News

The Bard College Photography Program announces that senior Max Gavrich is the first winner of the college's Lugo Land Prize. The award allows a graduating Bard photography major the opportunity to travel to the northern Italian city of Lugo to produce a new body of work. The student will be flown to Italy, receive room and board, and be aided in the development and production of a project of their devising in the town. Working with a designer in Lugo, the student will also make a limited-edition artist's book. The award provides an outstanding opportunity for the winner to continue his or her photographic practice after graduating from Bard.

Bard MFA Music/Sound faculty member Matana Roberts has been named as a recipient of the distinguished Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, which carries a prize of $75,000. Every year five mid-career, risk-taking artists in the categories of dance, film/video, music, theater, and visual arts are each selected to receive an award from the foundation. "Visionary composer, avant-garde saxophonist, and sound artist Matana Roberts was chosen as the winner in Music for her charismatic, powerful renderings of sound," says awards director Irene Borger. On May 9, the recipients will receive their awards at a private celebratory luncheon at the Herb Alpert Foundation in Santa Monica, California.

The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) presents the exhibitions Deviance Credits and Footnotes opening on April 13. Deviance Credits comprises 13 exhibitions and projects curated by second-year students in the graduate program in curatorial studies and contemporary art. Brought together in one exhibition, each gallery presents innovative approaches to contemporary art and exhibition making with over 35 artists, many of whom have created works specifically for the context of the Hessel Museum. The artworks selected for Footnotes are housed in the CCS Bard Hessel Museum, but their representations, meanings, and contexts exceed their physical locality. This exhibition spatially contextualizes artworks by rethinking the relationship between title, text, and footnote. Footnotes is co-curated by the class of 2015 M.A. candidates. Both exhibitions will be on view through May 25.

Learn more about Deviance Credits and Footnotes.

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents the American Symphony Orchestra on Friday, April 11, and Saturday, April 12, at 8 p.m. The program includes Johann Strauss Jr.’s Emperor Waltz, Accelerations, and On the Beautiful Blue Danube; Julius Conus’s Violin Concerto, featuring Zhi Ma ’15, violin; and Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 2. The concert will be conducted by Leon Botstein, music director. There will be a special preconcert talk by Alexander Bonus, assistant professor of music at Bard College, beginning at 7 p.m.

On Thursday, April 10, the Written Arts Program at Bard College presents a reading by Rikki Ducornet (Bard ’64). A poet, fiction writer, and visual artist, Ducornet’s many books include the recent novels Netsuke, Gazelle, The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition, and Phosphor in Dreamland. Publisher’s Weekly said of her story collection The Complete Butcher’s Tales: “[It’s] told in prose of such beauty that one can't help silently mouthing the words. Fluid, studied, almost overripe, it is also intensely visual.”

Live Arts Bard (LAB) is a partnership between the Theater and Performance Program and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. As its acronym suggests, Live Arts Bard is a laboratory for new performance. Each year LAB will provide residencies for individual artists, or groups of collaborators, in theater, performance, dance, live arts, and allied art forms. Its aim is to develop a fertile and nurturing community of visiting artists and students, who work side by side to generate projects and new creative methodologies.

Named “a highlight of the musical year” by the Wall Street Journal, the world-renowned Bard Music Festival returns to celebrate its 25th anniversary season in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, crowning Bard SummerScape 2014 with a two-week, in-depth, illuminating exploration of “Schubert and His World.” Twelve concert programs over the two mid-August weekends, complemented by pre-concert lectures, panel discussions, special events, and expert commentary, make up Bard’s examination of Franz Schubert (1797–1828), one of the most revered and influential composers of the Western tradition.

Together with her students, Professor Catherine Whalen recently launched the Bard Graduate Center Craft, Art and Design Oral History Project. The Archive is a treasure trove of oral histories, compiled and conducted by her students with craftspeople, designers, and artists. It focuses on contemporary work and includes photos, video, and reference materials.

A track from the record Thunder Lay Down in the Heart by composer Christopher Tignor ’98 features a new recording of poet and Bard professor emeritus John Ashbery.

Kate Hartman ’03—founder and director of The Social Body Lab in Toronto—is creating wearable technology that increases the visibility of cyclists, runners, and walkers.

Andrew Gori '04 and Ambre Kelly's SPRING/BREAK has been offering an inclusive, accessible alternative to the traditional art fair for three years, with solid attendance, positive reviews, and strong sales.

Daniel Gordon has been selected by Amsterdam’s Foam photography museum as the 2014 winner of its Paul Huf Award, which is given annually to a photographer under the age of 35. The award carries a €20,000 ($27,800) prize and an exhibition at the museum.

Struck by the devastation of Hurricane Sandy in his native New Jersey, Michael Marcelle '05 created the stunning Kokomo series, in which he imagines that the hurricane rips a hole in the fabric of the universe.

Ken Buhler discusses how he finds inspiration in striking natural environments, and the importance of spontaneity in his work.

Yishay Garbasz spent March 2013 touring the abandoned towns around the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. Ritual and Reality, exhibited at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York City, is the result.

Professor Ann Seaton, director of the Difference and Media Project and Multicultural Affairs at Bard, will appear in the Whitney Biennial as a member of the How Do You Say Yam in African Collective. The collective has produced the 53-minute digital film Good Stock on the Dimension Floor: An Opera, about how race haunts black identity, which will be screened at the Biennial in March and May. Professor Seaton's contribution to the film includes writing and conceptualizing. The collective consists of writers, artists, dancers, theorists, architects, painters, filmmakers, actors, and poets. Many members of the collective have visited Bard's Difference and Media Project and participated in campus events. Visit the collective's website or read about the project in the New York Times.

Bard College photography major Ben Barron has been awarded the University Dean's Award for Study Abroad by Central Saint Martins (CSM), part of the University of the Arts London. Barron was selected to receive the award by the CSM faculty from among 96 visiting students at the college this spring.

Bard College photography major Ben Barron has been awarded the University Dean's Award for Study Abroad by Central Saint Martins (CSM) during his semester abroad. CSM is a leading college of art and design and part of the University of the Arts London (UAL). Barron was selected to receive the award by the CSM faculty from among 96 visiting students at the college this spring, and received glowing recommendations from his professors. The Dean's Award is given to UAL study abroad students who demonstrate an "individual determination to succeed, creativity and innovation in their approach to the subject, and an outstanding personal contribution to the course."

Multimedia artist Dani Leventhal discusses the evolution of her work from ceramics to drawing and film, and reflects on her time at Bard.

Bard MFA faculty and alumna Amy Sillman will be featured in the Whitney Biennial for the second time this year, and her acclaimed survey Amy Sillman: One Lump or Two will come to CCS Bard.