the diversity of works in their subjects’ histories live, even as they tailor the installation to present clear points.”
In the editor’s letter for this month’s Art in America, William S. Smith notes that Hearn’s and de Land’s galleries exhibited work that was “prescient in its critique of American power.”
Bookforum also listed the exhibition catalogue for The Conditions of Being Art among the most outstanding art books of the season in a section called Artful Volumes, in which Bookforum contributors selected their favorite works.
12-04-2018
These days—despite longstanding clichés about art and excess—the creative impulse can actually be more closely tied to asceticism, Mason writes.
12-04-2018
Gaines was awarded the grant for his book Future Ruins: The Art of Abstractive Democracy, which examines the unmooring of representation in early 21st-century America.
12-04-2018
Inspired by bodybuilders posing, the video features “a set of four dancers flexing and strutting together” along the garden’s colonnade.
12-02-2018
New Annandale House, the two-story multipurpose media studio that houses the Center for Experimental Humanities at Bard College, has won a 2018 New York Design Gold Award from DRIVENxDESIGN, which represents 75,000 members, 5,000 brands, and 1,500 studios, and celebrates the role of design in enriching the human experience.
Located at the intersection of Woods Avenue and Annandale Road near the center of Bard’s main campus, New Annandale House is a 945-square-foot building made of four 40-by-8-foot Corten steel shipping containers, originally manufactured in Hong Kong in 2003. The building, installed in 2017, was designed by Maziar Behrooz of MB Architecture in Manhattan and fabricated by SnapSpace Solutions in Brewer, Maine. The ends of the containers were transformed into 8-by-8-foot glass walls. The main floor is a double-height space with an adjoining 20-by-8-foot space. Designed with versatility and flow in mind, the main classroom becomes an indoor/outdoor space with a 16-foot garage door opening onto an adjacent outdoor gathering space on the south side.
“This beautiful building has been an inspirational home for the work we do at the Center for Experimental Humanities,” says Maria Sachiko Cecire, assistant professor of literature and coordinator of experimental humanities at Bard. “It echoes our own values in its flexibility, foundations in social consciousness, and balance of the classic and cutting-edge. We have loved experimenting with its many possibilities as we’ve used it for digital workshops, interdisciplinary student presentations, VR demos, musical performances, art installations, miniconferences, a space for public-facing local history research, and more.”
An advisory panel praised New Annandale House as an exemplary project in DRIVENxDESIGN’s Public and Institutional category, which celebrates the process of planning, designing, and constructing form and space that reflect functional, technical, social, and aesthetic considerations.
Center for Experimental Humanities at Bard College
How does technology mediate what it means to be human? The Experimental Humanities (EH) concentration is Bard’s liberal arts–driven answer to the digital humanities. Digital humanities is an evolving field that typically employs digital tools and research methods to investigate humanities subjects. In addition, EH engages with media and technology forms from across historical periods, combining experimental research methods with critical thinking about how such forms function as a part of cultural, social, and political inquiry. We encourage the reconsideration of older media in light of today’s technologies and look ahead to the developments on the horizon. The Center for Experimental Humanities at New Annandale House hosts regular EH events, workshops, and meetings for EH projects and courses. Members of the Bard community can also apply to reserve the downstairs space for other activities, especially those that share EH’s interests in how technology and media intersect with the arts, humanities, and culture. eh.bard.edu
For more information: drivenxdesign.com/NYC18/project.asp?ID=17813
Located at the intersection of Woods Avenue and Annandale Road near the center of Bard’s main campus, New Annandale House is a 945-square-foot building made of four 40-by-8-foot Corten steel shipping containers, originally manufactured in Hong Kong in 2003. The building, installed in 2017, was designed by Maziar Behrooz of MB Architecture in Manhattan and fabricated by SnapSpace Solutions in Brewer, Maine. The ends of the containers were transformed into 8-by-8-foot glass walls. The main floor is a double-height space with an adjoining 20-by-8-foot space. Designed with versatility and flow in mind, the main classroom becomes an indoor/outdoor space with a 16-foot garage door opening onto an adjacent outdoor gathering space on the south side.
“This beautiful building has been an inspirational home for the work we do at the Center for Experimental Humanities,” says Maria Sachiko Cecire, assistant professor of literature and coordinator of experimental humanities at Bard. “It echoes our own values in its flexibility, foundations in social consciousness, and balance of the classic and cutting-edge. We have loved experimenting with its many possibilities as we’ve used it for digital workshops, interdisciplinary student presentations, VR demos, musical performances, art installations, miniconferences, a space for public-facing local history research, and more.”
An advisory panel praised New Annandale House as an exemplary project in DRIVENxDESIGN’s Public and Institutional category, which celebrates the process of planning, designing, and constructing form and space that reflect functional, technical, social, and aesthetic considerations.
Center for Experimental Humanities at Bard College
How does technology mediate what it means to be human? The Experimental Humanities (EH) concentration is Bard’s liberal arts–driven answer to the digital humanities. Digital humanities is an evolving field that typically employs digital tools and research methods to investigate humanities subjects. In addition, EH engages with media and technology forms from across historical periods, combining experimental research methods with critical thinking about how such forms function as a part of cultural, social, and political inquiry. We encourage the reconsideration of older media in light of today’s technologies and look ahead to the developments on the horizon. The Center for Experimental Humanities at New Annandale House hosts regular EH events, workshops, and meetings for EH projects and courses. Members of the Bard community can also apply to reserve the downstairs space for other activities, especially those that share EH’s interests in how technology and media intersect with the arts, humanities, and culture. eh.bard.edu
For more information: drivenxdesign.com/NYC18/project.asp?ID=17813
November 2018
11-30-2018
New Annandale House, the two-story multipurpose media studio that houses the Bard College Center for Experimental Humanities, has won a New York Design Gold Award from DRIVENxDESIGN.
11-22-2018
One of New York City’s most exciting young theater companies, New Saloon, founded by three Bard alumni, returns to Bard with their kaleidoscopic adaptation of Uncle Vanya.
11-21-2018
The Bard College Conservatory Orchestra performs at the Fisher Center on Saturday, December 1, at 8:00 p.m. with guest conductor Xian Zhang.
11-18-2018
Interdisciplinary artist Alisha Wormsley MFA ‘19, whose work is inspired by the collective memory of African American culture, will receive a $15,000 prize with the award.
11-17-2018
Eva LeWitt ‘07 talks about studying sculpture with Judy Pfaff at Bard, founding an artists’ residency in Italy, and how art is in her DNA.
11-17-2018
CCS Bard’s Tom Eccles and Luma Foundation’s Maja Hoffmann pen the introduction for the book accompanying the exhibition presented at the Parc des Ateliers, Luma Arles and at CCS Bard.
11-15-2018
Josephine Sacabo’s solo exhibit in New Orleans, Tagged, responds to the everyday misogyny of graffiti in the streets.
11-12-2018
Award-winning actress and filmmaker Isabella Rossellini talks about her new theatrical lecture on the science of animal minds. She will perform "Link Link Circus" on November 17 at 7:30 p.m.
11-10-2018
TŌN's free concert series will offer two performances led by associate conductor James Bagwell and one led by resident conductor Zachary Schwartzman during the holiday season.
11-09-2018
Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts, talks with the New York Times about her more than 50-year career as a composer and educator, and the milestone of turning 80 this fall.
11-09-2018
Matalon's hire fulfills the museum’s commitment to furthering community outreach through exhibitions and maintaining a feminist perspective in its curatorial practice.
11-09-2018
When the composer Joan Tower went to Bennington College to study music, her teachers told her she needed to compose something.
“So I wrote a piece,” she recalled recently, laughing, “and it was a disaster from beginning to end. I said, ‘I know I can do better than that.’ So I did that for the next 40 years, trying to create a piece that wasn’t a disaster.”
Read the full article from the New York Times
“So I wrote a piece,” she recalled recently, laughing, “and it was a disaster from beginning to end. I said, ‘I know I can do better than that.’ So I did that for the next 40 years, trying to create a piece that wasn’t a disaster.”
Read the full article from the New York Times
11-09-2018
As part of BGC's Agents of Faith exhibition, Adrián Viajero Román built an altar for those who have died crossing the Mexican border or were victims of Hurricane Maria.
October 2018
10-31-2018
“Creative Process in Dialogue: Art and the Public Today” will be held at BHSEC Manhattan on October 31, followed by a lunch hour talk at Bard at Brooklyn Public Library on November 1.
10-30-2018
Poet Elizabeth Alexander and Painter Amy Sherald in Conversation
Creative Process in Dialogue: Art and the Public Today with Elizabeth Alexander and Amy SheraldBard High School Early College Manhattan, October 31 at 6:30 p.m.
Lunch Hour Talk with Amy Sherald and Thelma Golden
Bard at Brooklyn Public Library, November 1 at 12:45 p.m.
Watch Live Starting at 6:30 Eastern Time on October 31:
Bard High School Early College Manhattan (BHSEC) hosts a discussion with poet Elizabeth Alexander and painter Amy Sherald about their creative processes and their commitments to the humanities. This public conversation seeks to diversify perspectives on the arts disciplines and to offer models for collective and inclusive community dialogues. The event is free and open to the public. It takes place on Wednesday, October 31, from 6:30pm to 8:00pm at BHSEC on 525 East Houston Street in New York City. Preregistration is required. Register here. A live webcast of the event will also be available.
Poet and president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Elizabeth Alexander and painter Amy Sherald have both produced works critical to marking and reflecting on recent periods of political and social change in the United States. Alexander wrote and recited the poem “Praise Song for Our Day” to usher forward the presidency of the first black American president, Barack Obama, and Sherald painted the official portrait of the first lady, Michelle Obama, one of two works to mark the end of the Obama Presidency. Moderators BHSEC literature professor Brittney Edmonds and Bard Associate Professor of History Christian Crouch will ask Alexander and Sherald four contextualizing questions around the process of patronage and collecting in the arts, artistic practice and black feminism, how their work speaks across artistic media, and how their work engages with the image of body.
“This event, the first of a series, is inspired by an ongoing dialogue within Bard’s Africana Studies Program surrounding race and diversity and social engagement in the visual and performative arts. We hope to create the opportunity for public dialogue around creative artistic practice and the humanities, and how artists engage their audience and broader community,” says Director of Africana Studies at Bard and Assistant Professor of Africana and Historical Studies Drew Thompson.
This event is cosponsored by Humanities New York, Bard Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard Center for Civic Engagement, Bard Undergraduate Program in Africana Studies, Bard High School Early College, and Bard American Studies Program.
On Thursday, November 1, from 12:45pm to 2:00pm, Amy Sherald will be in conversation with curator Thelma Golden at Bard at Brooklyn Public Library (BPL), the first New York City Microcollege. In this inaugural Bard at BPL Lunch Hour Talk, Golden and Sherald discuss an understated aspect of the creative process: the relationship between curator and artist. Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, has presided over exhibitions in which painter Amy Sherald’s works were included and was involved in the selection of Sherald to paint the portrait of former first lady Michelle Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. The event is free and open to the public. It takes place at BPL Central Library, Dweck Center, 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn. Preregistration is required. Register here.
10-23-2018
Castello di Rivoli Director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev has been named the winner of the 2019 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence, which carries a prize of $25,000.
10-23-2018
Art icon and powerhouse DJ Huxtable talks about process, representation, internet culture, and the future of nightlife in New York City.
10-17-2018
Pioneering jazz composer and pianist Vijay Iyer and Nigerian American writer, photographer, and Bard faculty member Teju Cole present a live collaboration, Blind Spot, on October 26.
10-09-2018
In tracing the remarkable work of gallerists Pat Hearn and Colin de Land, the exhibition presents the gallery as a crucial site for the history of art.
10-09-2018
Times theater critics Ben Brantley and Jesse Green review Daniel Fish’s “newly energized, gloriously conflicted” revamp of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic.
10-09-2018
Bard MFA Music/Sound faculty member Jace Clayton will present his latest video, The Jacob Lawrence of Jacob Lawrence, at Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center on October 19.
10-05-2018
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has named artist Wu Tsang, cochair of Bard MFA’s Film/Video Program, a recipient of a 2018 MacArthur Fellowship.
10-02-2018
“The exhibition’s total picture is one of insatiable intellectual and aesthetic curiosity and uncompromising integrity.”
10-02-2018
The artist, whose work focuses on “the intervention of human technology into nature, … aims in the current show for an immersive experience evocative of virtual reality.”
10-02-2018
Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place examines the impetus behind votives, ultimately arguing that it exceeds the confines of any single faith, even of religion itself.
10-02-2018
Gallery without Walls: Ex Voto NYC is a series of walking tours, installations, and workshops that celebrate the rich history of New York City and explore votive practice across cultures.
10-02-2018
OBIE award–winning interactive media artist Andrew Schneider and his collaborators perform NERVOUS/SYSTEM, a Live Arts Bard commission, at the Fisher Center October 12–14.
10-02-2018
Exhibitions of Sacabo’s Tagged series of photogravure prints open in Atlanta and New Orleans later this month.
September 2018
09-29-2018
By James Rodewald ’82
In the Bardian
If, during your time in Annandale, you lived in a dorm full of extremely creative people (or napped in one of the art studios) you may have had the good fortune to wake up to great Bard art. If not, you now have your chance. All you have to do is check in to the recently opened Freehand New York hotel, where all 395 guest rooms have murals on the walls—a few even have them on their ceilings—hand-painted by Bard students and alumni/ae. You’ll also see one of those murals in the ground-floor lobby, surrounded by beautifully restored original millwork. That conversation, between the building’s history and young artists’ creativity, continues throughout the property.
The newly renovated building, on the corner of 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, began life in 1929 as the George Washington Hotel. Over the years it has been home to writers, musicians, and artists as diverse as W. H. Auden, Dee Dee Ramone, and Keith Haring, who lived in the building when it served as a School of Visual Arts residence hall. Andrew Zobler, a member of the Fisher Center advisory board and CEO and founder of Sydell Group, which also owns Freehand hotels in Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles, wanted to cultivate an ongoing artistic community in New York City, so he partnered with the Fisher Center, the Bard MFA Program, and the Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs to commission original artworks for the public spaces and guest rooms.
“The challenge in New York, given the size of the project, was to make sure it remained true to the Bohemian spirit of Freehand,” says Zobler. “I think using the building as a blank canvas for young artists was the perfect way to give life to that spirit.”
The first Freehand, which opened in an art deco building in Miami in 2012, sought to capture the ethos of a hostel, where social interactions are more frequent and less predictable, while still providing a high-quality hospitality experience. “The culture of the hostel remains core to the Freehand in New York,” says Zobler. “The idea is to create places for people to mix and get to know each other and exchange ideas. Art and performance help stimulate that interaction.”
A panel made up of the hotel’s designers, Roman and Williams, and representatives of Freehand New York and Bard chose the artists after an extensive application process and blind portfolio review. The hotel’s guest room mural painters were Marty Abbe-Schneider ’14, Hannah Berger ’16, Kira Buckel ’16, Lukas Geronimas MFA ’11, Martin Katzoff ’19, Elizabeth Marshall MFA ’14, Isabelle Sigrid Marshall ’18, Louise Smith ’13, Scott Vanderveen ’16, and Rowan Willigan ’15. Leslie Fry MFA ’93, created sculptures for the Mezzanine Gallery, Lia Lowenthal MFA ’14 made framed tile panels as well as a piano installation, Vanderveen also painted the colorful gym mural and a mural on the ground floor, while Katzoff did a mural leading to the bar from the elevator on the roof. Several of those artists, along with Jordan Segal ’14 and Sarah Bastacky ’19, have framed pieces scattered throughout the hotel. Photographer Isaac Diggs MFA ’03 documented the project, which was managed by Zia Affronti Morter ’12 and Sean Leo ’14.
Berger painted murals in some 45 rooms, an experience that has changed her attitude toward her own work. “More than anything, this project has taught me to step away and let go of my work after it’s complete,” she says. “Doing so many murals in such quick succession forbids attachment to any one of them. I hope to carry this impact into my personal studio practice.”
The artists had to deal with logistical issues imposed by the spaces—furniture placement, windows, corners—but there were few specific guidelines for the artwork itself (no neon colors, not too much red, murals should have a gestural quality). “Constraints can be helpful,” says Berger. “I imposed more constraints upon myself—limiting the palette to one color, using one brush size—than anyone from the design team at Freehand did.”
A visitor might experience a slight shock upon walking into a crisp, clean room and seeing unmistakably handmade markings on the walls. No matter how lovely the images, all those years of being told to keep that crayon on the coloring book makes its own mark. For Berger, however, that didn’t present a problem. “I’ve definitely drawn, painted, and stuck wads of gum onto plenty of walls and ceilings,” Berger admits. “But holding a brush up to a pristine hotel room wall still felt like an unfamiliar thing to do. With all the other construction going on throughout the hotel, however, it seemed less invasive and strange.”
Handing over the keys, not to mention the bare walls, to a group of young artists shows a level of trust that perfectly reflects the Freehand culture. There’s a refreshing optimism to embracing the unknown, giving up control, and encouraging artistic freedom. Such an attitude goes hand in hand with trusting that people who are attracted to a place that seeks to go beyond the ordinary will want to interact with others who feel similarly.
Each hotel has its own identity, and they all have a mix of room styles, from bunks to sprawling penthouse suites. They also share variety in their eating and drinking establishments. Freehand New York includes two restaurants from the king of the West Village, Gabriel Stulman; a rooftop bar that is an outpost of the phenomenal Broken Shaker, whose Miami location has made the World’s 50 Best Bars list four years running; the third location of Smile to Go from the owners of popular Bond Street café the Smile; and the George Washington Bar (also run by Stulman), in the former library room, where another remarkable piece of art can be seen: a portrait of our first president that was commissioned for the original hotel and has somehow survived the Great Depression, bankruptcy, the wounding and capture by F.B.I. agents of a fugitive on the most-wanted list, a drug raid in the early ’80s, and even the threat of demolition (averted with the help of a local historical society). Zobler says they considered introducing new art into that bar, but decided against it. “We wanted one space where you would really connect with the history of the building without modification. I think that room makes you feel rooted, and that is a good thing.”
Iconic architecture from New York City’s history—with significant and playful modification—is on display on the same floor as the bar. Fry installed plaster sculptures in arched niches in the Mezzanine Gallery. “I meld forms from architecture, human anatomy, and plants,” Fry explains. Each sculpture is around four feet tall. In one, a classical male bust with a condensed cityscape atop his head is supported on a column covered in a whir of modes of urban transport, from bikes to VW bugs to high heels. In another, a large plant grows out of a heart cradled in human hands and is topped by that icon of the New York City skyline the Chrysler Building. “Some of the other architectural references are the Empire State Building, Guggenheim Museum, Washington Square Arch, and the hotel building itself,” says Fry. “The sculptures depict transformation, growth, and energy.” Much like the pulsating city itself, not to mention the kinds of guests the hotel will attract.
One other ingredient in the hotel’s cultural stew is the Freehand Fellowship. Zobler’s Sydell Group engaged Live Arts Bard—the Fisher Center’s residency and commissioning program—and the Bard MFA Program to create an ongoing fellowship for multidisciplinary artists in residence at the hotel. The residencies offer alumni/ae of the MFA program and affiliated artists of Live Arts Bard a paid, yearlong fellowship; three months’ use of the hotel’s 520-square-foot rooftop studio; accommodations at the hotel; and opportunities to curate public programs and exhibitions in the hotel’s public spaces. Four fellowships will be awarded each year.
Abraham McNally ’97 MFA ’03, one of the first fellows, incorporates into his work fabric from worn-out clothes that belonged to his three young children and poplar from trees he cut with his father on the family Christmas-tree farm in northern Vermont. “Both the wood and fabric are pieces of history, reminders of time past,” he says. “The materials are naturally distinct and often hard for me to control. My history and personal associations with these materials are critical, pulling me into an active conversation with the material, the past, and the present.” The other inaugural fellows are composer, pianist, and singer Dane Terry; performance artist Miguel Gutierrez; and installation artist Fawn Krieger MFA ’05.
Zia Affronti Morter ’12, who administers the partnership, says it “brings the creative force of Live Arts Bard and Bard MFA to New York City by providing artists the time and space to create—a rare luxury in our current cultural climate—and a unique environment in which to share and workshop new work.”
For discounted room rates, Bardians can go to freehandhotels.com/newyork and enter promo code BARDCOLLEGE.
Read the Spring 2018 Bardian
In the Bardian
If, during your time in Annandale, you lived in a dorm full of extremely creative people (or napped in one of the art studios) you may have had the good fortune to wake up to great Bard art. If not, you now have your chance. All you have to do is check in to the recently opened Freehand New York hotel, where all 395 guest rooms have murals on the walls—a few even have them on their ceilings—hand-painted by Bard students and alumni/ae. You’ll also see one of those murals in the ground-floor lobby, surrounded by beautifully restored original millwork. That conversation, between the building’s history and young artists’ creativity, continues throughout the property.
The newly renovated building, on the corner of 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, began life in 1929 as the George Washington Hotel. Over the years it has been home to writers, musicians, and artists as diverse as W. H. Auden, Dee Dee Ramone, and Keith Haring, who lived in the building when it served as a School of Visual Arts residence hall. Andrew Zobler, a member of the Fisher Center advisory board and CEO and founder of Sydell Group, which also owns Freehand hotels in Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles, wanted to cultivate an ongoing artistic community in New York City, so he partnered with the Fisher Center, the Bard MFA Program, and the Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs to commission original artworks for the public spaces and guest rooms.
“The challenge in New York, given the size of the project, was to make sure it remained true to the Bohemian spirit of Freehand,” says Zobler. “I think using the building as a blank canvas for young artists was the perfect way to give life to that spirit.”
The first Freehand, which opened in an art deco building in Miami in 2012, sought to capture the ethos of a hostel, where social interactions are more frequent and less predictable, while still providing a high-quality hospitality experience. “The culture of the hostel remains core to the Freehand in New York,” says Zobler. “The idea is to create places for people to mix and get to know each other and exchange ideas. Art and performance help stimulate that interaction.”
A panel made up of the hotel’s designers, Roman and Williams, and representatives of Freehand New York and Bard chose the artists after an extensive application process and blind portfolio review. The hotel’s guest room mural painters were Marty Abbe-Schneider ’14, Hannah Berger ’16, Kira Buckel ’16, Lukas Geronimas MFA ’11, Martin Katzoff ’19, Elizabeth Marshall MFA ’14, Isabelle Sigrid Marshall ’18, Louise Smith ’13, Scott Vanderveen ’16, and Rowan Willigan ’15. Leslie Fry MFA ’93, created sculptures for the Mezzanine Gallery, Lia Lowenthal MFA ’14 made framed tile panels as well as a piano installation, Vanderveen also painted the colorful gym mural and a mural on the ground floor, while Katzoff did a mural leading to the bar from the elevator on the roof. Several of those artists, along with Jordan Segal ’14 and Sarah Bastacky ’19, have framed pieces scattered throughout the hotel. Photographer Isaac Diggs MFA ’03 documented the project, which was managed by Zia Affronti Morter ’12 and Sean Leo ’14.
Berger painted murals in some 45 rooms, an experience that has changed her attitude toward her own work. “More than anything, this project has taught me to step away and let go of my work after it’s complete,” she says. “Doing so many murals in such quick succession forbids attachment to any one of them. I hope to carry this impact into my personal studio practice.”
The artists had to deal with logistical issues imposed by the spaces—furniture placement, windows, corners—but there were few specific guidelines for the artwork itself (no neon colors, not too much red, murals should have a gestural quality). “Constraints can be helpful,” says Berger. “I imposed more constraints upon myself—limiting the palette to one color, using one brush size—than anyone from the design team at Freehand did.”
A visitor might experience a slight shock upon walking into a crisp, clean room and seeing unmistakably handmade markings on the walls. No matter how lovely the images, all those years of being told to keep that crayon on the coloring book makes its own mark. For Berger, however, that didn’t present a problem. “I’ve definitely drawn, painted, and stuck wads of gum onto plenty of walls and ceilings,” Berger admits. “But holding a brush up to a pristine hotel room wall still felt like an unfamiliar thing to do. With all the other construction going on throughout the hotel, however, it seemed less invasive and strange.”
Handing over the keys, not to mention the bare walls, to a group of young artists shows a level of trust that perfectly reflects the Freehand culture. There’s a refreshing optimism to embracing the unknown, giving up control, and encouraging artistic freedom. Such an attitude goes hand in hand with trusting that people who are attracted to a place that seeks to go beyond the ordinary will want to interact with others who feel similarly.
Each hotel has its own identity, and they all have a mix of room styles, from bunks to sprawling penthouse suites. They also share variety in their eating and drinking establishments. Freehand New York includes two restaurants from the king of the West Village, Gabriel Stulman; a rooftop bar that is an outpost of the phenomenal Broken Shaker, whose Miami location has made the World’s 50 Best Bars list four years running; the third location of Smile to Go from the owners of popular Bond Street café the Smile; and the George Washington Bar (also run by Stulman), in the former library room, where another remarkable piece of art can be seen: a portrait of our first president that was commissioned for the original hotel and has somehow survived the Great Depression, bankruptcy, the wounding and capture by F.B.I. agents of a fugitive on the most-wanted list, a drug raid in the early ’80s, and even the threat of demolition (averted with the help of a local historical society). Zobler says they considered introducing new art into that bar, but decided against it. “We wanted one space where you would really connect with the history of the building without modification. I think that room makes you feel rooted, and that is a good thing.”
Iconic architecture from New York City’s history—with significant and playful modification—is on display on the same floor as the bar. Fry installed plaster sculptures in arched niches in the Mezzanine Gallery. “I meld forms from architecture, human anatomy, and plants,” Fry explains. Each sculpture is around four feet tall. In one, a classical male bust with a condensed cityscape atop his head is supported on a column covered in a whir of modes of urban transport, from bikes to VW bugs to high heels. In another, a large plant grows out of a heart cradled in human hands and is topped by that icon of the New York City skyline the Chrysler Building. “Some of the other architectural references are the Empire State Building, Guggenheim Museum, Washington Square Arch, and the hotel building itself,” says Fry. “The sculptures depict transformation, growth, and energy.” Much like the pulsating city itself, not to mention the kinds of guests the hotel will attract.
One other ingredient in the hotel’s cultural stew is the Freehand Fellowship. Zobler’s Sydell Group engaged Live Arts Bard—the Fisher Center’s residency and commissioning program—and the Bard MFA Program to create an ongoing fellowship for multidisciplinary artists in residence at the hotel. The residencies offer alumni/ae of the MFA program and affiliated artists of Live Arts Bard a paid, yearlong fellowship; three months’ use of the hotel’s 520-square-foot rooftop studio; accommodations at the hotel; and opportunities to curate public programs and exhibitions in the hotel’s public spaces. Four fellowships will be awarded each year.
Abraham McNally ’97 MFA ’03, one of the first fellows, incorporates into his work fabric from worn-out clothes that belonged to his three young children and poplar from trees he cut with his father on the family Christmas-tree farm in northern Vermont. “Both the wood and fabric are pieces of history, reminders of time past,” he says. “The materials are naturally distinct and often hard for me to control. My history and personal associations with these materials are critical, pulling me into an active conversation with the material, the past, and the present.” The other inaugural fellows are composer, pianist, and singer Dane Terry; performance artist Miguel Gutierrez; and installation artist Fawn Krieger MFA ’05.
Zia Affronti Morter ’12, who administers the partnership, says it “brings the creative force of Live Arts Bard and Bard MFA to New York City by providing artists the time and space to create—a rare luxury in our current cultural climate—and a unique environment in which to share and workshop new work.”
For discounted room rates, Bardians can go to freehandhotels.com/newyork and enter promo code BARDCOLLEGE.
Read the Spring 2018 Bardian
09-25-2018
The annual award, which recognizes artistic excellence and provides resources to mature visual artists, was established in memory of painter and Bard professor emeritus Murray Reich.
09-23-2018
Bard College will host the exhibition Weightier than Mount Tai, Lighter than a Feather: Human Rights Experience of Chinese Contemporary Art in the Bertelsmann Campus Center.
09-18-2018
Raphael Bob-Waksberg ’06 and cocreator Lisa Hanawalt talk about the origin story of their “depressingly good” animated series.
09-18-2018
Moscoso, currently senior curator at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, will head the curatorial team for the UK’s largest contemporary arts festival.
09-18-2018
The main through line of this “beautiful new show . . . is the rare affinity and intimate working relationship that Hearn and de Land shared with their artists.”
09-11-2018
From a Minoan axe-head left at a devotional cave on Crete, to a custom-built Harley left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, this exhibition looks at the practice of offering objects as acts of faith.
09-03-2018
This “illuminating” exhibition uses a broad sampling of art and documentary material to celebrate the influential NYC gallerists Pat Hearn and Colin de Land.
09-02-2018
The New Academy, founded after the 2018 Swedish Academy prize was cancelled in the aftermath of a sexual assault scandal, names Gaiman to its shortlist of four.
August 2018
08-28-2018
A new series of free events comes to Montgomery Place; film with live orchestra returns; The Orchestra Now presents a five-concert series; the Bard Conservatory celebrates Joan Tower, and more.
08-28-2018
One of America’s most highly regarded abstract painters lends his urbane vision to Four Quartets, “the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century.”
08-28-2018
“Machines take advantage of the particularity of each person’s appearance to flatten out our collective individuality,” writes Cole.