Bardian - Winter 2026

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BARD COLLEGE WINTER 2026

1-800-BARDCOL alumni@bard.edu alums.bard.edu #bardianandproud @bardalumni @bardcollege

DEVELOPMENT AND ALUMNI/AE AFFAIRS

Debra Pemstein Vice President for Development and Alumni/ae Affairs

845-758-7405 pemstein@bard.edu

Jane Brien ’89 Director of Alumni/ae Affairs 845-758-7406 brien@bard.edu

ADMISSION

George Hamel III ’08 Director of Admission bard.edu/admission admission@bard.edu 845-758-7472 issuu.com/bardian

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photos by Peter Aaron ’68/Esto,

Barrow, Chris Kayden, Pete Mauney ’93 MFA ’00, Karl Rabe Inside front cover, Bard College Archives

It doesn’t help to reenact an imaginary past; rather, one has to find the proper standards against which to judge the present.

—Leon Botstein

FEATURE First-year students at matriculation dinner, Ward Manor lawn, photo by Karl Rabe

TRANSFORMATIVE MATCH MADE

Bard Completes Endowment Challenge

By James Rodewald ’82

Bard’s successful completion of a landmark billion-dollar endowment challenge from the Open Society Foundations (OSF) and its founder, George Soros, positions the College to sustain and expand its mission as an independent institution of higher education centered on the liberal arts and sciences and dedicated to the public interest. The challenge, launched in 2021, invited Bard to match a $500 million commitment from OSF by raising an additional $500 million from other donors within five years. In that time, nearly 2,000 gifts and pledges from more than 1,000 contributors—trustees, alumni/ae, and friends—were made to the endowment, and in January 2026 it was announced that the challenge had been met. The successful campaign has already supported the addition of 17 new faculty chairs and a number of new named scholarships, awards, and prizes made possible by the generosity of alumni/ae.

“Bard is profoundly grateful to George Soros, Alex Soros, and the Open Society Foundations,” says President Leon Botstein. “The response of our donor community, which has given and pledged over $500 million to meet the OSF challenge, affirms George Soros’s belief in Bard and its mission. This outpouring of support endorses Bard’s excellence and innovation and bodes well for the future of the College.”

At a time when American democracy is under strain, and colleges and universities face growing political and financial pressure, Bard’s endowment underscores the importance of investing in independent higher education as a cornerstone of democratic life. It also reflects OSF’s historical support for higher education and the role of critical thinking in public life. “Higher education is essential to the future of American democracy,” says Alex Soros, chair of OSF. “Bard will continue to be a place where critical thinking flourishes and students learn why the liberal arts are more important to freedom and the rule of law than ever in today’s embattled moment.”

Under Botstein’s leadership, Bard has played a leading role in advancing liberal arts and sciences education and expanding access to higher education. In addition to undergraduate and graduate instruction in Annandale, programs include the Bard Early Colleges, which enable public high school students to earn college degrees tuition free in supportive environments; Bard Prison Initiative, which provides college education to incarcerated students; and a wide range of international partnerships focused on expanding educational opportunity for underserved communities.

The endowment will help defray the operating costs of the College, and over time, as pledges are converted into cash, the money available—essentially, the interest earned on the principal—will continue to grow. In the meantime, the 250 percent growth of the endowment has additional profound financial benefits, particularly in the realm of borrowing. In the absence of such a robust “savings account,” the pressure to raise funds to cover student financial aid—more than $60 million annually—the intense competition for top-notch faculty, and the ever-rising costs associated with maintaining and improving the campus create a certain amount of risk; those are expenses that can’t be delayed, and lenders don’t like risk. In recent years, Bard’s credit rating has improved, achieving “investment grade” for the first time in March 2023, and it is no coincidence that S&P Global Ratings raised its long-term rating on Bard’s bonds two notches to BBB+ (from BBB-) in January 2026, citing “significantly improved balance-sheet metrics and liquidity in December 2025,” a clear shout-out to the successful endowment campaign. The improved credit rating greatly enhances the College’s access to loans and lowers the cost of borrowing, which in turn helps ensure that necessary capital projects can be undertaken. The fundraising continues, of course, since only the interest earned on the endowment will be tapped, but the successful campaign is a game changer.

SEE SOMETHING, DO SOMETHING

Some Thoughts About Leon

By Robert Kelly, Asher B. Edelman Professor Emeritus of Literature Collages by Geoffrey Stein ’82

If I were to lay aside my poet’s quill and pick up the rusting machinery from my fiction-writing days to start a novel about a college president, I wonder if any of the true things I would record about Leon Botstein would seem possible? I would have to write about a young man still in his 20s, courageous enough, smart enough, to take on the presidency of a college faltering to its knees; a college that had lost both direction and endowment, a college that needed help. But within a few years, this failing institution would be on its feet, getting larger and larger, and larger and stronger. This would be a man who, despite being a college president would also be a scholar—a man who could teach musical history in Vienna to the Viennese, in German. A man who wrote articles and books, a man who paid attention to the whole intellectual current of the world. Remarkable.

We don’t see the like in most American educational situations. Most of the time, executors specialize in being executors, but here was a scholar, a learned man—an artist, in essence—who could do all of that, and still, somehow, manage to talk to people—rich people, businessmen, scientists—and achieve their sympathy and, often, their support. Here is a man who, years and years later, was the recipient of a half billion dollar endowment gift from a European philanthropist. Here is a man who was capable of all kinds of adventures of the mind, who was brave enough to bring all kinds of intellectuals to Bard—John Ashbery, Robert Duncan, William Gaddis, William Weaver—as well as the intelligent energies of his friend and guide Hannah Arendt and so many other luminous world figures, like Ephraim Isaac, Chinua Achebe, Édouard Roditi, A. J. Ayer, Ved Mehta, artists and intellectuals from all over the world.

These were not mere figureheads—they came to Bard and every student had a chance to talk to these great beings. That was something Leon insisted on. These were not people sitting up on top of a steeple somewhere, looking good in the newspaper. They were people on the ground, sitting there with the others in the faculty dining room, in their offices, on the park benches, chatting with everybody. That was the point. That is what a collegium is—a place where people come together. And Leon knew that—knows that—to a degree unusual in modern education.

Speaking of education, most educators, most teachers, shake their heads and groan a bit, and moan about how illprepared students are for “ higher education,” as we charmingly call the stuff we talk. Leon did not shake his head or moan or groan. He did something about it. Doing something about it is a big thing with Botstein. If you see a problem, you solve it. You don’t just walk away and write an essay: “Oh, how sad . . . .”

What he did was to start observing the fact that our kids come in, as most American students do, from high schools which are, to say the least, rather general in their application of intellectual principles. There is, it seems, more basketball than Baudelaire. They don’t learn much. They play a little. They have to go to class. They put up with it. They endure it. They learn a little of this, a little beginning Spanish or Chinese; a little of that, maybe a course or two in algebra that they wonder why they have to take. And that’s it.

And then they’re here. And suddenly we’re shaking Plato at them. And shouting at them about Europe! Music! Art! Well, Leon decided—I don’t know when, I don’t know how—that one thing to do would be to

make high schoolers do things differently. And so, under his kind guidance, his direct energy, Bard started early colleges all over the place—the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, New Orleans, Baltimore, Cleveland, and beyond—high schools that prepare students for the real life of college, the real life of the mind. A brilliant achievement, I think, and one that other colleges gradually perceived the benefit of.

Right now we are happy to have Bard’s connections, not just with high schools but with educational institutions all over the world—Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Hungary for a while, Germany, Austria. In those places, and through the remarkable Bard Prison Initiative in seven New York State correctional facilities and the three community-based Bard Microcolleges, we teach our stuff, the “liberal arts”—the arts of free humans, which is what the artes liberales were. That has worked at the high school level, feeding up to Bard; in Europe and Asia the branch reaches out from Bard and then it reaches back in. So we have the liveliest interchange with schools in the Near East like Al-Quds in the West Bank, just as Leon has had, in his own professional, artistic career as a conductor, a good relationship with the Israeli Philharmonic. The Israeli Philharmonic and the Palestinian university somehow engaged by the same human being.

These remarkable details betoken an intellectual generosity that does not end with places and subject matters and famous people, endowments and benefactors. Leon, in his wisdom, saw something that very few have seen: if you do not understand the cultural life of Europe, you’re not really going to understand the literature and philosophy of Europe, or of Asia, or anything else. He looked at a school with students who, for the most part, paid no attention to music other than what was on the radio, and he

understood, both from his own love of music and his own love of learning, that something was needed here. Gradually he formed this immense musical entity—the Conservatory. “Conserving,” in this case, is more like “serving.” Serving generations of students started with the realization that the music they listen to has something to do with the way they think. That listening to Beethoven helps you understand Nietzsche better, and understanding Mahler helps you understand Freud. Of course it helps to understand everything. The continuity of the culture, the lateral continuity—art, music, poetry, novels, philosophy, science—the lateral gestures all move together.

By bringing music into the foreground of our enterprise, Leon was able to shatter the silence, as it were, and bring the sound back. The result is not just happy kids watching cellphones for the latest songs. It is more than that. It’s people, hundreds of them, working in choruses, orchestras, at various levels. It’s impossible to be at Bard now without being exposed to what they used to call classical music. The better name for that is music—music of all kinds. And not just Mahler, not just Mendelssohn, not just Beethoven. Chinese music, too. Asian music. Into this Conservatory that had been very vigorously Viennese in its orientation, Leon brings Tan Dun, a Chinese composer, a Chinese master. And suddenly music itself changes. Its density changes. Its flag, so to speak. And now, we feel it moving in different directions, different places. And similarly, modern music, contemporary music—composer after composer, has been brought to Bard and worked here consciously, industriously. Leon has done all this in part because he is himself a conductor of an orchestra, for a number of years with the American Symphony Orchestra, and always with the Bard Conservatory and The Orchestra Now, with whom he regularly performs. And when I say “performs,” I mean that. He’s not just standing there waving his arms. He’s shaping something in that music.

Not long ago I happened to hear a performance that he did, that his orchestra did, of the Saint-Saëns organ concerto—a famous piece I had heard a thousand times . . . only I hadn’t. Toward the end, just before the great organ burst that brings in the very last part of the symphony, there is a section of thousands of little notes pouring out of the orchestra, tingling notes

that most people pay no attention to. I had heard them, but treated them as just getting ready for the big moment.

And then, as I was listening to Leon’s performance, I heard them. I heard something I had heard a hundred times, but had never actually heard. He had coaxed his performers into an elegant ballet of similars. I heard a contrapuntal excitement, a vivid interplay of sounds, very similar sounds, but different enough to be challenging. And I thought, My God, this man, what is he doing? He knows this music. He’s making every note meaningful, making every note matter. I was amazed by the performance, and I’m afraid that it characterized thereafter my sense of Leon—here is a man who takes care of the smallest details. Most of the time.

Does he have defects? He has one notable defect. He believes in people. He believes in them and sees the best in them. And sometimes they don’t live up to his perceptions. Every now and again we do stumble off the curb or wallow a bit in the mire. By “we,” I don’t mean anyone in particular, I mean just that we’re not always as good as he thinks we are. But he does think we are, and his thought of us raises us up. I have immense gratitude for the way he allowed us to sneak the Written Arts program out from under the walls of the Literature program and set it up as an independent program, now one of the largest in the college, allowing the people who actually write books to teach that sort of thing.

Leon saw that coming. He sees the extent to which every department has to dissolve into new disciplines. We are dealing in new ways with architecture, which had never been taught at Bard; dealing with Indigenous Peoples—the history of this very place. We’re beginning to understand that it’s as important to think about the history of Annandale as it is to think about the history of, say, Rome. We’re here, and that means something. These things Leon has made happen—brought the right people, brought the right timing, brought the money to pay for it all—in an extraordinary way.

I think of all these things with great pleasure, great happiness, great gratitude for this remarkable scholar, musician, intellectual, teacher, guide, benefactor to so many.

Robert Kelly has been at Bard since 1961. His latest collection of poems is The Symphonies (Wet Cement Press). For more of Kelly’s writing, visit rk-ology.com and his digital archives: digitalcommons.bard.edu/ rk_manuscripts

In art, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But that doesn’t mean the parts themselves can’t be compelling in their own right. Artist Geoffrey Stein ’82 uses collage to layer text and images, which carry their own separate meanings, over the scaffolding of a drawing. The resulting portrait is literally built on the subject’s attributes, influences, experiences, and accomplishments. Stein calls this approach, “a modern take on the Renaissance tradition of including iconography in portraiture, such as books to signify education or tools to symbolize the subject’s trade or craft. Instead of using symbols, as a Renaissance painter would, I collage these portraits using materials and text from the subject’s environment or the popular press.”

Stein earned degrees in sociology from Bard, law from Albany Law School, and—25 years after receiving his BA—an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He approaches his work like the “recovering lawyer” he is, taking deep dives into his subjects’ lives, uncovering intriguing photos or text from sources that have included newspaper articles, personal photographs, and sheet music, among other things. He is assisted in researching his subjects and searching for collage material by his studio assistant, Rosie Lopeman ’11, who is also faculty at the New York Studio School. The laborious process of building the collage can take Stein months. The work rewards close and careful observation. The 30” by 40” portraits Stein created of President Botstein and Asher B. Edelman Professor Emeritus of Literature Robert Kelly for this issue of the Bardian will be on view at the Anne Cox Chambers Alumni/ae Center, so you can see for yourself! geoffreystein.com

CELEBRATING FIFTY YEARS OF INNOVATION AND EXCELLENCE

Bard College and The World: A Selective Chronology

1975 Leon Botstein takes office as 14th president of the College

Final version of Title IX signed by President Gerald Ford; Sufjan Stevens born

1978 Bard Center founded

Original rainbow flag of LGBT movement flown for first time, at San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade; Jim Jones leads his cult in mass murder–suicide that claims nearly 1,000 lives; Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat win Nobel Peace Prize for their progress toward achieving Middle East accord; Iranian Revolution begins

1979 Bard assumes responsibility for Simon’s Rock Early College in Great Barrington, Massachusetts

Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident; Margaret Thatcher becomes first female prime minister of United

Kingdom; ESPN launches in United States; 500 Iranian radicals, mostly students, invade US Embassy in Tehran and take 90 hostages, 53 of whom are American, demanding United States send former Shah of Iran back to stand trial

1981 Bard launches its first affiliated graduate program, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, which offers a master of fine arts degree; first Workshop in Language and Thinking is held for entering students

Minutes after Ronald Reagan is sworn in as President of the United States, Iran releases 52 remaining American hostages, ending the Iran hostage crisis; attempted assassination of President Reagan; Space Shuttle Columbia becomes first crewed reusable spacecraft to return from orbit; attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II; first recognized cases of AIDS; MTV, first 24-hour video music channel launches in

Leon Botstein Inauguration, October 1975, photo Bard College Archives

United States and airs its first video, “Video Killed the Radio Star”; Sandra Day O’Connor becomes first female justice of US Supreme Court; Egyptian President Anwar Sadat assassinated during military parade by servicemen who belong to Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization and oppose his negotiations with Israel

1982 Institute for Writing and Thinking founded Dow Jones Industrial Average surges 425% to close at its first all-time high in more than nine years; Sony launches first consumer compact disc player

1986 Jerome Levy Economics Institute founded (now Levy Economics Institute)

Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrates 73 seconds after launch, killing crew of seven astronauts; first child born to a nonrelated surrogate mother; mishandled safety test at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant kills more than 5,000, damages almost $7 billion of property, and necessitates forcible resettlement of at least 350,000 people; Fox Broadcasting Company launches

1987 Opening of new academic facility Franklin W. Olin Humanities Building and 300-seat Olin Hall

AZT is approved by United States Food and Drug Administration for use in the treatment of HIV/AIDS; United States Senate rejects President Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork to Supreme Court; world population is estimated to have reached five billion

1988 Graduate School of Environmental Studies (Bard Center for Environmental Policy since 1999) offers a master of science in environmental studies

Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, making it mandatory that Title IX apply to any school that receives federal money, becomes law when Congress overrides President Reagan’s veto; NASA scientist James Hansen testifies to US Senate that human-made global warming has begun, becoming one of the first environmentalists to warn of the problem; ceasefire effectively ends Iran-Iraq War, with an estimated one million lives lost; George H. W. Bush defeats Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis in presidential election; first World AIDS Day held; first proper and official Internet connection between North America and Europe is made between Princeton, New Jersey, and Stockholm, Sweden

1989 Alumni/ae Houses (aka Toasters), a collection of five residence halls designed by James Polshek and Partners, completed; Stevenson Gymnasium complex opens Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran, issues fatwa calling for the death of author Salman Rushdie and his publishers for issuing novel The Satanic Verses; Soviet Union troops leave Afghanistan, ending nine years of military occupation; Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels of oil after running aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound; Seinfeld premieres; civil union between same-sex partners becomes legal in Denmark, world’s first such legislation; first commercial dial-up Internet connection in North America made; David Dinkins becomes first Black mayor of New York City; East Germany opens checkpoints in Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to travel freely to West Germany for first time in decades; peaceful student demonstration in Prague, Czechoslovakia, severely beaten back by riot police, sparking the Velvet Revolution and election of Václav Havel to lead first noncommunist government in Czechoslovakia in more than 40 years; Poland’s president signs Balcerowicz Plan, ending communist system in Poland in favor of a capitalist system, leading to abandonment of Warsaw Pact; musician Taylor Swift born

1990 Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture (CCS Bard) founded; Bard Music Festival presents first season

Smoking banned on all US cross-country flights; Hubble Space Telescope launched aboard Space Shuttle Discovery; World Health Organization removes homosexuality from list of diseases; Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to Gulf War; East Germany and West Germany reunify into single Germany 1991 Program in International Education (PIE) brings young people from emerging democracies to study at Bard Gulf War’s Operation Desert Storm launches five weeks of air strikes against Iraq followed by ground campaign, causing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to withdraw Iraqi troops from Kuwait; South African parliament repeals Population Registration Act, which has required racial classification of all South Africans at birth, ending apartheid; first website is created; Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan declare independence from Soviet Union, which is formally dissolved at year’s end; Clarence Thomas confirmed as US Supreme Court Justice

1993 Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture (BGC) opens in New York City; Charles P. Stevenson Library expansion, designed by Robert Venturi, completed

Czech Republic and Slovakia separate in dissolution of Czechoslovakia; 51-day stand-off at Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ends with fire that kills 76

1994 CCS Bard initiates graduate program in curatorial studies; a Firing Line Debate, with President Botstein debating New York City Mayor Ed Koch, hosted by the College Nelson Mandela wins South Africa’s first fully multiracial elections, marking final end of apartheid; Channel Tunnel opens between England and France; Jeff Bezos founds Amazon; in midterm elections, led by messaging from Georgia Representative Newt Gingrich, Republican Party secures control of both houses of Congress for first time in 40 years; George W. Bush is elected Governor of Texas

1995 Bard’s Clemente Course in the Humanities, providing free humanities classes to motivated students who might not otherwise have the opportunity for higher education, piloted in Manhattan

1996 Bard launches Trustee Leader Scholar Program

Likud Party, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, wins narrow victory in Israeli general election; Australian government introduces nationwide ban on private possession of automatic and semiautomatic rifles; Dolly the sheep, first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult cell, born in Scotland

1997 President Botstein’s Jefferson’s Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture, published

1998 Institute for International Liberal Education (IILE) founded with a mission to advance theory and practice of international liberal arts education; Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, a joint venture between Bard and Saint Petersburg State University, founded Study published in The Lancet suggesting a link between MMR vaccine and autism sparks anti-vaccination movement despite having been exposed as fraudulent by Sunday Times investigation that led to full retraction of the study; Russian economy collapses; Google founded.

1999 Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) founded; Bertelsmann Campus Center, designed by Cathy Simon of Perkins+Will, opens President Bill Clinton, second US president to be impeached, acquitted by Senate on two counts: lying under oath and

obstruction of justice; Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 10,000 for first time; John F. Kennedy Jr. dies in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts; Boris Yeltsin resigns as president of Russia, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as acting president; world population is estimated to have reached six billion

2000 US Supreme Court rules recount of Florida ballots be halted and original results certified, making George W. Bush winner of US presidential election

2001 Bard and New York City Department of Education launch Bard High School Early College (BHSEC), a four-year public school in downtown Manhattan; The Ravines (aka New Toasters), six residence halls designed by Garrison Siegel Architects, open; Bard Globalization and International Affairs (BGIA) program opens and BPI launches pilot program with 16 students Apple releases iTunes; Wikipedia launches; Human Genome Project publishes first draft of human genome sequence; AlQaeda hijacks four planes, two of which are crashed into World Trade Center in New York City, killing nearly 3,000 and causing towers to collapse; Afghanistan is invaded by US-led coalition, beginning War in Afghanistan; American scientists create first successful clone of a human embryo; Apple introduces iPod

2002 First phase of Stewart and Lynda Resnick commons, three suite-style residence buildings designed by Ashokan Architecture, and 52,000-square foot LEED-certified

addition to Robbins House, designed by Andrade Architecture, open Euro is introduced as official currency in the Eurozone countries; United States withdraws from Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia; Russia withdraws from START II nuclear reduction agreement with United States; in largest US government reorganization since creation of Department of Defense in 1947, President Bush signs Homeland Security Act into law, establishing Department of Homeland Security

2003 Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by architect Frank Gehry, opens; Bard and International Center of Photography join forces to offer MFA degree in photography

Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry, killing all seven astronauts on board; Iraq War begins with invasion of Iraq by the United States and allied forces; Human Genome Project completed, with 99% of human genome sequenced to 99.99% accuracy; President Bush declares end to invasion of Iraq in “Mission Accomplished” speech; Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, captured by US Army

2004 Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program welcomes first class

Mark Zuckerberg launches social networking website for Harvard University students “TheFacebook,” later renamed Facebook; CBS News breaks story of Abu Ghraib torture and

Al-Quds Graduation Ceremony 2019: (front row from left) Imad Abu Kishek, president of Al-Quds University; graduating student; Leon Botstein; and Marwan Awartani, Palestinian minister of education and higher education

prisoner abuse; Putin is sworn in for second term as Russia’s president; Senate Intelligence Committee criticizes CIA for “flawed” intelligence regarding presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; George W. Bush reelected President of the United States

2005 Bard College Conservatory of Music opens, offering a fiveyear double-degree (BM/BA) program; Lorenzo Ferrari Soccer Complex completed

YouTube founded; Hurricane Katrina causes well over 1,000 fatalities and damages estimated at $125 billion, with New Orleans and surrounding area hardest hit

2006 Conservatory of Music initiates graduate program in vocal performance (graduate conducting program follows in 2010); CCS Bard inaugurates Hessel Museum of Art; West Point–Bard Initiative launched; Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities established

Hamas wins Palestinian legislative election; Twitter launched; former President of Iraq Saddam Hussein sentenced to death by hanging by Iraqi Special Tribunal for Crimes Against Humanity; Wikileaks founded

2007 Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation, designed by Rafael Viñoly, opens; five-year BS/BA Program in Economics and Finance launches; Landscape and Arboretum Program established Nancy Pelosi becomes first female speaker of United States House of Representatives; Apple introduces original iPhone

2008 BHSEC Queens opens in New York; Bard launches early college program in New Orleans

Worldwide stock markets plunge amid growing fears of US great recession; President Bush signs revised Emergency Economic Stabilization Act into law, creating $700 billion Treasury fund to purchase failing bank assets; Democratic Senator Barack Obama defeats Republican candidate John McCain to become first African American elected president of the United States; Bernard Madoff arrested for securities fraud

2009 Bard partners with Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem to launch College for Arts and Sciences and master of arts in teaching program; Lynda and Stewart Resnick Science Laboratories completed, as is The parliament of reality, outdoor installation by artist Olafur Eliasson Bitcoin established; H1N1 influenza strain deemed a global pandemic; Michael Jackson dies from acute Propofol intoxication

2010 Bard marks 150th anniversary; establishes partnership with American University of Central Asia

Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform explosion in Gulf of Mexico results in one of largest oil spills in history; trillion-dollar stock market crash occurs over 36 minutes, initiated by a series of automated trading programs in a feedback loop; Instagram launches; WikiLeaks releases more than 90,000 internal reports about US involvement in War in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010, nearly 400,000 documents concerning 2003 Iraq War, and more than 250,000 American diplomatic cables, including 100,000 marked “secret” or “confidential”

2011 Citizen Science becomes part of required first-year curriculum; Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) is established; BHSEC Newark opens; Bard assumes ownership of European College of Liberal Arts in Berlin (now Bard College Berlin) Magnitude 9.1 earthquake and tsunami kill nearly 20,000 and damage Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant; WikiLeaks and others publish classified documents about Guantanamo Bay detainees; Osama bin Laden, founder and leader of militant group Al-Qaeda, killed during American

military operation in Pakistan; world population is estimated to have reached seven billion

2012 Longy School of Music merges with Bard; Live Arts Bard (now Fisher Center LAB) launches; construction completed on Anne Cox Chambers Alumni/ae Center and addition to Stevenson Athletic Center; MBA in Sustainability program inaugurated; Bard College Farm established Putin reelected president of Russia; Hurricane Sandy, largest Atlantic hurricane on record, causes 233 total deaths and $687 billion in damage; President Obama reelected; 20 students and 6 teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, killed in deadliest school shooting at a K-12 school in US history

2013 Bard Entrance Examination introduced as alternative application for admission; László Z Bitó ’60 Conservatory Building, designed by Deborah Berke, opens; BardWorks, a professional development program for juniors and seniors, debuts

Former CIA employee Edward Snowden discloses operations engaged in by US government mass surveillance program to news publications, flees the country and is later granted temporary asylum in Russia; US Supreme Court overturns key section of Defense of Marriage Act, thus granting federal recognition to same-sex marriage in the United States

2014 Center for Moving Image Arts opens; Levy Economics Institute Master of Science in Economic Theory and Policy welcomes first students; fourth BHSEC campus opens, in Cleveland, Ohio; Honey Field, a baseball facility, completed; Fisher Center’s Theater Two renamed LUMA Theater West African Ebola virus epidemic begins, infecting nearly 30,000 and killing more than 11,000

2015 New initiatives include The Orchestra Now (TŌN), a preprofessional orchestra and graduate program; BHSEC Baltimore; and Bard Academy at Simon’s Rock, a college preparatory program for 9th and 10th graders in Great Barrington, Massachusetts

Cuba and United States reestablish full diplomatic relations, ending 54 years of hostility between the nations; OpenAI is founded

2016

More than $565 million raised during 150th Anniversary Campaign for scholarships, new buildings and renovations, operating support, and endowment; acquisition of Montgomery Place, an adjacent 380-acre property; Bard Early College (BEC) Hudson and Bard Microcollege Holyoke open

United Kingdom votes in a referendum to leave European Union, triggering Brexit; US intelligence agencies publicly accuse Russian government of using computer hacking to interfere with US election process; Washington Post releases videotape showing candidate Donald Trump privately bragging about sexual improprieties; WikiLeaks releases thousands of private emails from inside political campaign of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton; Donald Trump elected 45th President; majority of US troops withdrawn from Afghanistan 2017 New Annandale House, a sustainably built multiuse space designed by Maziar Behrooz, completed; BEC New Orleans expands to full-day program; Central European University opens extension site on Bard campus

Women’s March, largest single-day protest in American history, follows Trump’s inauguration; Trump issues executive order banning travel and immigration from seven Muslimmajority nations; US government announces intention to withdraw from Paris Climate Agreement; in Las Vegas, Nevada, lone gunman kills 60 people and injures 867 more;

United States announces withdrawal from UNESCO; German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung publishes 134 million documents that reveal offshore financial activities on behalf of politicians, celebrities, and business leaders

2018 US-China Music Institute, a partnership of Bard College Conservatory and Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, welcomes first students; Bard Microcollege Brooklyn, joint venture with Brooklyn Public Library, launches; Center for Environmental Policy and Bard MAT initiate MEd program in environmental education; BGC offers 3+2 BA/MA program in decorative arts, design history, and material culture; Levy Economics Institute’s graduate programs add one-year MA in economic theory and policy; Bard and Central European University offer Advanced Certificate in Inequality Analysis Russian President Putin elected for fourth term; Trump announces intention to withdraw United States from Iranian nuclear agreement; Trump imposes tariffs and other trade barriers on China; dispute over funding for US-Mexico border wall results in longest government shutdown in US history

2019 BHSEC DC opens; College Behind Bars, Emmy-nominated documentary series profiling students in the Bard Prison Initiative, airs on PBS; Center for the Study of Hate launches; Fisher Center production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! wins 2019 Tony Award for best revival of a musical WikiLeaks cofounder Julian Assange arrested after seven years

in Ecuador’s embassy in London; Volodymyr Zelenskyy elected President of Ukraine; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports July 2019 was hottest month on record globally; United States officially withdraws from IntermediateRange Nuclear Forces Treaty established with Russia in 1987; Russia formally adopts Paris Agreement on climate; US formally begins process to pull out of Paris Agreement; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicted on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust; first known human case of COVID-19; Trump impeached for first time when House of Representatives adopts two articles of impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress

2020 Bard and Central European University establish Open Society University Network (OSUN); President’s Commission on Racial Equity and Justice created; Fisher Center debuts UPSTREAMING, a virtual stage featuring new commissions and archival works

Senate acquits Trump in first impeachment trial, with Mitt Romney becoming first US senator to cast a vote to convict and remove a president of his own political party from office; basketball star Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others die in helicopter crash; United Kingdom formally withdraws from European Union; Dow Jones Industrial Average has several record drops; Italy is first country to implement nationwide quarantine in response to COVID-19

Opening Ceremony for Bard High School Early College Bronx, Daniel Weisberg, Leon Botstein, and Janet Peguero stand in the center cutting the ribbon, photo by Danny Santana Photography

outbreak; protests caused by the murder of George Floyd break out across hundreds of cities in US and around the world; Russia approves world’s first COVID-19 vaccine; Joe Biden elected President of the United States; number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 80 million worldwide and global death toll exceeds 15 million

2021 Bard offers new master of arts programs in global studies and in human rights and the arts, and a bachelor of music in vocal performance; Center for Human Rights and the Arts opens; Bard Microcollege for Just Community Leadership launches in Harlem at the Countee Cullen branch of the New York Public Library; Center for Environmental Policy and OSUN form Solve Climate by 2030 initiative; philanthropist George Soros Bard establishes $500 million challenge grant, setting the stage for a $1 billion endowment drive; Bard is placed on Russia’s list of “undesirable organizations,” resulting in closure of Smolny College

Trump supporters attack US Capitol, disrupting certification of 2020 presidential election, forcing Congress to evacuate, and resulting in five deaths; number of recorded deaths from COVID-19 surpasses 5 million, but World Health Organization estimates number of excess deaths due to COVID-19 to be 149 million; United States officially rejoins Paris Agreement, 107 days after leaving; Benjamin Netanyahu, longest-serving prime minister of Israel, voted out of office; Taliban captures Kabul; Afghan government surrenders to Taliban; US withdraws remaining troops from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, ending 20 years of operations in Afghanistan; publication of 119 million leaked documents, known as Pandora Papers, reveals offshore financial activities of multiple current and former world leaders

2022 Bard and network partners help evacuate nearly 400 Afghan students to safety; scholarship program offers support for displaced Ukrainian and Russian students; Smolny Beyond Borders established at Bard College Berlin; two graduate programs debut: MA in Chinese Music and Culture and Graduate Instrumental Arts Program; renovations to Kline Commons completed; Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities opens with mission to connect research with grassroots environmental protection efforts; $1.49 million grant from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck project; landmark gift from the Gochman Family Foundation supporting, in part, Native American and Indigenous Studies programming and scholarships, including Center for Indigenous Studies Russian President Putin begins full-scale invasion of Ukraine; Elon Musk acquires Twitter; US Supreme Court in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturns Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, ruling that constitution does not confer right to abortion; bloc of right-wing and far-right political parties led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wins majority, allowing him to be sworn in as prime minister of Israel for third time; OpenAI releases artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT; world population is estimated to have reached eight billion

2023 Bard NYC, which combines advanced coursework with professional internships, welcomes first cohort of students to state-of-the-art facility in Williamsburg, Brooklyn; Office of Undergraduate Research and Center for Ethics and Writing launch; MA in Global Studies program initiates dual-degree track in partnership with Central European University; new BHSEC campus opens in South Bronx; Gagarin Center for the Study of Civil Society and Human Rights at Bard College founded; Russian Independent Media Archive (RIMA), project of the Gagarin Center and PEN America, established; Fisher

Center LAB biennial Common Ground focuses on politics of land and food; ground broken on North Campus for four new suite-style residence halls, a campus center, and a new performing arts studio building designed by Maya Lin; Massena Campus, 260-acre property adjacent to Montgomery Place Campus, acquired World’s oceans reach new record high temperature; July is hottest month on record for globally averaged surface air temperatures; Hamas launches incursion into southern Israel from Gaza Strip, prompting military response from Israel Defense Forces and Israel’s first declaration of war since 1973 2024 New BHSEC campus opens in Brooklyn; Illinoise, dance musical based on the Sufjan Stevens album Illinois and cocommissioned by the Fisher Center at Bard, wins Tony for Best Choreography; Center for Curatorial Studies receives $3 million from Keith Haring Foundation for 6,000-squarefoot addition, which will be named Keith Haring Wing, to expand library and archives

Putin reelected president of Russia for fifth term; former President Trump found guilty on 34 counts in hush money trial, first time an American president has been found guilty of a crime; Trump defeats incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris in presidential election; former President Jimmy Carter dies at 100

2025 Simon’s Rock relocates from Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to Massena Campus; conducted by Music Director Leon Botstein, The Orchestra Now, on the occasion of its 10th anniversary, performs memorial concerts in Germany commemorating the end of World War II; Sō Percussion, whose members were founding codirectors of Bard Conservatory of Music’s Percussion Program, wins Grammy Award; Lapham’s Quarterly, journal of history and reportage founded in 2007, acquired Wildfires across Los Angeles burn more than 16,000 structures and kill 29; 2024 reported as Earth’s hottest year; US withdraws from World Health Organization and Paris Agreement on Climate; with 280 pediatric deaths reported, 2024–25 influenza season is worst since 2009 swine flu pandemic; Trump signs executive order directing secretary of education to “facilitate the closure” of US Department of Education; 135 people killed and dozens reported missing during flood in Central Texas; first shutdown of federal government since 2018 is longest ever; series of “No Kings” protests occur in all 50 states; Erika McEntarfer ’95, head of US Bureau of Labor Statistics, fired two hours after the release of weak monthly jobs report; US military launches series of lethal strikes against alleged drug vessels in international waters; demolition crews remove facade of East Wing of White House for construction of new ballroom without public notice or planning commission approval and despite initial announcement that existing building would not be touched; Zohran Mamdani becomes first South Asian and Muslim elected mayor of New York City; US military launches series of lethal strikes against alleged drug vessels in international waters; Trump pardons former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández from his conviction of aiding large-scale cocaine trafficking

KEITH HARING WING OPENS

Lauren Cornell, who has been director of the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) graduate program and chief curator of the Hessel Museum of Art since 2017, has assumed the new role of CCS Bard artistic director; Argentinian scholar and curator Mariano López Seoane is the new director of the CCS Bard graduate program. Through a strategic partnership with the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), López Seoane is also ISLAA Fellow in Latin American Art. In her expanded role, Cornell will continue to oversee and enhance the Hessel’s programming while seeking to grow its base of support and financial capacity, refining its acquisitions strategy, and working to further enhance its presence and reputation as a dynamic destination for contemporary art. In addition, she will continue her active role on the CCS Bard faculty, teaching courses within the graduate program. López Seoane, who has been a member of the CCS Bard faculty since 2023, will continue to lead the ISLAA Artist Seminar, an annual, research-intensive course that results in a student-curated exhibition that utilizes the ISLAA archives and collections in New York City, while overseeing all aspects of the CCS Bard graduate program.

Hamza Walker, curator, writer, educator, and executive director of The Brick (formerly LAXART) in Los Angeles, is the recipient of the 2026 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. Walker, whose work explores the rhetoric of race in the United States, racial identity, and politics, cocurated the landmark exhibition MONUMENTS (on view through May 3, 2026), which brings together decommissioned monuments and contemporary artworks to examine how symbols placed in public spaces have shaped national identity and historical memory.

CCS Bard and Bard College’s Human Rights Project have named multidisciplinary artist Carlos Motta as Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism for 2025–26. Motta's work explores the experiences of postcolonial subjects and societies, documenting the social conditions and political struggles of sexual-, gender-, and ethnic-minority communities through a range of media, including video, installation, sculpture, drawing, web-based projects, performance, and symposia. Motta, associate professor of inter-disciplinary practice in the Fine Arts Department at Pratt Institute, has exhibited globally, and his work is in the permanent collections of some of the world’s most prestigious museums.

In October, CCS Bard inaugurated its new Keith Haring Wing, named in recognition of a $3 million gift from the Keith Haring Foundation, which added 12,000 square feet to the library and archives, doubling its capacity. The minimalist two-story masonry structure has open ceilings and large windows that incorporate natural light throughout the expanded library. Among the features of the new wing are the Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg Reading Room, open research stacks that can accommodate more than 30,000 additional volumes, the 30-seat Pontus Hultén Classroom—made possible by a generous gift from the Marieluise Hessel Foundation—the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Collaborative Study Room, six new offices, and 6,000 square feet of new storage space.

Hamza Walker photo by Todd Gray

Mariano López Seoane photo by Cecilia Glik

Lauren Cornell photo by Carrie Schneider

Carlos Motta photo by John Arthur Peetz

Front row from left: Jaidyn Appel, Shane Brennan, Ann Butler, Marieluise Hessel, Kristen Haring, Marty Eisenberg; back row from left: Matthias Hollwich, Lori Chemla, Leon Botstein, Melissa Schiff Soros, Tom Eccles, Maja Hoffmann

Photos by Karl Rabe

HESSEL MUSEUM OF ART

Opening at the same time as the Betty Parsons show will be Uman: Waiting for You and Replica of a Chip: The Weaving Technology of Marilou Schultz

The first traces the evolution of Uman’s practice from the intimate portraits and sketches she made in the 2000s to the commanding paintings she creates today, with a focus on the self-taught artist’s distinct vocabulary of signs, symbols, associations, and chromatic textures. The other is the first survey of acclaimed fourthgeneration Navajo/Diné weaver Marilou Schultz, who was commissioned by the Intel Corporation in 1994 to create a woven replica of its Pentium chip. The exhibition explores Schultz’s subsequent engagements with technology and the digital world, highlighting her inventive approaches to material technique and patterning.

Betty Parsons (1900–82) is justifiably famous for shaping the trajectory of 20th-century American art. Her eponymous gallery established the careers of artists such as Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Clyfford Still and championed women artists like Agnes Martin, who in 1958 had her first solo exhibition in New York City with Parsons. That history has been well documented, but Betty Parsons: An Expanded World, on view June 27 through October 18, 2026, at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College’s Hessel Museum of Art, is the first major retrospective to examine the intertwined legacies of Parsons as both pioneering abstract artist and trailblazing gallerist. The exhibition, organized by curator Kelly Taxter CCS ’03 and artist Amy Sillman MFA ’95, centers Parsons’s 60 years of creative output as a painter and sculptor, while exploring the radical history of her gallery and its support of underrecognized, experimental artists. “Decades ahead of institutional norms or validation, she gave equal weight to women and queer artists . . . as well as artists positioned well outside of the established and narrow circuits of the art world, while simultaneously forging her own distinctive artistic path,” says Taxter.

Canary Islands, Betty Parsons, 1932. Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York ©2025 Betty Parsons and William P. Rayner Foundation

Samone, Uman, 2023. ©Uman. Courtesy the artist. Collection of Marty and Rebecca Eisenberg. Photo by Lance Brewer

Integrated Circuit Chip & Al Diné Weaving, Marilou Schultz, 2024. Gochman Family Collection. Image courtesy the artist and Kunstverein Munchen. Photo by Maximilian Geuter

NEW TRUSTEE

Matthew F. Heyd, Bard's newest trustee, was installed as the 17th bishop of New York on February 10, 2024. He grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina; was a Morehead Scholar and student body president at the University of North Carolina; and holds a master of arts in religion from Yale University and a master of sacred theology from the General Theological Seminary. Heyd was director of Faith in Action at Trinity Church Wall Street, rector of Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York City for 10 years, and since his consecration as bishop in May 2023 served alongside Bard College Honorary Trustee the Right Reverend Andrew M. L. Dietsche. Heyd helped launch Episcopal Charities of New York and served as chief operating officer of a national nonprofit connecting students and teachers in schools to service opportunities.

THE BRITTEN WORD

Internationally celebrated tenor and musical scholar Ian Bostridge delivered the 2025 Anthony Hecht Lectures in the Humanities, a biennial series that honors former Bard faculty member Anthony Hecht ’44, whose poems, scholarship, and teaching made him one of the moral voices of his generation. In “Ancestral Voices

Prophesying: Notes on Britten’s War Requiem,” the 15-time Grammy nominee examined the layers of meaning and context in the piece. The first two lectures—“Requiem” and “Anthem”—were held in Bard’s Olin Auditorium, and the final one, “Akedah,” took place in the Irving Posner and Herman Ackman Space at Kaufman Music Center in New York City. War Requiem, which Bostridge has performed nearly 100 times since 1994, is considered one of the most important works of classical music written after 1945.

The Human Rights Project at Bard College awarded Anthony Lester Fellowships, which support practical work in human rights and the rule of law, to Hadeal Abdelatti and James Rooney. Abdelatti, a final-year law student at the University of Cambridge, used the fellowship to investigate concerns around the handling of deceased inmates’ organs in the state of Alabama. Rooney, a barrister-at-law from Ireland specializing in public interest and human rights law, used the fellowship to provide legal advice and assistance to the Streha Centre, an LGBTI+ shelter and community service in Albania. Each fellow received a stipend of $25,000. The fellowships honor the memory and legacy of Anthony Lester QC (Lord Lester of Herne Hill), one of Britain’s most distinguished human rights lawyers.

THE 25TH BARD FICTION PRIZE WINNER LESTER FELLOWSHIPS

Writer and filmmaker Eliza Barry Callahan was awarded the Bard Fiction Prize for her first novel, The Hearing Test (Catapult Books), published in 2024. The book was a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Award and longlisted for Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. Callahan’s writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Bomb, frieze, and The Drift. In 2025, her 18-minute directorial debut, The Non-Actor, premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. She teaches a seminar on artist writings and ekphrasis at Columbia University. During her fall 2026 Annandale residency, Callahan will work on writing projects, meet informally with students, and give a public reading. The Bard Fiction Prize, presented each October since 2001, is intended to encourage and support young writers of fiction, and provide them with an opportunity to work in a fertile intellectual environment.

The Right Reverend Matthew F. Heyd, photo by Joseph Nartey ’26

Eliza Barry Callahan, photo by Eliza Josey

Ian Bostridge, photo ©Marco Borggreve

THE CONSERVATORY CELEBRATES

Bard Conservatory of Music marked its 20th anniversary with a performance celebrating two interwoven milestones: the Conservatory’s founding in 2005 and President Leon Botstein’s 50th year of leadership of the College. The concert Innovation and Legacy: An Anniversary Celebration with Bard Conservatory Orchestra took place at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall on October 29, 2025, with Botstein conducting the Bard Conservatory Orchestra in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In conversation with that piece, Bard Conservatory Dean Tan Dun conducted the North American premiere of his Choral Concerto: Nine, a reimagining of Beethoven’s final symphony through a contemporary

global lens. Together, these performances underscored Bard’s ongoing mission to blend tradition and innovation in music education and performance, and the celebration marked Botstein’s extraordinary fivedecade presidency, a tenure that has shaped Bard into a cultural and intellectual force. Under his leadership, Bard has championed and invested in a model that positions the arts—and especially music—as a cornerstone of liberal education. “The placing of the making and study of the arts as equal partners alongside the sciences, the study of society, and the humanities in a college and university context is extremely timely.” says Botstein.

“It makes for better artists, viewers, and listeners, and strengthens forms of life that are ever more essential to the preservation of freedom and democracy. Bard is proud to be in the vanguard of this effort.” The Conservatory, the shining example of this approach, integrates rigorous musical training with a full liberal arts education, offering students dual degrees and close mentorship from international performers and scholars with a model that prepares graduates not only for performance careers but also for meaningful engagement with public life and culture.

Tan Dun conducts the Conservatory Orchestra at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, photo by Brian Hatton

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENTS

Five Bardians received highly competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships from the US Department of State: mathematics and Italian studies double major Ezra Calderon ’25 to study at the University of Trento in Italy, studio art major Adelaide Driver ’26 to study at Kyoto Seika University in Japan, architecture and art history joint major Dashely Julia ’26 to study at Bard College Berlin, computer science major Nyla Lawrence ’26 to study at National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan, and psychology major Brenda Lopez ’26 to study at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.

Mahlia Slaiby ’27 was selected to participate in the NCAA Division III Student Immersion Program, a highly competitive, all-expenses paid professional development initiative for emerging leaders in college athletics that took place at the NCAA Convention in Washington, DC, in January 2026. Slaiby, a three-year starter on the Bard women’s soccer team, was one of just 40 students nationwide chosen to engage in this athlete advocacy, leadership, and policy-making program. During her time at Bard, Slaiby has been named to the College Sports Communicators

Academic All-District and Liberty League All-Academic teams, and was selected for the Lebanese Futsal National Team.

Grace Miller-Trabold ’26 has been awarded a $10,000 Davis Project for Peace grant. Her project, “Connecting Threads: Reciprocity and Gratitude as Pedagogies of Peace in Oaxacan Textile,” will create, with the Zapotec community, two weeks of workshops on textile traditions and practices for youth in Teotitlán del Valle, Mexico. Miller-Trabold will also facilitate youth workshops in Poughkeepsie, New York, on Oaxacan dyeing and weaving traditions.

Lauren Mendoza ’26 was awarded a Barry Goldwater Scholarship, which supports college sophomores and juniors pursuing research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering. In her research the past two years, Mendoza has been grappling with extremely challenging astrophysical data, working to characterize the molecular composition of Venus.

Jessica Zoll ’26, a literature major, won a scholarship from Fund for Education Abroad (FEA). Zoll is one of 71 undergraduates selected from around the country, and with FEA’s Education in Ireland Access Partner Scholarship, will attend University College Cork in Ireland.

The Dante Society of America awarded Celeste Connell ’26 the 2024 Dante Prize for the best essay on poet Dante Alighieri by an undergraduate in the United States or Canada. Connell, a classical studies and literature major, was recognized for her essay “Lucan’s Exiles: Solitude and Moral Vision in the Commedia.”

Lauren Mendoza ’26, photo by Anna Bilyk ’27

Celeste Connell ’26, photo by Rachel L. Crittenden

Mahlia Slaiby ’27, photo by Pearllan Cipriano

Grace Miller-Trabold ’26, photo by Anna Bilyk ’27

Jessica Zoll ’26, photo by Gaspard Bason ’29

ARENDT YOU GLAD?

In 16 previous fall conferences, the Hannah Arendt Center has explored various crises, dilemmas, horrors, and conundrums. This year, a diverse group of speakers from a wide range of disciplines gathered to look for joy. More specifically, JOY: Loving the World in Dark Times sought ways of finding meaning and connection in today’s fractured world. Among the presenters were dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones, whose “physical charisma” Visiting Professor of Humanities and Senior Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center Thomas Chatterton Williams cited as a highlight of the conference. Jones presented a clip from DMan in the Water, which quotes a work by artist Jenny Holzer: “In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were filled with joy.”

Novelist, essayist, and photographer Teju Cole gave the keynote address, Operation Lightness, and he also gave generously of his time and attention to students in a breakout session afterward. There were even opportunities to venture outside of Olin Hall: a walk to Hannah Arendt’s grave, in the Bard Cemetery, commemorated the 50th anniversary of her death. Throughout the two days, a selection of music organized, by Aleks Vitanov ’25 and performed by students of the Bard Conservatory, brought additional joy to conference attendees.

VICTORY LAPHAM

Bard College has taken ownership of Lapham’s Quarterly, the beloved journal of history and ideas founded in 2007 by renowned editor and writer Lewis Lapham, who died in 2024. With Lapham’s death, the fate of the magazine, which features writing by greats of the past and present to illuminate issues of our times, was in doubt. But Paul Morris, publisher and executive editor of the Quarterly reached out to Roger Berkowitz, academic director for the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, who proposed to President Leon Botstein that the publication be brought under the Bard umbrella. Botstein quickly agreed. The fit is a good one, since the magazine “embodies the belief that history is the root of all education, scientific and literary as well as political and economic.” That meshes perfectly with the interdisciplinary focus of both the College and the Arendt Center, whose exploration of politics, culture, and the human condition is as broad as it is deep. The Center plans to build upon Lapham’s legacy by integrating the journal into Bard’s broader mission of fostering critical inquiry and dialogue, and it will realize his longtime wish to distribute free copies of the Quarterly to incarcerated readers, through the Bard Prison Initiative.

Lewis Lapham in the Quarterly's old offices on Irving Place, 2011, photo by Joshua Simpson

Bill T. Jones interacts with the audience at the Hannah Arendt Center Conference JOY: Loving the World in Dark Times, photo by Karl Rabe

BARD: A PLACE TO THINK TANK

In recognition of the urgent need for general education reform and to shine a light on the responsibility of higher education to prepare students for citizenship in a democratic society, Bard has established the Chang Chavkin Center for Liberal Education and Civic Life. Part think tank and part teaching institute for faculty, the Center will advance curricular reform in colleges and universities with the aim of restoring liberal education to the heart of the undergraduate curriculum. In pursuit of its mission to prepare students for lives of purpose and democratic citizenship, the Center will promote a model of liberal education grounded on four basic commitments: the study of major primary texts; instruction through small discussionbased seminars; commonality of intellectual experience across the student body; and a nondisciplinary approach to course design, content, and staffing. Roosevelt Montás, John and Margaret Bard Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life in the Division of Languages and Literature, is founding director of the center. Montás was born in the

Dominican Republic and immigrated to the United States as a teenager. He attended public schools in Queens, New York, and went on to study comparative literature at Columbia University, where he also earned his PhD in English. Montás, who specializes in antebellum American literature and culture, with a particular interest in American national identity, is author of Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation and the forthcoming Becoming America: Four Documents That Shaped a Nation; he is coeditor of the forthcoming The Princeton History of American Political Thought (all three with Princeton University Press).

Maxim Botstein, who had been Fritz Stern Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities and is now visiting assistant professor of humanities, is Chang Chavkin’s assistant director. Jessica Lee, for nearly a decade the executive director of Freedom and Citizenship at Columbia University, is the center’s associate director.

REWEAVING THE BARD NETWORK

The Henry Luce Foundation awarded Bard College a $200,000 grant to extend opportunities for students around the world to take courses offered by the College’s international network. The grant coincides with the launch of the Global Higher Education Alliance for the 21st Century (GHEA21) and the new Bard Global Degree Program for displaced students. GHEA21 provides a full curriculum of regular undergraduate courses, taught by faculty around the world, which reach more than 7,000 students each year across a broad range of geographies and backgrounds. GHEA21’s newly redesigned curriculum consists of certificate programs in civic engagement, global humanities, global studies, human rights, and sustainability and climate solutions. The Bard Global Degree is an online degree program for students who have been displaced or threatened by conflict, crisis, or political repression, and who have little or no access to liberal arts education.

PEN PRESISDENT

Dinaw Mengestu, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of the Humanities, director of the Written Arts Program, and founder and director of the Center for Ethics and Writing, is the newly elected president of PEN America, a 103year-old writers organization whose mission is to celebrate literature and defend freedom of expression. Mengestu, the author of four novels and numerous magazine and newspaper articles, a MacArthur Fellow, and recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, will spend his two-year term working in partnership with the literary community at large to ensure that free expression is safeguarded, and to strengthen the connection with PEN’s international chapters to advance the organization’s mission for freedom of expression worldwide.

Chang Chavkin Center senior administration, from left: Maxim Botstein, assistant director; Roosevelt Montás, director; Jessica H. Lee, associate director. Photo by Rachel L. Crittenden

Dinaw Mengestu, photo by Anne-Emmanuelle Robicquet

ALUMNI/AE ACHIEVEMENTS

Cecilia Giancola '25, a Historical Studies major, has been awarded a Fulbright independent study/research grant to India. Her archival research project is focused on the operations of the Baroda (Gaikwad) state in western India during the 19th century. Oskar Pezalla-Granlund ’24, who majored in Art History and Visual Culture, has received a Fulbright independent study/research grant to Spain. He will focus his research on the often overlooked history of the artistic and cultural contact between the Philippines and Spain through an examination of the Museo-Biblioteca de Ultramar. Grace Molinaro ’24, a Middle Eastern studies and cello performance major, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study Modern Standard Arabic in Egypt. Maia Cluver ’22, a joint Art History and Visual Culture and Human Rights major, has been selected for a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Jordan for the 2025–26 academic year.

Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s highly touted show of Black men’s fashion, attracted almost as much attention for its exhibition design as the finery on display. Artist Torkwase Dyson, former Bard MFA faculty in sculpture, devised the forms, and her “hypershapes” were realized and installed by Stefan Klecheski ’12, Tyler Dusenbury ’08, and Alan Lucey ’09 of exhibition and experiential design firm SAT3 Studio. Meticulously organized into themes based loosely on Zora Neale Hurston’s essay “Characteristics of Negro Expression” (1934) and drawing from Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity (2009) by Barnard professor Monica L. Miller, who was guest curator for the exhibition, the show presented a “history of Black style through the lens of dandyism, emphasizing the importance of sartorial style to Black identity formation in the Atlantic diaspora and the ways Black designers have interpreted and reimagined this history.” SAT3 Studio, which also worked on the Met’s Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty in 2023, was well versed in the museum’s rules on circulation, clearance, and accessibility, which greatly enhanced their ability to execute Dyson’s vision. With 300 years of garments, accessories, paintings, videos, caricatures, and sketches arranged throughout the 10,000-square-foot space, this was no simple matter. As Dyson told Vogue’s Lilah Ramzi, “I wanted people to feel held by a thoughtful system—not confined by it.”

Blanche Darr ’25 was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Darr, who was an anthropology and violin performance double major, will travel to Kenya, Indonesia, India, and Germany to examine barriers to music-making (including access, cost, and elitism) and, by joining international music education programs, explore ways to overcome them. The Watson Fellowship offers college graduates of unusual promise a grant of $40,000 for a year of independent, purposeful exploration, travel, and independent study.

Blanche Darr ’25, photo by Anna Bilyk ’27

Disguise, gallery view, photo ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vitanov ’25, a dual degree major in political studies and music performance, was chosen as a Schwarzman Scholar. Originally from North Macedonia, Vitanov will focus his one year, fully-funded master’s program in global affairs at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, on studying China’s strategy in Southeastern Europe.

Able Bloodgood ’25 was selected for a prestigious Peace Corps Fellowship in Sri Lanka. A politic studies major, Bloodgood will undertake an intensive language training program to study Tamil and Sinhala before being stationed in a town where he will coteach and lead English language courses for students of all grades.

A Lien, directed by Sam Cutler-Kruetz ’13 and his brother David, was nominated for an Academy Award in the best live-action short category. Tara Sheffer ’13 (producer) and Blair Maxwell ’13 (costume designer) also worked on the film. A Lien won the Special Jury Award from Salute Your Shorts 2024 and the Grand Prize Narrative Awards from the Washington Film Festival 2024.

This year’s Whitney Biennial will feature works by multimedia artist Cooper Jacoby ’11, sculptor Sula BermúdezSilverman ’15, and artist and filmmaker Jordan Strafer MFA ’20. The Whitney Biennial, now in its 82nd edition, is the longest-running survey of contemporary art in the United States.

Ephraim Asili MFA ’11, associate professor and director of film and electronic arts, was one of 50 artists selected to receive a 2025 United States Artists (USA) Fellowship. USA Fellowships are annual $50,000 unrestricted awards recognizing the most compelling artists working and living in the United States, in all disciplines, at every stage of their career.

Rowena Kennedy-Epstein ’02 won the Modern Language Association of America’s Prize for Bibliographical or Archival Scholarship. She was also selected by the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center as one of its 15 Fellows for the 2025-26 academic year. Kennedy-Epstein, professor of gender studies and women’s writing at the University of Bristol, is working on the first biography of writer Muriel Rukeyser (1913–80).

The French Directors’ Guild presented Todd Haynes MFA ’88 with the 2025 Carrosse d’Or prize, which recognizes a director who has made a lasting mark on filmmaking. Past awardees include David Cronenberg, Agnès Varda, and John Carpenter. Haynes’s films include Velvet Goldmine, Carol, and Dark Waters. His first released film, Poison, won the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize in 1991. While at Bard, he made Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, a short documentary that used Barbie dolls to tell the story of the iconic singer.

Emma Ressel ’16 was named the University of New Mexico (UNM) Center for Regional Studies postdoctoral research fellow for 2025–26. The fellowship supports scholars whose research aligns with the center’s mission to discover, create, preserve, disseminate, and promote a culture of broad inquiry within and beyond the UNM community. Ressel, who earned a BA in photography from Bard and an MFA from UNM, will use the $50,000 award to continue her artistic research into photo history and museums in the region.

Aleks

Aleks Vitanov ’25, photo by Anna Bilyk ’27

A Lien, photo by Andrea Gavazzi

Able Bloodgood ’25, photo by Anna Bilyk ’27

ERIKA MCENTARFER ’95 CUTTING THROUGH THE BLS BS

Speaking to an audience of Bard students, faculty, staff, and community members in Olin Hall on September 16, 2025, Pavlina Tcherneva, president of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, said: “. . . truth and rigorous analysis matter . . . our ability to solve problems and find common ground depends on a shared commitment to facts and honest inquiry.” Tcherneva was introducing Erika McEntarfer ’95, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) until being fired by President Trump six weeks earlier, whom she called a “dedicated public servant whose career has been defined by a commitment to curating good data as the foundation of sound policy.”

McEntarfer was appointed commissioner by President Biden in July 2023 and confirmed rapidly and with broad bipartisan support (86-8) shortly after Trump began his second term. By that time she had dedicated 20 years to nonpolitical roles across the federal government under multiple administrations, including lead labor market economist in the Census Bureau Center for Economic Studies, member of the economic staff of the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy, and White House Council of Economic Advisors nonpolitical staff member. McEntarfer’s yearlong BLS tenure ended not because she was bad at her job, difficult to work with, or even because she expressed views unpopular

with the administration. She was fired for doing exactly what every BLS commissioner had done before her: she released a jobs report prepared by professional economists using data gathered by survey. The report showed a weakening economy and a weakening jobs market, which contradicted the administrations preferred narrative, so McEntarfer herself became a statistic. She is one of the more than 200,000 civil servants who have left their jobs in the past year, including nearly 60,000 who have been fired.

“Economic data must be free from partisan influence,” McEntarfer told the audience in Olin. “Markets have to trust that the data are not manipulated. Firing your chief statisticians for releasing data you do not like will have serious economic consequences. Think of the US economy like a city’s transportation infrastructure. Just like traffic sensors, cameras, and GPS data help city planners understand where congestion, road usage, and repairs are needed, economic data helps policymakers, businesses, and investors understand where the economy is thriving, slowing, or in need of intervention. The city planners of the US economy—senior officials at the Federal Reserve, the president’s senior economic advisers—watch this data very closely. So do traders on Wall Street, investment bankers, and business economists. Messing with economic data is like messing with the traffic lights and turning

those sensors off. Cars don’t know where to go, traffic backs up at intersections, there are more accidents. The city planners no longer have data to reroute traffic. My firing was big news because nobody thinks it’s going to be good for our economy if we start messing with those traffic lights.”

McEntarfer’s appearance in Annandale marked her first public statements since her firing, but the BLS had earlier released a statement that said, “Commissioners do not cook the numbers. They don’t even see them until after the estimates are complete. The real goal is clear: to discredit independent statistics, slash budgets, and bully federal workers into silence. But BLS staff will not be intimidated. We will publish reliable data no matter how inconvenient the results. The numbers will remain accurate and nonpartisan. And if that ever changes, the professionals will tell you.”

Unlike the current administration, the work of the Levy Economics Institute is rooted in, as Tcherneva put it, “a simple credo: start with facts, not ideology, and build models from the real world economic experiences of people.” That sounds like a perfect description of what the Bureau of Labor Statistics does in normal times. These are not normal times, and the firing of a dedicated public servant like Erica McEntarfer is just one of many unfortunate examples of government dysfunction.

From left: Pavlina Tcherneva, president of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College and Erika McEntarfer ’95, photo by Karl Rabe

BOOKS BY BARDIANS: ALUMNI/AE

Sing to Me: A Novel by Jesse Browner ’82

Brown and Company

Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana by Virginia Hanusik ’14 Columbia Books on Architecture and the City

Wild West Village: Not a Memoir (Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1) by Lola Kirke ’12 Simon & Schuster

Becoming Caitlin Clark by Howard Megdal ’07 Triumph Books In Dreams Begin Responsibilities by Jonathan Rosenbaum ’66

Hat & Beard Press

Orange Blossom Trail by Joshua Lutz ’97 ICP ’05 and George Saunders ITI Press

Lonely Crowds: A Novel by Stephanie Wambugu ’20

Little, Brown and Company

Mama: A Queer Black Woman’s Story of a Family Lost and Found by Nikkya Hargrove ’05 Algonquin Books

Being a kid is complicated enough, harder still to grow up poor, and unimaginably difficult to be the child of an addict mother who was often incarcerated and often absent when not. Nikkya Hargrove’s mother, Lisa, calls her “mama,” which could be seen as shockingly self-aware, or simply heartbreaking. Hargrove chooses to cast it as “a privilege.”

Mama begins with a description, simultaneously tender and gut wrenching, of Lisa being strip searched before a family visit. Ten years and a few pages later, Lisa gives birth to a son, Jonathan, who comes into the world two days after his mother ingested crack cocaine and other drugs. Hargrove, who had graduated from Bard a year earlier, would soon take responsibility for her brother, driven by a need to extricate him from the broken system he was born into. “I came to realize,” she writes, “that being a parent was my calling.” Woven throughout this book about overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles are intimate stories of family, commitment, intergenerational trauma, the power of community—including Bard, where Hargrove found friends “who accepted me and where I had come from”— and the importance of mothering one another, and oneself, with love.

Sonita: My Fight Against Tyranny and My Escape to Freedom by Sonita Alizada ’23 HarperOne

Little,

The Plotinus by Rikki Ducornet ’64 Coffee House Press

BARD GRADUATE CENTER

The 28th Annual Iris Foundation Awards honored Irene Roosevelt Aitken, a prominent collector and patron of the decorative arts, as Outstanding Patron; Julius Bryant, longtime curator and now keeper emeritus of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement; Meredith Martin, professor of art history at New York University and the Institute of Fine Arts, as Outstanding MidCareer Scholar; and Katherine Purcell, specialist in French 19th-century jewelry and works of art and joint managing director of the legendary antique jewelry firm Wartski, as Outstanding Dealer.

The first major United States exhibition dedicated to the life and work of visionary architect, designer, and theorist EugèneEmmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–79)—best known for his restoration of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris—is on view at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery from January 28 through May 24, 2026. Viollet-le-Duc: Drawing Worlds brings together nearly 150 drawings and objects, the majority of which have never before been displayed in the United States, highlighting his prolific work as a draftsman and the centrality of drawing to his practice. The exhibition, which includes sketches from the architect’s travels to Italy and through the Alps, reveals how his art was inextricably intertwined with his social and political beliefs rooted in a strong sense of national and ethnic identity. Opening September 18, 2026, and running through January 3, 2027, Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film will tell the untold story of costume and style in early Hollywood. Bringing together a selection of rare objects from the advent of cinema, the show highlights the behind-thescenes work of famous designers such as Travis Banton, Henri Bendel, Clare West, and Lady Duff Gordon (aka Lucile) as well as less-known names such as Madame Frances, I. Miller, Natacha Rambova, and Lilian St. Cyr.

Lillian Gish in a nightgown designed by Henri Bendel, film still from Way Down East. Bain News Service, New York/Library of Congress

View of the antique theater at Taormina, restoration project, 1840, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. Médiathèque du patrimoine et de la photographie, Charenton-le-Pont

From left: Meredith Martin, Katherine Purcell, BGC Founder and Director Susan Weber, and Julius Bryant, photo by Fresco Arts Team

BOOKS BY BARDIANS: FACULTY

My Studio Is a Dungeon Is the Studio: Writings and Interviews, 1983–2024 by Nayland Blake ’82, professor of studio arts Duke University Press

Listening Through by Robert Kelly, Asher B. Edelman Professor Emeritus of Literature Contra Mundum Press

The Forger’s Requiem by Bradford Morrow, professor of literature Atlantic Monthly Press

Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse by Thomas Chatterton Williams, visiting professor of humanities Knopf

The Innocents of Florence: The Renaissance Discovery of Childhood by Joseph Luzzi, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature W. W. Norton

Godwin: A Novel by Joseph O’Neill, distinguished visiting professor of written arts Pantheon

Framing Equality: The Politics of Gay Marriage Wars by Omar G. Encarnación, Charles Flint Kellogg Professor of Politics Oxford University Press

Portent by Tanya Marcuse SR ’81, artist in residence Nazraeli Press

Early Work

by Stephen Shore, Susan Weber Professor in the Arts and director of

the Photography Program

MACK

Before Stephen Shore was the “towering figure he would become in photography,” as The New York Times wrote recently, he was a kid with a Kodak darkroom kit. The neverbefore-seen photographs in Shore’s latest book, Early Work, were made between 1960 and 1965, when he was just a teenager. The sophisticated images show a remarkable sensitivity to his environment, a fine sense of composition, and an innate understanding of what it means to collapse three dimensions into two. Because his primary environment was New York City, the photographs also provide a fascinating look at the city in the 1960s. Shore’s earliest published pictures, taken on his first day at Andy Warhol’s Factory, when he was 17 years old, provide a fitting finale to Early Work. The experimentation of those five formative years would lead to a cross-country photographic excursion, when he took the photographs of diners, gas stations, and national parks that would appear in Uncommon Places. A year after that book was published, the 24-year-old Shore had a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was the first living American since Alfred Stieglitz, more than 40 years earlier, to have such a show. Today Shore is recognized as “a master of elegantly prosaic scenes.” Early Work beautifully illustrates that his ability to capture the essence of the moment was there from the beginning.

Our capacity to create something that is not useful, that’s only understood by mortals, that’s only within the human experience, and that is beyond the provable and everyday, that is unpredictable—that is the highest praise we can give for being human —Leon Botstein, Jewish Voices, by Dana Rubin.

Plato and the Tyrant by James Romm, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics W. W. Norton & Company faculty.bard.edu

Rhinebeck, New York, 1964 ©Stephen Shore. Courtesy 303 Gallery, New York

TŌN IS TEN

The Orchestra Now (TŌN), a Bard graduate program that is training the next generation of music professionals, celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. After a decade of performing in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Fisher Center at Bard, the orchestra—whose members are graduates of the world’s leading conservatories and hail from countries across North and South America, Europe, and Asia—performed abroad for the first time. TŌN’s first concert in Germany was part of the Koblenz IMUKO Festival, which has a focus on multicultural engagement. The program featured Max Bruch’s Adagio on Celtic Melodies and his Ave Maria, both for cello and orchestra; Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major; and Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5. Acclaimed cellist Benedict Kloeckner, artistic director of the festival, was the featured soloist. Two nights later, at

Nuremberg’s Congress Hall, once the ceremonial heart of the Nazi regime, TŌN performed Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, Symphony No. 5, and Choral Cantata Verleih uns Frieden. Commemorating the 80th anniversary of the day the Nazis surrendered, ending the Second World War in Europe, Grant Us Peace showcased Mendelssohn, whose music was banned during the Nazi era owing to his Jewish heritage, as a reminder of the hope that the 1945 victory in Europe over Nazism would bring peace and tolerance to a new world without war. The performance drew an audience that included survivors of the war and a distinguished roster of civic and diplomatic leaders.

Other highlights included a Carnegie Hall concert that featured orchestral transcriptions of works by Beethoven, Chopin, and Smetana; TŌN’s spring benefit,

in collaboration with dancers of American Ballet Theatre Studio Company; a concert that included Kaija Saariaho’s Laterna Magica (The Magic Lantern), Carl Maria von Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No. 2 (with soloist and winner of the 2023 Bard Conservatory Concerto Competition clarinetist Miles Wazni ’25), and Albéric Magnard’s Symphony No. 4, and two live-to-picture performances of John Williams’s iconic score to Jurassic Park, which was projected in HD in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. De-extinction never sounded so good.

TŌN has released albums on the Hyperion, Sorel Classics, and AVIE labels, recordings of its live concerts from the Fisher Center can be heard regularly on Classical WMHT-FM and WWFM The Classical Network, and the orchestra has appeared more than 100 times on Performance Today, broadcast nationwide.

The Orchestra Now, with James Bagwell conducting, performs the score to Jurassic Park; photo by Karl Rabe

FACULTY RECOGNITION

In recognition of his contributions to global culture and the arts, Oscarwinning composer and Dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music Tan Dun has been awarded the title Officier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.

Bard professors Daniel Mendelsohn, Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities, and An-My Lê, Charles Franklin Kellogg and Grace E. Ramsey Kellogg Professor in the Arts, have been inducted into the Academy of Arts and Letters. Mendelsohn and Lê, who are among 24 new members to join the organization in 2025, were chosen in recognition of notable achievements in their fields into the departments of Literature and Art, respectively.

Olga Touloumi, associate professor of architectural history, has been awarded a MacDowell Fellowship and a 2025 research fellowship from the Canadian Centre for Architecture in support of her project Building Worlds: A Feminist Counter-Biography of Modern Architecture. The project focuses on the life and works of Christine Benglia-Bevington (1936–2020), an Afro-French architect, professor, and crocheter, investigating questions of feminist historiography, archival absence, and transnational trajectories in modern architecture.

Adhaar Noor Desai, associate professor of English, received the Modern Language Association Prize for First Book for Blotted Lines: Early Modern English Literature and the Poetics of Discomposition (Cornell University Press).

Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture Anne Hunnell Chen won the Archaeological Institute of America’s Award for Outstanding Work in Digital Archaeology for the data accessibility project she directs, the International [Digital] DuraEuropos Archive (IDEA, which is creating the first globally accessible, multilingual, interinstitutional register of content related to one of archaeology’s blockbuster sites.

Six faculty members have been named as recipients of grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) for 2025: Erika Switzer, assistant professor of music and director of the Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship; Lucy Fitz Gibbon, visiting faculty in vocal arts at the Bard College Conservatory of Music; Sarah Hennies, visiting assistant professor of music; and Suzanne Kite, distinguished artist in residence, assistant professor of American and Indigenous Studies, and director of the Wihánble S’a Center for Indigenous AI at Bard. In addition, the College received a Support for Organizations Award for 2025 in the amount of $40,000 and NYSCA Support for Artist grants were awarded to DN Bashir, assistant professor of theater and performance at Bard, and Ann Lauterbach, professor of languages and literature.

Associate Professor of Politics Simon Gilhooley received an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the Massachusetts Historical Society in support of his project The Declaration of Independence as Constitutional Authority in the Long Nineteenth Century, which studies how political actors across American history have invoked the Declaration not just as a rhetorical device but as a set of principles to guide interpretation of the Constitution.

The Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University awarded Karen Barkey, Charles Theodore Kellogg and Bertie K. Hawver Chair of Sociology and Religion, a grant in support of Successful Religious Pluralism in the Mediterranean: A Comparative-Historical Study. Barkey will use the award for trips to religious communities including Marseille Espérance, a faith leaders’ committee in Marseille, France, and the Simon Attias Synagogue and Haim Zafrani Research Center in Essaouira, Morocco. It also supports Barkey’s work with a Bard undergraduate who is transcribing, translating, and organizing Greek interviews into English.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded 2025 Guggenheim Fellowships to Bard College Assistant Professor of Photography Lucas Blalock ’02 and Bard College Visiting Artist in Residence Gwen Laster. Blalock, who teaches in the Photography Program, and Laster, who teaches in the Music Program, were chosen through a rigorous application and peer review process from a pool of nearly 3,500 applicants based on both prior career achievement and exceptional promise.

Antonios Kontos, associate professor and director of physics at Bard College was been awarded a three-year, $351,951 research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award will allow a team of scientists and engineers to produce an initial conceptual design for, and develop technologies to facilitate the eventual realization of, a next-generation gravitational-wave observatory (the Cosmic Explorer) that will enable the detection of nearly every black-hole collision in the observable universe. The project is being undertaken in collaboration with the California Institute of Technology, which received a separate grant for the initiative.

Lucas Blalock '02 (left), photo by Anna Bilyik '27; Gwen Laster, photo by Tom Moore Studios

Antonios Kontos, photo by Gaspard Bason ’29

SKY'S THE LIMIT

Photos by Bilyana Dimitrova ’99

With the recent completion of four suite-style buildings, housing more than 400 students, and a new campus center, a revitalized North Campus is taking shape. All Bard students— but especially those who live in nearby Cruger Village, Resnick Commons, Ward Manor, Robbins House, and the new residence halls—now have access to a variety of spaces in Campus Center North in which to study, gather, attend meetings, and even take classes. The building is also home to the Ralph Ellison Center. Situated adjacent to the Bard Farm and a stone’s throw from the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, the new Maya Lin–designed Performing Arts Lab (opening Spring 2026), and artist Olafur Eliasson’s installation

The parliament of reality, the new construction is Passive House certified, greatly advancing the College’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2035.

Architectural photographer and filmmaker Bilyana Dimitrova ’99 was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and immigrated to the United States with her parents as a young child. She grew up in New York City and studied fine art photography at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts and then with Stephen Shore and Larry Fink at Bard. After college she worked with renowned architectural photographer Peter Aaron ’68. Dimitrova is the former photo editor of Metropolis magazine and author of To Each His Home (Princeton Architectural Press). Iris Vanderloo ’26 and Gaspard Bason ’29 assisted Dimitrova on this photoshoot.

CZECH IT OUT

Bard SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival (BMF)—which in 2025 focused on the 20th century’s foremost Czech composer, Bohuslav Martinů—keep on connecting audiences to powerful, moving, entertaining, and important works of music, opera, dance, and theater that have been unjustly ignored, forgotten, suppressed, neglected, or would not otherwise have even existed. Roof-raising late-night revelry at the Spiegeltent rounded out a lively and enriching Hudson Valley summer, all hosted by the incomparable Fisher Center.

One of the highlights of SummerScape was the first fully staged American production of Bedřich Smetana’s Dalibor, “a work of great sweep and passion, interlaced with enchanting national melodies” (The New York Times) and widely considered to be the composer’s most important opera. To master the subtleties of Dalibor’s Czech text, the cast—all making role debuts—worked in close collaboration with dramaturg and diction coach Véronique Firkusny, the daughter of pianist Rudolf Firkusny, one of Martinů’s dearest friends and an early supporter of the BMF. The American Symphony Orchestra (ASO), conducted by Leon Botstein, music director and artistic codirector of Bard SummerScape and the BMF; the Bard Festival Chorale, under the direction of Chorale Master James Bagwell; and director Jean-Romain Vesperini created a production the Times called “dramatically cogent and musically satisfying,” adding that a “strong cast and creative team argued persuasively for the opera’s gleaming orchestrations and sumptuous vocal lines.” Botstein, in his note for the program, set out an ambitious goal for the production: “. . . to place Dalibor in the foreground as a dramatic opera whose humanistic qualities and virtues—all marshalled to defend the centrality of the arts and the power of friendship, based on a shared aesthetic experience, and to defeat tyranny and autocracy—will captivate a new audience.” Captivation accomplished!

Bedřich Smetana’s Dalibor, photo by Maria Baranova

In 11 themed concert programs, Martinů and His World, went deep into the composer’s fascinating life and remarkable work, and the rich cultural world he was such an important part of. “What’s interesting about Martinů,” explains Botstein, “is that he was almost permanently in his career in exile, an émigré, and he was intensely prolific. . . . He as a composer was very eclectic. He didn’t have one style, really, so he modulated from one style to another. . . . He never overstays his welcome as a composer, and he had a real sense of the beauty and the uniqueness of instrumental sounds.”

The opening concert featured two of Martinů’s major orchestral works performed by The Orchestra Now (TŌN) and conducted by Botstein—his Second Symphony, which was commissioned for the Cleveland Orchestra, and Double Concerto, one of the composer’s crowning achievements—as well as his Fantasia for theremin, oboe, string quartet, and piano, which featured Dorit Chrysler, the Austrian theremin virtuoso, composer, musicologist, teacher, and sound artist who is cofounder and creative director of the New York Theremin Society. The following night, Botstein led TŌN in Martinů’s searing response to the Nazis’ annihilation of a Czech village, Memorial to Lidice; his

award-winning Sixth Symphony (Fantaisies symphoniques); his masterly Fourth Piano Concerto, “Incantation”; and the Piano Concertino by his friend Rudolf Firkušný, which had only been performed publicly twice previously. Other highlights included the world premiere of the original French version of Martinů’s one-act opera Mariken de

Nimègue (Mary of Nijmegen); his powerful anti-war cantata Field Mass performed by TŌN with the Bard Festival Chorale; a semistaged concert performance of what is arguably Martinů’s finest work, his opera Julietta, with Botstein, the ASO, the Bard Festival Chorale, Grammy-winning tenor Aaron Blake, and soprano Erica Petrocelli;

Martinů’s opera Julietta, with the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein, Sosnoff Theater

From left: Kevin Thompson, Alfred Walker, Isabelle Kosempa, Aaron Blake, Rodell Rosel, Philip Cokorinos, photo by Matt Dine

Martinů’s Fantasia; Dorit Chrysler, theremin, Alexandra Knoll, oboe; Balourdet Quartet; Orion Weiss, piano, photo by Matt Dine

Joan Tower’s Petroushskates, a recent work that harks back to Martinů in its rich timbral variety and rhythmic drive; and Renée Anne Louprette playing works by Leoš Janáček and Petr Eben on the newly renovated organ of the Episcopal Church of the Messiah in Rhinebeck, New York.

Two free panel discussions, “Why Martinů: Understanding Classical Music, Past and Future” and “Music and Politics: From the Multinational Empire to Contemporary Populism and Autocracy,” as well as preconcert talks by noted scholars, made the 35th Bard Music Festival another in a long line of feasts for the ears and the brain.

Complementing the look back at Martinů (and his world), SummerScape presented several new works, including the world premiere of Pastoral, a collaboration between Fisher Center LAB Choreographer in Residence Pam Tanowitz, who blends modern dance and classical ballet; visual artist Sarah Crowner, whose imagery adorned towering curtains and moveable panels; and composer Caroline Shaw, who overlayed Beethoven’s

Sixth Symphony, nicknamed the “Pastoral,” with sounds from environments urban and rural. A peek into the future was provided by a staged reading of Pulitzer Prize–winner Suzan-Lori Parks’s work-in-progress libretto for Jubilee, an adaptation of Scott Joplin’s 1910 ragtime opera Treemonisha, the first Fisher Center LAB Civis Hope Commission project to be presented publicly.

SummerScape’s Spiegeltent is now legally an adult (Happy 18th!), so it’s no surprise that the revelry was turned up to 11, with the mix of cutting-edge artistry, dazzling performances, dancing, drinks, and dining that the Hudson Valley counts on to make summer weekends sizzle. Some old favorites were back: performance artist Adrienne Truscott as the one and lonely Païge Trnr, the forgotten cabaret legend and figment of her own imagination; Sunny Jain, the “Hendrix of dhol,” shared trance beats and ethereal soundscapes; vocalist, songwriter, composer, and educator Martha Redbone performed her trademark indigenous soul, blues, and American roots music; Meshell Ndegeocello brought her Grammy-winning celebration of

James Baldwin, No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin; John Cameron Mitchell, writer, director, and star of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, presented Queen Bitch, a tribute to all things Bowie; and there was so much more!

How will the Fisher Center top all that in 2026? A tall order, but Spiegeltent will be back pushing boundaries and making bodies move; the Bard Music Festival’s 36th season will be an intensive two-week exploration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (August 7–9 and 14–16, 2026); and SummerScape highlights will include dance from worldrenowned choreographer Lucinda Childs; Suddenly Last Summer: A New Opera, composed by Courtney Bryan and directed by Daniel Fish, with a libretto by Fish and Gideon Lester, Fisher Center artistic director and chief executive; and another noteworthy operatic rarity, Richard Strauss’s The Egyptian Helen, showing once again that, as the Times noted, Botstein’s “zeal for operatic excavation is his true gift: hearing the potential in a dusty score, and then doing something about it.”

The Civis Foundation has made a $2.5 million gift to the Fisher Center at Bard, matched by the College, to create an initial endowment of $5 million for the Civis Hope Commissions. The endowed commissioning fund will support, in perpetuity, the development and production of major new works in the performing arts that explore the subject of hope. The first three projects under the new program are

Jubilee, a new musical based on Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha with a libretto by Pulitzer Prizewinning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks; MacArthur Fellow Courtney Bryan’s first opera, an adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer, which will be directed by Daniel Fish, who was behind the Fisher Center’s Tony Award–winning revival of Oklahoma!; and a musical adaptation of Yentl the Yeshiva

Boy, which will be internationally acclaimed theater and opera director Barrie Kosky’s first project developed in the United States. Civis Hope Commissions productions will support contemporary artists who will examine, interrogate, and transform American artifacts, archival materials, or artworks from the past to imagine a more perfect, just, and hopeful future.

Reading of Jubilee, photo by Maria Baranova

165TH COMM

MENCEMENT

Photo by Karl Rabe

On May 24, 2025, Bard College President Leon Botstein conferred 485 undergraduate degrees on the Class of 2025, 192 graduate degrees, and 53 associate degrees on students from its microcolleges. Former prime minister of Haiti Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis’s Commencement address was delivered by filmmaker Patricia Benoit.

“Exactly a month ago, Professor of Political Studies Jonathan Becker invited me for the fourth time to participate in his class on civic education, and I decided to speak about the ethics of care. We discussed its constitutive elements: attention, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness, all of which relate to consideration of the other. It was wonderful to listen to the students’ questions and to recognize their understanding based on their own experiences. While historical and cultural environments may be different, students from Myanmar, Afghanistan, Congo, are experiencing similar conditions of violence. How can civic engagement mitigate these effects? I explained how my colleagues and I have helped communities of artists whose workshops were ransacked to relocate safely, smallholder farmers to continue to produce, and displaced families to find solace in my home. I had in mind then what I often tell my own students: dare to learn. Use your own reasoning and always uphold the sense of our common humanity. And this leads me to you. The graduating students of Bard college who today celebrate a new beginning. As a distinctive liberal arts institution, Bard demonstrates how studies in philosophy, history, languages, and the arts are necessary to the study of science and are at the intersection of Bard’s commitment to civic education, civic engagement, and an openness to the world. At the heart of this process is the development of critical thinking—that is, the capacity to read and to integrate new ideas, thereby constructing a body of knowledge that challenges the prevailing doxa and creates a new narrative. A new imaginary. The complexity of our time makes this process more urgent as we are confronted with an oversimplified and destructive alternate reality. Alternate truths. And alternate facts. I wish you to remain lifelong learners.”

—Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, president, Fondation Connaissance et Liberté (Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty); professor, Université Quisqueya, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

“I wish I had better news for you, but you don’t need reminding that the world you are entering is unprecedented, particularly for those of you who live in the United States. I could borrow the old clichés or use some new ones, but instead I am going to give you 10 pieces of advice. Think and speak independently. Don’t borrow slogans, code words, or clichés. Be skeptical, find your own words, your own rhetoric, and your own sound. Rely on evidence. Don’t assume everything you hear is true. The President of the United States would like to tell you that his assault on higher education is to protect the Jews of America and to fight antisemitism. As a Jew in the American community, I can think of nothing more false and more nefarious than that claim. He is doing exactly what princes, dukes, and kings did to Jews in the 18th century. It feeds into the most nefarious of all conspiracy theories that everything is controlled by the Jews. As a result, the demolition of Harvard and Columbia is whose fault? The Jews. So, interrogate the difference between false and true claims. Don’t simplify. Things are complex and ambiguous. You need to look at what is told to you by pundits and the media and on the internet with the intuition that things aren’t quite so new or simple. Listen Listening is an art. You should listen to the people who don’t agree with you. You should listen to people who have different ideas. And, from my point of view, you should listen to music, to whatever music you like. Don’t live without music. Resist all forms of violence. Avoid physical violence, obviously, but also shouting at people, humiliating people, hurling curses, epithets—don’t do it. If you hate someone or you think someone is wrong, shouting at them will not improve the chances that you might be able to change their minds and reduce enmity. Don’t give in to fear, even when you are in danger. When my mother was pregnant with my older brother in 1941, her Swiss colleagues in the medical school—she was a professor in the medical school in Zurich—said to her, ‘How can you bring a Jewish child into this world only for that child to be killed?’ Her answer: ‘this is my only way of expressing the hope that we will escape the danger.’ No matter how bleak, there is always a reason for hope. Resist fear because fear leads to cowardice

and to self-censorship. Always keep a sense of irony. Don’t overdo seriousness. Retain the capacity for laughter. Smile about how things don’t always turn out the way they are supposed to. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Don’t give in to envy. It won’t do you any good. You can emulate somebody: you can look at someone—we musicians do it all the time—and say, They can do that, that’s great. I’m going to learn how to do that because it impresses me. I don’t envy the person, because the envy of the person will not make me know how to do it. Emulate, don’t envy. You should never have an excuse to be bored. Boredom leads to envy, and envy to hatred, violence and discrimination, to blaming other people for your life. Sing, write, dance, paint, take photographs, read—not only a short book, but a big one—and you won’t be bored. So, value the excellence around you. Go to an exhibit, old and new art. Whatever you do, you should have no reason to be bored. Remember your teachers. Remember their qualities and the care they gave. Remember Bard College. Stay true to the link between learning and education and democracy and freedom.”

—Leon Botstein, President, Bard College

HONORARY DEGREES

Maja Hoffmann, art collector, film producer, and philanthropist; Josef Joffe, newspaper editor, professor of political studies, and author; and Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, former prime minister of Haiti and president of the Fondation Connaissance et Liberté (Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty) were awarded Doctor of Humane Letters degrees. Yaron Tomer, a board-certified endocrinologist and Marilyn and Stanley M. Katz Dean of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, received an honorary doctor of science degree. And artist and performer Justin Vivian Bond and photographer Cindy Sherman accepted Doctor of Fine Arts degrees.

BARD COLLEGE AWARDS

On May 23, 2025, in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater, Bard College President Leon Botstein and Mollie Meikle ’03, president of the Bard College Alumni/ae Association Board of Governors, celebrated the exceptional achievements of Bard alumni/ae and friends of the College as well as outstanding faculty and staff who were retiring.

In honor of her many years of volunteer service on the Alumni/ae Association Board of Governors and her commitment to the common good through her work as an educator, Penny Axelrod ’63 (1) was awarded the Bard Medal, which honors individuals whose efforts and achievements on behalf of Bard have significantly advanced the welfare of the College. Bo Bo Nge ’04 (2), in recognition of his courage and commitment to the fight for democracy and freedom—a fight he continues as a political prisoner in Myanmar—and Sasha Skochilenko ’17 (3), for her activism and bravery in the face of repression, imprisonment, and adversity, were honored with Laszlo Z. Bito Awards for Humanitarian Service. The John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science went to Jen Gaudioso ’95 (4), pictured with her husband, Damian Donckels, on the occasion of her 30th reunion, for her groundbreaking work in the fields of energy security, climate science, engineering, and artificial intelligence. Also celebrating her 30th reunion, Lisa Kereszi ’95 (5) received the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters in recognition of her personal and innovative work in the field of photography and her long career as an inspiring teacher of the craft. For her tireless commitment to offering legal representation to refugees and asylum seekers, especially those who have experienced trauma and gender-based violence, Angela Edman ’03 (6) was honored with the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service. Joy Harjo (7), internationally renowned poet, musician, and writer of the Muscogee Nation, who served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, accepted the Mary McCarthy Award, which recognizes engagement in the public sphere by an intellectual, artist, or writer. Bardian Awards, which honor the service of longtime members of the Bard community, were given to Visiting Professor of Literature Peter Filkins (8); Vice President for Institutional Planning and Research and Associate Professor of Mathematics Mark Halsey (9); Visiting Associate Professor of Music Peter Laki (10); Bradford Morrow (11), founding editor of Conjunctions, professor of literature, and Bard Center Fellow; and Professor of Spanish Melanie Nicholson (12).

Photos by Brennan Cavanaugh ’88,Chris Kayden, Karl Rabe, Samuel Stuart Hollenshead

DEAR BARDIANS,

At the Alumni/ae Association Board of Governors meeting this past October, I invited Bard President Leon Botsein to join us to give an update on the College and to answer questions from our members. Before opening the floor to questions I asked him, “Leon, after 50 years here, what makes you so deeply committed to the work you do at Bard? And why do you personally support Bard?”

After a long pause he answered, “Education is the only short- and long-term solution for a civilized, free society.”

As we look back and celebrate Bard’s last 50 years, it’s obvious that this is the driving principle behind everything

that Bard has done and everything that Bard will do in the future. On the off chance that you’ve flipped straight to Class Notes and skipped the first half of the issue, here’s a reminder of what Bard is today:

• 10 free, public high schools in six cities across the country granting associate degrees.

• More than 400 students across seven sites enrolled in the Bard Prison Initiative working toward associate, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees.

• Education without borders: 2,500 displaced students taking college classes in Myanmar, Kenya, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, plus 85 more on campus in Annandale.

• 14 graduate programs in locations from the Hudson Valley to the West Bank.

• And, still, an undergraduate college with a 8:1 student to faculty ratio. Small classes change lives.

I hope that you will join me in New York City on March 26, 2026, to honor the great work of the College and celebrate the past 50 years of innovation and excellence, and toast to a bright future.

Bardian and Proud, Mollie Meikle ’03 President, Board of Governors, Bard College Alumni/ae Association alumni@bard.edu

P.S. Please note: quarterly board meetings are open to alumni/ae, students, faculty, staff, and friends. You’re invited!

MARGARET AND JOHN BARD SOCIETY

Mollie Meikle ’03, photo by Chris Kayden

CLASS NOTES

2022

Rainer Turim BHSEC’18 released the second edition of his zine on Keith Haring’s Public School 97 murals from 1985 to 1988. The new edition is limited to 100 handnumbered copies. It features never-before-seen photographs, video stills, and news articles that give context and meaning to the murals Haring painted in this littleknown elementary school courtyard, which now belongs to the Bard High School Early College in Manhattan. Rainer’s writing also covers Haring’s earlier mural at Junior High School 22. Copies are available online and at Village Works Bookstore and Printed Matter.

2021

Kent Priore made his publishing debut with The Monsters Among Us, a dark fantasy horror novel released by Rowan Prose Publishing. The novel follows main character Seth’s life, which has been a product of a diabolical Truman Show—his entire upbringing, a façade orchestrated for malevolent purposes. After his beloved dies, he undergoes a demonic metamorphosis, which causes the world’s fictitious walls to crumble. The Monsters Among Us is book one of The Abyss Borne Gods series; the second, In the Wake of Gods, is scheduled to be out May 2026

2020

Ian Ullmann, who served as an enlisted member of the Air Force Reserve throughout his years at Bard, was commissioned as a

second lieutenant in the US Army Reserve upon completing his MA at Tufts University in May. Edgar Guzman, a jazz musician who is also a sergeant in the Marine Corps Reserve, traveled to Boston for Ian’s commissioning ceremony so he could be the first to render a salute to 2LT Ullmann.

2018

Ella Alexander published her debut novel, The Sleeping Land (Unnamed Press) in February 2025. The novel starts less than two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It follows three junior archeologists and their gloryhound adviser to a remote cave in the heart of the Siberian wilderness to carry out the first extensive Western dig on Russian soil since the execution of the Czar. More of Ella’s writing can be found in LongReads and the Huffington Post

Funto Omojola published If I Gather Here and Shout (Nightboat Books) in November 2024. The book is a deft, musical poetry collection about the disabling effects of illness, rupture, and inheritance—informed both by Yoruba divinatory systems and

2012

Ashley Stegner married Christopher Barnhart at Bard in June. After the outdoor ceremony, the party, which included Ashley’s father, longtime Fisher Center staff member Ray Stegner, Nora Rubenstone-Diaz ’11, and Lauren Forstbauer Chapman MAT ’10, moved into the Spiegeltent for dinner, dancing, and celebration.

violent Western medical understandings of the Black body. If I Gather Here and Shout places Ifá divination practices alongside incantatory prose poems to interrogate the concept of illness in a Western context.

Amando Houser’s show DeliaDelia! The Flat Chested Witch! had its first full New York City run at The Brick Theatre in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, following runs at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Philadelphia Fringe Festival. The production was directed by Kedian Keohan ’16, scenic design by Charlie Mai, featuring music by Simon Paris, and puppetry by Maddie Assarsson

2017

Clark Wolff Hamel was listed as one of New York’s 2025 Pride Trailblazers, recognizing LGBTQ+ New Yorkers fighting for equality and inclusion. Helming PFLAG NYC, New York City’s leading

organization that supports the families of LGBTQ+ young people, Clark is a proud transgender man who has increased the reach and cultural responsiveness of the group’s support meetings. In his former role as the PFLAG NYC’s director of education programs, he fostered collaborations with schools and community organizations in addition to creating and implementing workshops for students, families, teachers, and administrators citywide. He began his journey at PFLAG as a volunteer.

Alejandro Castro Arias was awarded the Hans Ohlms Prize for best debut film at the Oldenburg Film Festival for Harakiri, Me Haces Falta (Harakiri, I Miss You). The film follows three young Latin American men drifting through the streets of Madrid, Spain, clinging to macho rituals and hollow bravado as they spiral into obsession over a quiet, mysterious neighbor.

CITIES PARTIES

As they do every year, Bard’s Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs (ODAA) put on a series of fun-filled 2025 Cities Parties—with the help of fabulous alumni/ae—in Annandale, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland, Santa Fe, Seattle, Somerville, and Springfield. For information on future Cities Parties, visit alums.bard.edu and click on “Events.”

2016

Abby Adler was appointed chief of staff at the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), where she has worked since 2018. In this capacity, she serves as a senior adviser to the executive director, supporting strategic initiatives and promoting the agency’s mission to foster and advance the full breadth of arts, culture, and creativity for all. Founded in 1960, NYSCA supports more than 3,000 arts organizations and artists across New York State annually.

Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez has released a new single, “Go From Here,” and accompanying music video. Raina wrote this song many years ago, and it kept knocking on her door. During the recording process, its meaning and place in her life evolved and took new shape. “Go From Here” can be listened to anywhere you stream music and purchased on Bandcamp.

2008

Sophia Dahlin’s second full length poetry collection, Glove Money, was published by Nightboat Books in October 2025.

Nicholas Shapiro’s new book Homesick (Duke University Press) came out in October 2025. In Homesick, Nicholas draws on almost 15 years working with impacted community members to trace how the story of toxic

emergency housing units expands into a story of how all of our shelters became a seat of exposure and how we can collectively struggle for cleaner indoor air.

Ariel Stess won a 2024 Obie Award for Playwriting for her play KARA & EMMA & BARBARA & MIRANDA.

2007

Bo Ruberg’s latest book How to Queer the World: Radical Worldbuilding through Video Games (NYU Press) was published in April 2025. What does it mean to build a world? Worldbuilding is traditionally understood as an expression of storytelling across media forms. How to Queer the World argues that video games provide us with keen insight into worldbuilding.

2005

Margaux Ogden was interviewed in BOMB Magazine about Tidal Locking, her paintings that were on view at Tif Sigfrids in Athens, Georgia. When asked about her work, Margaux said, “I’m bifurcating the surface. One side mirrors the other, but not in a way that is supposed to be a copy or reflection—more like an echo.”

Caitlin Pearce and Betsy Plum ’08 work together as deputy director and executive director, respectively, of the Riders Alliance, a grassroots organization of transit riders fighting for better subways and buses in New York City. After long stints in public policy and organizing, the two joined forces four years ago to lead this young nonprofit, which is grabbing attention for its robust work on safe, affordable, and reliable service.

Daria Solovieva wrote about her family’s experience during the first 24 hours after the devastating wildfires broke out in Los Angeles in January 2025. The article, “California wildfires show we are not prepared for climate change,” can be read on Salon, where she is deputy money editor. salon.com/writer/daria-solovieva

2003

Laida Lertxundi was appointed Professeur d’enseignement artistique at the Master Art École Nationale Supérieure des BeauxArts de Lyon. Laida hopes to connect with fellow Bard alumni/ae in Paris, France.

Josie Schoel’s book Race and Beauty: Early Modern Cosmetics and the Mythology of Whiteness (Routledge) was published in April 2025. This work examines how beauty standards, specifically the ideology of “fairness,” contributed to the racialization of bodies in early modern England. The book is available for purchase on Amazon or through Routledge.

2002

Mike Fletcher published his edition of Catulli Carmina, originally by Gaius Valerius Catullus, through Scribbnotes in September 2024. In this edition, many of the poems have been translated in such a way as to require new interpretations.

Cynthia Kane published The Pause Principle: How to Keep Your Cool in Tough Situations (Wiley) in January 2025. In the book, Cynthia, a renowned holistic communications expert, reveals her tried-and-tested SOFTEN practice to better handle awkward, difficult, or tense conversations at work by breaking free of automatic reactions including shutting down, running away, yelling, or getting passive aggressive or defensive.

Kristina Klemetti, known professionally as Stacy Gonzalez, was selected as a finalist for an Audie award for her performance in the audiobook for Anita de Monte Laughs Last

1999

Ozan Adam published Time is a Bitch & Fame is a Pimp in March 2025.

Jedediah Berry released his book The Naming Song (Tor Books) in September 2024. In this fantasy adventure novel about the power of language and stories, a courier

of the Names Committee uncovers a conspiracy to ignite a war between the nameless and the named. Accompanied by a patchwork ghost and a fretful monster, her search for the truth of her past opens the door to a revolutionary future—for the words she carries will reshape the world. The book won the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction.

Humanity’s Ruins: Ethics, Feminism, and Genocidal Humanitarianism (Duke University Press), by Danielle Bouchard, was published in August 2025. Danielle examines how genocidal aspirations animate contemporary Western humanitarian projects and discourses, showing that humanitarianism perpetuates fundamentally racist conceptualizations of what it means to be human. She is an associate professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and author of A Community of Disagreement: Feminism in the University (Peter Lang Inc, International Academic Publishers).

1998

Yarrow Paisley released his collection of short stories, Divine In Essence: Stories (Whiskey Tit) in September 2024. The stories of Divine In Essence exemplify a sui

generis slipstream style that deftly weaves a psychedelic literary fabric from elements of fabulism, occult horror, transgressive fiction, and the weird.

1997

Erika Hughes Hooper coauthored Be the Architect of Your Inclusive Classroom: Building Communities for Learning (Teachers College Press, Columbia University), published in February 2025. Based on the authors’ collaborative work with K–12 public school teachers, this practical book offers an invitation to create dynamic learning opportunities in classrooms designed to challenge and support all learners. Erika is also a proud Bard parent.

1996

Jessica Burr directed a cast of four in Nine Moons, a prequel to Shakespeare’s Othello, produced by the Blessed Unrest Theatre Company and The Untitled Othello Project in New York City. The show had 13 performances between May 30 and June 15, 2025.

Abraham (Abe) Rein, a near 20year veteran white collar defense attorney, has been named chair of Post and Schell’s esteemed White Collar and Internal Investigations Practice Group.

1995

Tereza (Topferova) Bottman works as a high school English language development specialist in Portland Public Schools in Oregon, teaching multilingual learners, consulting on best practices in serving students new to English, and in a leadership capacity as a member of the school’s Instructional Leadership Team. Her experience as a first-generation immigrant and passion for advocacy for underserved students led to her engagement with the English Learner Advisory Group and Statewide Multilingual Learner Strategic Plan Workgroup, convened by the Oregon Department of Education to craft the newly unveiled Oregon Multilingual Learner Strategic Plan. Tereza is also a 2024–25 Teachers for Global Education Program Fulbright Fellow and president of

the board of directors of Czech School of Portland, which offers Czech language classes and cultural experiences for the Czech and broader communities in person and online.

1993

Nina Gould, previously chief product officer at Forbes, was promoted to chief innovation officer overseeing its technology and product businesses. Nina will build out Forbes’s strategic approach and alignment in AI and other key areas.

1992

David Cote continues to review theater—from Broadway to OffOff—in New York City. Also a librettist, he has several operas being presented and developed around the country. His acclaimed opera Blind Injustice was presented in July at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, Ohio. David was in residence at Peak Performances at Montclair State University working on a new opera about the life and activism of Paul Robeson. And on February 8, 2026, his recent work Lucidity had its European premiere at Theater Regensburg in Germany.

Susanne Williams is part of an Emmy-winning lighting team on the daytime talk show The Kelly Clarkson Show

1991

Susan D’Agostino has a new Inside Higher Ed column titled “The Public Scholar.” The first installment, “Don’t Wait for Permission to Write for the Public” was published August 4, 2025. In it, Susan encourages folks to share their expertise now, instead of waiting for a public engagement grant or media team to begin, and offers advice on how to do so. In this monthly column, academics and other experts will get fieldtested strategies from Susan, along with a hearty dose of inspiration, to get their writing published in leading newspapers and magazines in ways that help shape public conversations that matter.

1989

Joseph Balletti self-published Old Pokey-Poke, a parable of greed and hatred, in July 2025. The book is available through Kindle direct.

Peter Criswell is serving his fourth term as an Ulster County Legislator, representing District 7 in the City of Kingston, and is in his third year as chair. He feels grateful for the ongoing community support and the opportunity to contribute. Peter also recently stepped into a new role as executive director of the Ulster County Historical Society, which has been both exciting and demanding in all the best ways. Peter continues to sing with Key of Q, the Hudson Valley’s LGBTQ+ and Allied a cappella singers, and serve on their board. It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly 10 years since he bought his home across the river in Kingston. He remains connected to the College and continues to serve on the Bard College Alumni/ae Association Board of Governors.

1986

In May, Jim Salvucci released a new book on leadership, Greater than Great, gave a TEDx talk, and moved from Newburgh, New York, to Wilmington, Delaware.

1978

Flora Eyster was interviewed for an article in Bandcamp Songtradr, featuring jazz flutists and spotlighting the original jazz composition “Riffster.” The article includes Flora in a list of worldclass jazz flutists and highlights her time spent with former Bard professor Roswell Rudd. In her career, Flora has performed with blues superstars and always participates in the alumni/ae jazz music concert during Commencement and Alumni/ae

Reunion Weekend. Flora also teaches and plays 40 woodwind instruments. Her most popular programs for young people are Meet the Flute Family and Jazz Cafe. Flora released her latest album, Ave 51 Poems with Riffs Messing with Maria, in August 2023.

1979

David Segarnick’s recent publications include “Reperfusion of Ischemia in the Heart or Brain” in The Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, “Fibrinolysis was Misunderstood” in Karger, and “Silacrown ethers as ion transport modifiers and preliminary observations of cardiovascular cell line response” in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry

1977

Dennis Barone’s new poetry book, Far-Dale, was released in July 2025. Far-Dale is published by Karyn Kloumann ’92 through The Nauset Press.

Bruce Wolosoff released his solo piano variations on House of the Rising Sun in November 2024 on Avie Records. The album’s CD booklet includes an interview with legendary music critic Tim Page.

1976

Patricia Griffin Mackie recently celebrated 40 years as a New York State licensed architect. After graduating from Bard, she went to the Harvard Graduate School of Design, earning her master’s degree in architecture in 1980. She completed her apprenticeship and passed the New York State exam, becoming a registered architect in 1985, and has worked as an architect in New York City ever since. There are more than 100,000 licensed architects in the country, and Pat is one of the fewer than 500 women of color.

Grant Harper Reid was part of an exhibit featuring Jimi Hendrix’s 1969 performance in Harlem, New York, that was on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

1974

Christine Wade traces the misunderstood legacy of the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag and makes the case for its renewal in her article “Reclaiming the Rattlesnake on Flag Day” for The Overlook (Saugerties, New York).

1973

Kristin Waters recently returned from Martinique, where she received the 2025 Frantz Fanon Outstanding Book Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association for Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought. The award was particularly gratifying to Kristin, since the conference celebrated the 100th anniversary of Frantz Fanon’s birth in his birthplace.

1970

Peter Boffey’s 1984 Israel Commentary 2025 consists of a collection of his poetry (Israel 1984: A Personal Mobile), commentary produced while revisiting the poems, and an essay exploring greater debates concerning the current situation in Israel and Palestine. The threepart piece is designed to foment a deep questioning of standard histories and historiography, subjecting habitual assumptions to further scrutiny and ultimately broaching unsettling questions about the resilience of institutional democracy in the Middle East as well as the long-term sustainability of a militarized political State of Israel. It can be accessed on his website: peterboffey.com.

Steven Miller is pleased to announce his publication of Unresolved Museum Issues: a voice from the inside – 1985 to now (BookBaby) in June 2025. The book is a collection of 25 new and previously published essays centered on the importance of museum collections. This includes their care, scholarly role, the administrative attention they

Robert Kramer ’79 and Catherine Storms Fischer ’79 were friends as undergraduates, but had lost touch. Five years ago, Robert was living in the West Bank and working on a biography; Catherine was involved in peace-building efforts between Israelis and Palestinians. But that’s not when they reconnected. They were brought together because of Jina Rishmawi AQB ’22 CHRA ’24, whose grandmother

deserve, and their disposal by unprotected selling. Steven has nearly 60 years in the profession as a curator, director, trustee, consultant, museum studies educator, and writer.

1963

Nan Toby Feldman Tyrrell’s four years at Bard shaped and changed her life, with strong memories of her friendships and teachers who opened her mind, heart and soul. Living now in Port Townsend, Washington, Nan Toby still keeps sharp snapshots of working during her four field periods, where she discovered the magic of working with young children. Bard College planted seeds and roots for her to grow and challenge herself, and she is grateful to have been able to study and experience life on the deepest level as she was still evolving into the woman she is today.

was the subject of Robert’s research, and whose sister, a guide, had introduced Catherine to the rest of her family. When Bard inevitably came up in conversation, the connection was made, and so—of course— when Jina’s wedding was announced, it was a certainty that Robert and Catherine would be there to celebrate, and to have their first in-person conversation in 46 years.

CONSERVATORY GRADUATE CONDUCTING PROGRAM

2005

Elizabeth Askren was announced as director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra and associate professor adjunct at the Yale School of Music, beginning in the 2025–26 academic year. Elizabeth brings with her a wealth of experience as a conductor, educator, and advocate for inclusive excellence in the arts. She is widely recognized for her collaborative spirit, technical command, and a deep commitment to fostering musical growth. Currently Hawai’i Opera Theatre’s first principal guest conductor and a music staff member at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Elizabeth has led performances praised for their clarity, vitality, and expressive depth.

LOOKING DOWN

1) After the funeral she walked to the sea. She had traveled far to get to this last ritual. For her friend. And she had journeyed on her own. So, no one missed her when she left the cool dim space of the church that she had attended as a child. It had been years since she’d been in any church.

2) Out. Into the blasting July sun. The day clear as a clicking sound. She waited by a side door until all the other mourners had emerged. Then, still unobserved, she turned away from where they stood. Their backs bowed. The widower’s gentle hazel eyes aimed toward the earth.

3) Alone, she followed the land’s curve until she was out of sight of the people clustered at the church entrance. Or its exit.

4) She took off her shoes and let them dangle against her side. The sand yielded beneath her heels as she stepped. At the shore’s edge, she tossed her shoes as far into the surf as she could. She didn’t want them.

5) The water around her ankles cold, despite the day’s hot hot. The low waves, curling in, waved at her. Invited her out. She answered. Knee deep. Thigh deep. Her blue skirt growing darker with the wet. The dark of sorrow. Deeper she went, until her green blouse stuck to her breasts.

6) The horizon didn’t get closer as she approached it. Of course it didn’t.

7) She lifted her legs and floated. Her back in the sea. Her front bobbling. Light and air changing with each easy up and down. A distant airplane, high in the sky, like a silver minnow. Her hair went Ophelia.

8) She was nine years older than the body of the woman in the wooden box in the church. That husk all that remained of her friend, who had been hunted by illness for years. Pain fought. Respite won. Pain redux. Finally, illness the victor.

9) Her younger friend’s body—now on its way to the cemetery—had, when it was a living girl, followed her. Into teenage giddiness. Then bride. Mother. Grandmother. Only in the death dance had her friend leapt ahead.

10) Bouyant in the water, and having so recently looked into the casket (open, as expected in this village), she remembered a different time of looking down. At the new baby that her friend had been then. Round. Plump. Beautiful. Especially the eyes, bright and gentle as the eyes of the devastated husband who had stood outside the church, with something inside him crushed.

11) She had, herself, been a child the first time she had gazed at the other child, the newborn. The tiny blanket like a pink sea in which the infant drifted, asleep. The baby’s toy lamb cuddled against the slats of the crib. Or, another time, not long after, the baby friend’s arms asking her, without words, for “Up! Up!”

13) And she had lifted the child up.

14) “Up! Up!,” she now said to her own liquid-suspended self. “Up.”

15) She dipped her feet downward. Stood. Slipped on the rocky seabed.

16) No matter how carefully she looked down, no matter how much she tried to balance, she stumbled—again and again—as she struggled toward shore.

René Houtrides MFA ’97 (relatively) recently resigned her position on the faculty of Juilliard’s drama division. Her short stories have appeared in The Georgia Review; New Ohio Review; Mississippi Review; Tishman Review; Carve Magazine; Kestrel; The Vincent Brothers Review; Crack the Spine; The Courtship of Wind; Action, Spectacle; Mobius: The Journal of Social Change; and other publications. One of her Georgia Review stories was included in that journal’s 2011 retrospective issue of finest short stories from the past 25 years. renehoutrides.com

MILTON AVERY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE ARTS

2025

Lucia Reisig presented a solo show of sculptures at MIMO Gallery in Brooklyn, New York.

Matthew Li is a recipient of a Smack Mellon artist studio residency, in Brooklyn, New York. This year-long residency includes a studio, fellowship, and access to materials.

2022

mj daines has been awarded a two year Core Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas. She will be in residence through July 2027.

2018

Austin Martin White presented Tracing Delusionships, his second solo exhibition at Petzel Gallery in New York City and his first at Petzel’s Chelsea space. White’s large-scale canvases and works on paper draw from ruins, archives, and inherited images. His layered compositions reconfigure fragments of the past, testing how painting can hold structure and collapse, clarity and distortion— keeping history alive through acts of reinterpretation and transformation.

2016

Daisy Atterbury published The Kármán Line, described as “a new cosmology” (Lucy Lippard) and “a cerebral altar to the desert” (Raquel Gutiérrez). The Kármán Line investigates queer life and fantasies of space and place with an interest in unraveling colonial narratives in the American Southwest.

2011

For the International Art Biennial of Antioquia and Medellín, Richard Garet presented nine works from The Perceptual Series, a complete cycle of 31 moving-image compositions that transcode sonic material into visual form. Grounded in the artist’s concept of “material sound,” where sonic matter functions simultaneously as both material and instrument, each work is generated through algorithmic and generative processes that transform urban noise, electromagnetic signals, and other sound-based data into visual structures.

2003

S Topiary Landberg’s new short film Lesbian Custody, codirected with Molly Skonieczny, had its premiere at Frameline the San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival and screened at the Hammer Museum as part of the Outfest Legacy Project screening series last June. Additional screenings took place at Yale University; DocLisboa in Lisbon, Portugal; Kyoto and Tokyo, Japan; Dayton, Ohio; and at the Lesbian Lives Conference at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

2002

Bobby Abate has joined the Film/Video faculty at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Their solo exhibition Big Bad ran May 17 to June 22, 2025, at Delaware Valley Arts Alliance in Narrowsburg, New York. Recent residencies include Zaratan – Arte Contemporânea in Lisbon, Portugal, and Moulin à Nef, Auvillar, France.

2001

Michelle Handelman’s film BloodSisters: Leather, Dykes and Sadomasochism (1995) screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on the occasion of the film’s 30-year anniversary. The screening was part of the series Queer and Uncensored.

Carolyn Kuebler published her first novel in May 2024, Liquid, Fragile, Perishable (Melville House Press).

1991

Lily Prince exhibited paintings in the group show In Bloom at 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel in Basel, Switzerland, from June 17 to August 31, 2025. This was Lily’s first European gallery representation.

BARD GRADUATE CENTER

2013

Sarah Rogers Morris, after attending President Leon Botstein’s virtual fireside chat in May 2025, was inspired to write an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Want to Save Democracy? Teach Art History.” In the article, Sarah argues that visual comparison cultivates thinking skills that are vital to political life.

2006

Harriette Kaley gave a very wellreceived presentation in March 2025 to the psychoanalytic community on a paper based on her Bard Graduate Center thesis: an art-historical investigation of Sigmund Freud’s antiquities collection.

CENTER FOR CURATORIAL STUDIES

1998

Regine Basha curated the exhibition Common Sentience at 601Artspace in New York City. It featured an intergenerational group of artists—Janine Antoni, Daniel Bozhkov, Zana Briski, Juan

William Chávez, Ania Freer, Hope Ginsburg, Goldie, Poblador, Ana Prvacki, and Miguel Sbastida. Basha also curated the Fall 2025 International artists-in-residence exhibition at Artpace in San Antonio, Texas.

In March 2025, Zhang Zhaohui had a solo exhibition, The Light of Ink, at Crossing Art gallery in Chelsea (New York). The exhibition featured 20 ink brush works, most of which were created during the pandemic, when Zhaohui was residing in the forests of Massachusetts, where he engaged in a profound period of reflection about nature, existence, and spirituality.

2003

Jimena Acosta Romero recently published The ABC of Design, the first bilingual monograph of Mexican designer Emiliano Godoy. Her independent publishing house, Toronja Ediciones, was founded in 2018 and is dedicated to publishing books that explore contemporary design from a critical perspective.

2005

After “retiring” from her career as an independent curator at the end of 2024, Janice (Jyeong Yeon) Kim has been working as the CEO of HIVE, a new art fair that will launch in Seoul in May 2026.

2015

Uruguayan curator and arts administrator Roxana Fabius has been appointed director of the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (MNAV) in Montevideo, Uruguay. MNAV houses the largest public collection of paintings and sculptures in the country. This new position brings her back to her home country after 12 years in New York City attending graduate school and working in several arts organizations, including A.I.R. Gallery, Ford Foundation, and The Neighborhood in Brooklyn.

2022

Marina Caron was assistant curator for Once Within a Time, the 12th SITE Santa Fe International (on view through January 12, 2026) as well as managing editor

for the exhibition guidebook and catalogue. She has been appointed assistant curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center.

Sofia D’Amico and Danni Shen cocurated Ontopo 2025: Sensory Cultivation at Bak Lim Sa (Catskill Zendo), a Chogye Zen Buddhist monastery in Catskill, New York. Structured as an annual hybrid between an artist-led convening and a lightly held temple stay, Ontopo offers an experimental framework for presenting new work—one that sits at the edge of Zen practice while remaining in active conversation with it. Over two days, artists, performers, musicians, and poets came together for shared meals, meditation, and ritual, alongside performances and offerings that test the boundaries of site, form, and immediate spiritual contexts.

2023

Abel González Fernández is the associate curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. He is excited to be curating an upcoming survey of Detroit’s legendary textile artist Carole Harris, whose work has influenced several generations of Detroiters across the art and design field.

2025

After graduating from CCS Bard in May, Zuhra Amini started her new role as curator at the Gochman Family Collection in July 2025.

CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC GRADUATE PROGRAMS

VOCAL ARTS PROGRAM

2009

Rachel Schutz published a book titled Welsh Vocal Music: A Guide to Lyric Diction and Repertoire with Routledge. The book introduces audiences to a rich body of art song, choral music, and opera by Welsh composers as well as giving them the tools to accurately and confidently sing in the Welsh language.

IN MEMORIAM

1946

Charles Dyson Friou, 99, died October 16, 2025. Charlie attended P.S. 193 and Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, New York, before coming to Bard on the GI Bill. He began college as a history major, but earned his bachelor’s degree in religion. He then went to Yale University Divinity School for his master’s and immediately embarked on missionary work with the American Friends Service Committee in Gaza, Palestine, where he was head of the Maghzi camp of 10,000 refugees. In 1951, Charlie was ordained a Congregational minister of the gospel and served churches in Flushing, New York, and Chester, New Jersey, before becoming pastor of Ingram Memorial Congregational Church in Washington, DC, where he served from 1956 to 1969. Charlie helped organize the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1970, he moved to the Health and Human Services Community Services Administration (CSA), overseeing the same types of community programs that defined his ministry; he retired in 1991. Charlie returned to campus often for reunions, well into his nineties, and was especially happy to see Congressman John Lewis, with whom he worked in 1963, at Commencement in 2017. Charlie was predeceased by his wife, Odette Simone Schwengeler Friou, and is survived by their daughters: Odette Kent, Louise Fudge, and Suzanne Friou.

1948

Nancy Levin Edelstein, 97, died December 19, 2024. She was a member of Bard’s first coed class, and studied art with Harvey Fite ’30. Nancy remained part of the Bard community her whole life. An accomplished sculptor, visual artist, and supporter of the arts, she was long affiliated with the Broward Art Guild and was a founding member of the Tarpon River Art Collective. Raised in the Detroit area, Nancy raised her own

children in New Rochelle, New York. She was a 40-year resident of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and a lifelong summer resident of Hilton Beach, Ontario. She is survived by her children: Andrew, Carolyn, and Matthew.

Joann Rosenberger Lang, 98, died September 2, 2024. After graduating from Bard, Joann earned a master’s in social work from New York University. In 1993, Joann, along with Safe Horizon, opened a fully owned and operated domestic violence shelter, which was named Lang House in honor of her and her husband. She had been an active board member since 1997 and was honored with two Lifetime of Service Awards from Safe Horizon. She also served on the board of the Jewish Home and Hospital for 30 years and was a member of the resident care committee. Joann is survived by her sister, Gerrie Soman, and children: William, James, Nancy, and Carolyn.

Selda Steckler (née Jerrold) died July 20, 2025. After graduating as part of Bard’s first coed class, Selda received a master’s in social work from Columbia University and a master’s in education from New York University. She then began a long and successful career as a special education teacher, working first with visually impaired children and then with children with learning disabilities. As a passionate and creative educator, Selda also developed and utilized individualized teaching materials for those with special needs. These learning puzzles were later acquired by a company that produced educational materials. After her retirement, Selda became an accomplished sculptor, working with wood, alabaster, and metal. She was predeceased by her husband, Mortimer, and is survived by her son, Steven, and daughter, Amy.

1949

Roger D. Isaacs, 99, died February 19, 2025. Roger’s studies were interrupted by World War II when he joined the 87th Infantry Division. He fought in France and Germany, was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge, received the

Purple Heart, and was named a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in recognition of his service. After the war, he learned about Bard from his cousin, Nancy Edelstein ’48 (see above), during a visit to the home of faculty member Harvey Fite ’30. Roger earned his BA in Languages and Literature from Bard and went on to become a pioneer in public relations, helping found the Public Relations Board and growing it into an international agency. He also served on the boards of directors of the Chicago Crime Commission, Highland Park Hospital, North Shore University Health System, North Bank/Wintrust, WBEZ, and as a member of the advisory council at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago. His proposal for a “Declaration of Interdependence” with Europe was used as the basis for President John F. Kennedy’s July 4, 1962, speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Roger was also an independent researcher, specializing in Hebrew Bible studies; his 2010 book, Talking With God, is a recontextualization of Hebrew words, biblical texts, and Abrahamic religions through lenses of linguistics, physics, and chemistry. Roger was predeceased by his wife of 72 years, Joyce, and is survived by his daughters, Gillian (mother of Orion Isaacs ’15) and Jan.

1953

Charles Naef, 94, died February 25, 2025. Charlie spent his early years in Zürich, Switzerland, but the family returned to the United States when he was 17. At Bard, he roomed with Martin Johnson, who would be a lifelong friend. Charlie was drafted into the Army, serving in West Germany, and continued to serve in Army Active Reserves until 1957. He earned a master’s and PhD from Rutgers University, where he met the love of his life, Susan. Charlie taught comparative government, international relations, and politics for 35 years at Colgate University, where he also played a major role in the development of the International Relations and Peace Studies Programs. Charlie actively served the village and town of Hamilton as

well as the wider region, and was elected mayor in 1999. He also held leadership positions in local organizations, including the Rotary and Hamilton Clubs, the Hamilton Interfaith Service Group, and the Hamilton Forum Steering Committee. In 2015, for recognition of his political and civic contributions to Hamilton and Madison County, he received the Madison County Democratic Committee’s annual James and Dolley Madison Service to the Community Award. He is survived by his wife, Susan, and son Eric.

1956

Thomas Rhodes Rockwell, 91, died September 27, 2024. Tom was the author of How To Eat Fried Worms, which won the Mark Twain Award in 1975, and many other beloved children’s books. He was born in New Rochelle, New York, but his parents, Mary and Norman Rockwell, soon moved the family to West Arlington, Vermont. Tom met artist Gail Sudler ’55 at Bard; they married and made their home in LaGrange, New York. For almost 40 years, Tom was the manager of the Norman Rockwell Family Agency, and he collaborated on his father’s autobiography, My Adventures as an Illustrator. Tom leaves behind his son, Barnaby, and daughter, Abigail.

Richard Crittenden Sewell, 89, died September 14, 2024. As a student at Bard, Dick became the youngest person to win the Glascock Poetry Prize. Publications featuring his poetry included The Quarterly Review of Literature and The New Yorker. His facility with language led the Army to train him in Russian at the language school at Monterey, California. While stationed in Germany, he won his first directing award with a production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar for a festival created for the Seventh Army Special Services. Dick taught and created theater at High Mowing School, the Coburn Classical Institute, and the Oak Grove-Coburn Schools in central Maine. He received many awards, including for his adaptation of Nathan the Wise, his book In the Theater of Dionysus, and his play The Winter Crane. In 1970, he cofounded a professional classical

rep company, Theater at Monmouth. Dick was artistic director and actor there for more than 25 seasons. In 1974, he was hired by Colby College to begin an official theater program and help design Strider Theater, where he spent nearly 30 years. In 2023, he returned to Strider for its final production, Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice. Dick acted in five films, an NBC true-crime TV series, and a dozen commercials. He is survived by his wife, Kim; son, Gavin; daughter, Bronwyn; and stepdaughter, Gabrielle.

1957

Alice Jane Mariani (née Gladstone), 87, died November 23, 2024. Alice excelled academically, earning her GED at 16, and attended New York University before transferring to Bard, where she met her husband, Umberto. Alice earned a PhD in comparative literature from Yale University in 1967, with expertise in Homer’s Odyssey. Her intellectual and creative spirit extended to her love of folk and classical music, poetry, literature, and art. She collaborated with her husband on several Italian-English translations, showcasing their shared passion for language and culture. Alice dedicated her career to teaching English as a Second Language, empowering countless immigrants in New Jersey to thrive in their new communities. Her lifelong commitment to social justice was expressed through her active involvement in civil rights organizations, including decades of service to the American Civil Liberties Union. For more than 20 years, she also played a pivotal role in coordinating the Somerset County Free Legal Clinic, providing essential support to those unable to afford legal services. Alice was predeceased—by 15 days—by Umberto. She is survived by her daughters, Francesca and AnnaLisa.

1958

Florence Elinor Bayne, 87, died August 31, 2024. Ellie was the youngest of her family, preceded by three elder sisters, and surprised them when she was born minutes after her twin brother, Tommy. Ellie was mostly raised by

other relatives after her mother fell ill when she was only five years old. She was introduced to the Episcopal Church while living with her cousin, Ellie, after whom she was named. At Bard, Ellie studied French by translating plays and books. She loved teaching elementary school and working as a librarian. Ellie drove a British Rover and joined a road rally club, where she met her true love, Jimmie, who raced a convertible TR3. She became his navigator in the car and in life, where he trusted her without hesitation. They married in 1960. Ellie is survived by her daughter, Debbie.

Benjamin Lambert Hall, 90, died May 29, 2025. Born at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, he soon earned the nickname “Buzz” for his constant movement. As a teenager, he was the lead tenor in the Edgartown Federated Church choir, and he studied music and performed at Bard and beyond. A fascination with electronics led him to become a technician and appliance repairman, and he went on to work at a Boston radio factory, where he quickly advanced to quality control. Buzz founded Edgartown Electrical Equipment Corp. with a childhood friend, and his repair skills made him legendary among lovers of antique radio and tube amplifiers. He also worked in the family business, keeping the Capawock, Strand, Island, Dreamland, and Elm theaters on the island running. He and his wife, Therese, established a business restoring and renting homes to young families and workers, and they became known for their generosity to those often overlooked. Buzz was predeceased by Therese and is survived by his sons, Benjamin Lambert Hall Jr. and Brian-Alexander McKinnon Hall, and two sisters, Charlotte and Marcia.

1959

Bertram (Bob) Henry Bernstein, 87. Bob was a devoted husband, father, grandfather and physician. Born to Dorothy and David Bernstein on April 14, 1937, in Nyack, New York, Bob attended Bard on a full academic scholarship before earning his

medical degree from New York Medical College in 1963. He completed his residency at Lenox Hill Hospital, during which he also served in the Army Medical Corps. While continuing his work as an attending physician at Lenox Hill, Bob established a successful private practice in New York City, where he cared for many patients who adored him, including numerous professional athletes who played on the New York Rangers, Yankees, and Mets. During this time, he met Linda, a nurse at Lenox Hill Hospital. They married in 1977. After 35 years practicing medicine, Bob retired with Linda in Rhinebeck, where he found a community of wonderful friends. In addition to his wife, he is survived by his children Adam, Brad, and Scott.

1961

Charles Leland Currey, 86, died March 25, 2025. After graduating with a degree in psychology from Bard, Chuck earned a master’s degree in vocational rehabilitation from Syracuse University. In 1995, he retired from a lengthy career of helping people as a senior vocational rehabilitation counselor for the State of New York’s Vocational Educational Services for Individuals with Disabilities Program. Although he was against the Vietnam War, he enlisted in the Navy and was an interior communications specialist on the guided missile destroyer Henry B. Wilson. He was grateful to be rescuing his fellow soldiers instead of taking human lives, and was honorably discharged in 1968. He was a member of the Protestant Young Adult group, where he met his wife, Dorothy. Chuck was a classically trained pianist, and played guitar, banjo, and hammered dulcimer. He was a member of the Electric City Chorus for more than 40 years. Also, an Authur Murray–trained ballroom dancer, he later developed a love for country line dancing and enjoyed going to the Singles Outreach Services parties. His other hobbies included riding his speeder train and steam engine around the track at Adirondack Live Steamers and cleaning up the Hudson River waterways as a volunteer for North River Friends

of Clearwater. Chuck is survived by his daughters Lisa, Michele, and Dawn.

1962

Ralph Levine, 85, died July 10, 2025. Ralph had perfect musical pitch and was a natural athlete. A graduate of PS 11 in the Bronx and Bronx High School of Science, Ralph intended to enroll in the 3-2 Program with Columbia University, but decided to change his major from physics to mathematics. He went on to earn a master’s and doctorate from Harvard, and had a long and successful career in educational administration, culminating in decades in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department at Stanford University.

George S. Wislocki, 89, died September 21, 2024. George was the founding director of the Berkshire Natural Resources Council (BNRC), a nonprofit dedicated to conservation and public access to unspoiled lands. Thanks to his abilities to raise funds, negotiate with landowners and win political allies, BNRC now owns or holds conservation restrictions on nearly 26,000 acres of land. George could be wry and creative, using a sense of humor and showmanship to make a point the media and the public would remember. For many, the master class on that was how George and his best friend came up with the fictional town of Ripton, Massachusetts, and used it to subtly poke Boston-area political leaders who seemed to forget there was a commonwealth beyond Brookline. George served as executive director of the BNRC through 2001. His higher-level understanding of why people cared about environmental issues—or why they should care—made a difference. He is survived by his wife, Alice; son, Stash; and daughter, Anya.

1963

Abigail Hubbell Rosen McGrath, 84, died December 20, 2024. Born in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance, Abigail was a colorful woman with many talents. Aside from teaching writing, she was an actress, writer, model, local columnist, and producer; she

played a role in the Andy Warhol film Tub Girls, was the niece of acclaimed novelist and story writer Dorothy West, and the daughter of poet Helene Johnson. At Bard, she met her first husband, Leonard Rosen ’63. She went on to write, produce, and act in productions with the Off Center Theatre in Manhattan, where she met her second husband, Tony McGrath. Together, they produced political satire, experimental works, Shakespeare plays, and free theater for children. They would drive their truck to the city’s roughest neighborhoods to perform at schools, in the streets, and in parks. In 2000, Abigail created the Renaissance House writing retreat in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, to honor the memory of her mother and aunt. After 25 years, it is still one of the few retreats for issue-oriented writers, writers of color, and writers on social justice. She is survived by her son, Jason Rosen.

Sandra Fisk Porter, 85, died October 17, 2024. Sandy was adopted at two days old and raised on a small gentleman’s farm in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. In her teenage years, Sandy met jazz musician Ran Blake ’59, who became a dear friend and mentor. Although she was not a musician herself, she was a lifelong jazz enthusiast. While in college, Sandy met her future husband, architect Tyrus Porter (as in-house architect for the Boston Red Sox, he was instrumental in saving Fenway Park from demolition). They married in Berkeley, California, in 1961. Sandy was a passionate peace activist, experimental gourmet cook, and enthusiastic weaver. She earned two master’s degrees in special education and worked in several Massachusetts school systems. At age 40, unexpectedly and remarkably, she met her biological father for the first time, along with her newfound sisters, Cynthia and Wendy. She and Tyrus spent years cruising in an antique wooden boat in the Charles River, then to the coast of Maine in a more reliable troller, and for two decades throughout beautiful European canals in a lovely Dutch vessel aptly named Wanderlust. She is survived by her

son, Mark Porter, and daughter, Kira Hower.

Lane Sarasohn, 82, died April 16, 2025. Lane was a writer and film producer, best known for Not Necessarily the News (1982), This Just In (1993), and The Munsters Today (1988). At Bard, Lane cowrote for Channel One Underground TV with classmates Chevy Chase ’68 and Ritchie Allen ’67, which later morphed into The Groove Tube (1974), directed by Ken Shapiro ’65.

1968

Libby Titus (nee Jurist), 77, died October 13, 2024. Libby was born in Woodstock, New York, and was best known to the public as a singer-songwriter. “Love Has No Pride,” which she wrote with Eric Kaz and released on her second album, Libby Titus, has been recorded by Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, Rod Stewart, Tracy Nelson, and Daryl Braithwaite, among others. Libby collaborated with countless songwriters, sang harmony on many recordings, had a few film roles, and was the subject of several musical tributes from artists such as Carly Simon, Dr. John, and Wendy Waldman. In the late ’80s, Libby became a concert promoter and impresario, enlisting her myriad friends and collaborators for special concerts in restaurants and clubs around New York City. These shows led to a reconnection with Donald Fagen ’69, whom she married in 1993, and the creation of the New York Rock and Soul Revue. She is survived by Donald and her daughter, musician Amy Helm. Libby’s son from a previous marriage, Ezra Titus, died in 2009.

1969

Deborah Cook, 77, died November 25, 2024. Debbie earned her BA in studio art from Bard and moved to Eastport, Maine, in the 1970s, where she ran a restaurant, and in the ’80s to Stonington, where she purchased land and built a house with her partner, James Day. In Stonington, she worked at Petersen’s Pharmacy, was one of the directors of the Deer Isle Food Co-op, and a volunteer at Stonington Public Library. For 19 years, Debbie worked as a

pharmacy tech at Blue Hill Memorial Hospital. With that connection, she also went on several medical mission trips to Ecuador. In 2009, Debbie returned to New Preston, Connecticut, to care for her aging mother. She is survived by her brothers, Timothy and Jeffrey.

Pierre Joris, 78, died February 27, 2025. Pierre was born in Strasbourg, France. His father was a surgeon and his mother worked as an administrator in her husband’s practice. Pierre graduated from the Lycée Classique in Diekirch, Luxembourg, in 1964, briefly studied medicine in Paris to fulfill the wishes of his parents, and then moved to the United States. In 1975, he received a master’s degree from the University of Essex in England in the theory and practice of literary translation. From 1976 to 1979, he taught in the English department of Université Constantine 1 in Algeria. He earned a PhD in comparative literature from SUNY Binghamton in 1990 and taught at SUNY Albany from 1992 to 2013. Pierre was best known as a poet and translator. In eight books published over more than 50 years, beginning in 1967 when he was an undergraduate, Pierre sought to render in English some of the 20th century’s most difficult verse, the complex work of the German-Romanian poet Paul Celan; to transmit what can’t be communicated in words—the Holocaust and its many aftermaths, physical and psychological—by creating an open-ended poetry of multiple possible meanings. Pierre also translated writers such as Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Sam Shepard from English to French and published more than 80 volumes of his own work, including Interglacial Narrows: Poems 2015–2021 and Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello, both from Contra Mundum Press. Poasis II: Selected Poems 2000–2024, was published posthumously by Wesleyan University Press. Pierre is survived by his sister, Michou; wife, performance artist Nicole Peyrafitte; son, filmmaker Miles

Joris-Peyrafitte ’14; and stepson, colorist Joseph Mastantuono.

1970

Michael Edward McAllister, 76, died May 20, 2025. After graduating from Bard, Michael earned a master of arts degree from New York University and a master of social work at the State University of New York at Albany. For more than four decades, Michael devoted his professional life to public service across numerous New York City agencies. As a behavioral therapist and director of both mental health and substance misuse/abuse programs, he worked tirelessly to support individuals from diverse communities. His efforts helped countless people find paths toward sobriety and healthier lives. He is survived by his brother, Paul; sister, Margaret; wife, Livia; son, Colin; and stepson, Devin.

1972

Robert Cummings Wesson, 73, died February 15, 2024. Originally from Chicago, Robert came to Bard to study painting. After graduation, he moved to Tribeca, working as an art director on feature films. A penchant for travel and the sea led him to earn his captain’s license, and he spent many years sailing yachts between Maine and the Caribbean. In 1986, he left New York City for Bellingham, Washington, joined a year later by Kathleen Beriont ’73. They bought and moved aboard a 1926 53-foot Alden schooner, racing her in classic yacht regattas. Robert went on to work as a vessel master for Clean Sound Cooperative and Marine Spill Response Corporation, finishing his professional career at the Department of Ecology as lead vessel inspector, monitoring maritime compliance for ships entering Puget Sound. Leaving liveaboard life behind, he and Kathleen purchased a classic 1906 craftsman and spent several years restoring it into a gracious family home. The lure of the sea resurfaced, and Robert purchased his last boat: a beautifully restored 1910 40-foot schooner, sailing it well into retirement. In addition to Kathleen, he is survived by a son, Henry.

1973

Susan Pickhardt died July 9, 2025. A lifelong advocate for young people, Susan dedicated more than 35 years to secondary education as a highly respected guidance counselor in the Rochester, New York, area. After graduating with a degree in psychology from Bard, she earned a master’s in education from the University of Rochester. She brought wisdom, empathy, and unwavering support to those she served at Nazareth Academy and in the Victor and Greece public school systems. Even after retirement, Susan remained a steadfast champion for education, volunteering her time and expertise within the Rochester City School District. Susan was a faithful and devoted member of St. Thomas Episcopal Church. She was a fierce and passionate advocate for equal rights and a voice for those too often unheard. She is survived by her husband of 67 years, Charles, and her sons, Steven, Kevin, and Jonathan.

1974

Richard Julian Gladdys, 74, died July 13, 2025. After Bard, he pursued graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In 1976, Richard married Georgiana, and the couple settled in Conway, Massachusetts, where they raised their two children. Later, they moved to Plymouth, where Richard worked for several large construction firms as director of business development. A civicminded man, he served the town of Plymouth for many years on the finance committee. In 2024, he fulfilled a lifelong dream by publishing his poetry collection, Notes from the Sargasso Sea—a deeply personal accomplishment that reflected his courage, perseverance, and literary spirit. In addition to Georgiana, he is survived by his son, Benjamin, and daughter, Marcy.

Barry Weintraub, 74, died August 13, 2025. He specialized in civil rights law, and was named one of Washington’s Best Lawyers by Washingtonian Magazine.

1975

Gerald Drucker, 71, died April 4, 2024. Growing up, Jerry spent summers on Fire Island, New York, where he was a lifeguard and surfer. After graduating from high school he followed his surfing dream to Southern California and attended UC Irvine. Surfing temporarily won out, and he left college and moved to the beaches of Mexico, but soon returned to academics, graduating from Bard with a degree in psychology. He went on to earn a PhD in psychology from UC Santa Barbara (with a minor in surfing). There he also met Lynda McDevitt, and they were married in Regina, Saskatchewan, where Jerry was working at an early childhood intervention center. After four years in Canada, the family moved to Humboldt County, California, where Jerry was employed at the Redwood Coast Regional Center, providing services for clients with developmental disabilities and their families. He worked there for 34 years, while also maintaining a private practice and, for 17 of those years, also spending one day a week in the Hoopa Valley Tribe’s Department of Human Services. In addition to Lynda, he is survived by his sons, Michael and Jesse. He was preceded in death by his parents, Estelle and George Drucker, and his sister, Lauri Dowling.

Christopher Frederick Wynn, 74, died April 9, 2024. After graduating from Bard, Christopher attended pharmacy school in Philadelphia. He was a pharmacy technician for many years in Philadelphia before moving back to White Plains, New York, to care for his aging mother. He is survived by his sister Becky.

1976

Mary Allan, 70, died October 20, 2024. Mary was born in Pittsburgh and was very proud of her Pittsburgh roots. At Bard she met her future husband, Richard Crotty ’76, and in their 50 years together they traveled all over the United States, with a special fondness for the time they spent in Hawaii. She is survived by Richard and her service dog, Wolfie.

Winifred Anne Carriere, 87, died March 6, 2025. Raised in a Quaker family, Anne attended Friends Seminary and The University of Wisconsin. Anne studied American architectural history through Bard College’s University Without Walls. For her degree, she wrote a comprehensive history of the architecture of Sharon, Connecticut, during its first 100 years. Anne worked as an editor for her mother’s publication Professional Florist Magazine. She also served as public relations director for South Street Seaport Museum, and later as a legal secretary at the firms Paul Weiss and Coudert Brothers. Anne produced numerous short stories and poems, which were published in The New York Times, New Yorker, and Herald Tribune. Her beloved children’s book, Jennifer’s Walk, published by Golden Books in 1973, was illustrated by her then-husband, New Yorker magazine cover artist Arthur Getz. Anne participated in the antinuclear movement, volunteering for the campaign Ground Zero. Upon retirement, she founded the nonprofit community service organization Ancramdale Neighbors Helping Neighbors. She helped develop the somatic nonviolence method Aiki-AVP, editing its first training manual. Anne was an avid hiker, longdistance swimmer, cross-country skier, canoeist, and flower gardener. She is survived by her husband Bill, her son Kurt, and her daughter Sarah.

1981

Lynn Michael Spitz, 65, died April 10, 2025. Lynn was born in Rochester, New York, and graduated from the School Without Walls in 1977. After earning his BA in biology from Bard, he studied computer science at Monroe Community College. Lynn worked in biology labs and as a software engineer for years before turning to writing; three of his stories were published in anthologies. He played in several different role-playing games, such as Dungeons and Dragons, GURPs, and Traveller, and had been developing a gaming system of his own. In 1991, Lynn met Thomas Douglas and they were married in

2011, when it finally became legal to do so. He was a member of the Society for the Creative Anachronism, where he was known for his assistance in the kitchens and his cooking skills. In addition to his husband, Lynn is survived by his mother, Shirley, and his stepfather, George.

1982

Edward Michael Colon, 65, died August 23, 2024. Ed was born in New York City and attended Xavier High School. Ed remained loyal to the Yankees, Giants, and Rangers, even after leaving the city in 1993, when he moved to Connecticut to marry a Red Sox fan, attend the University of Connecticut Law School, and raise a family. Ed is survived by his wife, Jackie; son, David; and daughter, Mya.

1986

Carlos Cariño-Higgins, 60, died August 15, 2024. Carlos was an exemplary friend, colleague, and public servant who served the New York City Council for 25 years under every Speaker. New Yorkers everywhere benefited from Carlos’s care and advocacy, and his legacy lives on through all the lives he touched and the countless he mentored.

1987

Lawrence David Le Fever, 60, died August 28, 2024. He was born in Kingston, New York, graduated from Onteora High School, and in addition to attending Bard he studied in the United Kingdom and Germany. He worked for many years for Laufer Group International in New York City as a software engineer. In his spare time, Larry wrote the scripts for and produced four short films. He was also a drummer and guitarist in a band and enjoyed poetry. Larry is survived by his parents, Edith and John, and siblings, Dan and Michelle.

1989

Elizabeth Felicella, 58, died December 22, 2024. Elizabeth majored in photography at Bard and went on to study German literature at Columbia University before shifting her focus back to art, first at Columbia and then as a Fulbright scholar at the

Hochschule der Künste (now the Universität der Künste) in Berlin. She remained in Berlin as a teaching assistant at the Hochschule der Künste’s newly established interdisciplinary art and architecture department, an experience that led her to pursue architectural photography upon her return to New York City. Elizabeth gained prominence shooting landscape architecture, and her work appeared in publications including The New York Times, Architectural Record, Architect’s Newspaper, Interior Design, Metropolis, Vogue, and Places. She had a particular interest in New York City’s public space and infrastructure, and was perhaps best known for “Reading Room: A Catalog of New York City’s Branch Libraries,” a fouryear project surveying the city’s 210 branch libraries, in which she treated the library system itself as an architecturally fluid “collection” of buildings to browse. Elizabeth was often commissioned to photograph artists’ spaces, including Sol LeWitt’s studio; Vito Acconci’s library and studio; Donald Judd’s homes and studios in Marfa, Texas, and SoHo; and the homes of ceramicist Henry Varnum Poor, artists David Salle and Chaim Gross, and many others. She was a political activist, member of the Democratic Socialists of America, practitioner of martial arts and yoga, accomplished bookbinder, avid surfer, and was pursuing a PhD at City University of New York focusing on the work of preservationist photographer Richard Nickel. Elizabeth is survived by her mother, Joan; siblings Carol, Vincent, and Jill; and her partner, George Stolz.

1995

Stephanie Viola Chasteen, 52, died November 3, 2024. After Bard, Stephanie served in the Peace Corps in Guinea, West Africa, where she learned the local language, Pular, and helped establish a rural Health Clinic which was subsequently named in her honor. Stephanie later established the Friends of Guinea organization. Returning from Guinea, she completed a PhD in condensed matter physics at the

University of California - Santa Cruz, followed by a National Science Foundation postdoctoral appointment at the Exploratorium Science Museum in San Francisco. She then joined the Science Education Initiative at the University of Colorado - Boulder. While in graduate school, she worked as an independent science journalist, publishing numerous articles of importance to the public, and interned at NPR through her AAAS Mass Media Fellowship. Through her business, Chasteen Educational Consulting, Stephanie worked with universities throughout the US in various capacities to help faculty improve the teaching of physics using evidence-based methodologies. In recognition of her lifetime of contributions improving the teaching and learning of physics, Stephanie received the 2024 Lillian McDermott Medal of the American Association of Physics Teachers. Her legacy of educational reform has impacted thousands of students and their mentors. Stephanie loved contra dancing, hiking, canyoneering and technical climbing which she shared with many good friends over the years. She is survived by her parents Dennis and Margaret, stepmother Loretta, son Maxwell, and caregiver and loving partner Terry.

Tanya Sophia Thielke MFA, 56, died February 8, 2025. Tanya began violin lessons when she was 4 years old, and went on to earn a master’s degree in violin performance and composition at Bard. As a composer and sound designer, she specialized in unique methods for audio recording and manipulation, and was known for developing compositional approaches using a sound-based expressive language. As Tantroniq, her music can be found on streaming sites. Her magnum opus was an interdisciplinary work, After River, which combined music, narration, sound design, and visuals. She is survived by her husband, Andrew, and daughter, Nico.

2004

Hannah Jean Corin, 43, died September 26, 2024. Hannah had a love for reading and a passion for

music, which persisted throughout her life. She had a talent for playing the piano and a broad knowledge of classical music theory, and she cared deeply about human rights. She is survived by her sisters, Erika Doxtader and Erin Cotton.

FACULTY AND STAFF

Denis Nikolaevich Akhapkin, 55, died April 16, 2025. Denis was an associate professor of literature and university research fellow at the (recently banned) Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Smolny College) of St. Petersburg State University. Denis joined Smolny in 2004 and over the years served as deputy dean of Smolny, inaugural director of the Smolny Center for Writing & Critical Thinking, Smolny FYSEM curator, and member of the Smolny Academic Council. He taught Russian and Anglophone literature and was an adviser to both Russian and American students spending summers or semesters abroad at Smolny. He led IWT workshops and workshops focused on liberal arts pedagogies at Narxoz University in Kazakhstan and at many Bard Network partners. He often taught bilingually at American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and European Humanities University in Vilnius, Lithuania, and in 2023 he taught L&T in Annandale. A prolific Brodsky scholar, Denis published the highly praised Joseph Brodsky and Anna Akhmatova: In the DeafMute Universe and Joseph Brodsky after Russia: Commentary to Poems and contributed “Joseph Brodsky and His Circles,” in The Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture. He is survived by his mother, Elena Ivanovna; wife, Ekaterina Kuznetsova; and son Sergey.

Professor of Literature Rebecca Cole Heinowitz, 50, died May 24, 2025 in an accident in California. Cole earned her BA in creative writing and comparative literature from the University of California San Diego and an MA and PhD in comparative literature from Brown University. Prior to coming to Bard College, she taught literature and

Spanish at Brown University, Brandeis University, and Dartmouth College. Cole joined the Bard faculty in 2004 and became full professor in 2021, teaching courses that spanned Romantic and Gothic literature, Romantic imperialism, and 20th-century and contemporary poetry and poetics. Most recently she led a seminar at BardNYC titled Poetry as Radical Community: New York Poetics from 1960 to the Present, that extended the classroom space to introduce students to the network of poetry communities active around them. She was director of the Literature Program from 2016 through 2021, joined the Language and Thinking Program faculty in 2024, and was a frequent guest speaker, introducing students to the world of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein through a careful consideration of how “the creature has become such an apt metaphor for the diverse range of persons that society excludes,” ultimately encouraging her audience to consider interdisciplinary questions of kinship and belonging. Cole was the author of three books of poetry: Daily Chimera (Incommunicado, 1995), Stunning in Muscle Hospital (Detour, 2002), and The Rubicon (The Rest, 2007); translated many works from Spanish into English; was published widely in scholarly journals; and received numerous awards and honors, including a 2019 New York State Council on the Arts Grant and the Cliff Becker Prize from the American Literary Translators Association.

Gerry Kelly, 85, died November 10, 2024. Gerry served as Bard’s director of financial aid for many years, retiring in 2005 after 25 years of service to the College. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1965, but left the ministry in 1972 to marry his wife, Margaret. He continued to serve his community, volunteering with such organizations as the Lewis Gordon Norrie Playground, Hudson River Housing, Hyde Park Visual Environment Committee, Hyde Park Community Garden, Friends of Seniors, and Hudson Valley Hospice. He was also active at Regina Coeli Church/St. Paul’s Parish as a eucharistic minister,

lecter, cantor, and member of the choir. In addition to Margaret, he is survived by their four children: Bridget, Matthew, Elizabeth, and Catherine.

Mary Florence Kelly (née Barich), 94, died June 24, 2025. Mary worked for 27 years at the Bard College Bookstore, starting as an assistant manager and working her way up to manager. After leaving the bookstore, she served as deputy clerk for the Village of Red Hook for another 20 years, retiring at 80. Mary was a founding member of the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival and the Elmendorph Handspinners Guild of Red Hook, and a leader of the Dutchess County 4-H Club The Golden Fleece for many years. The Mary Kelly Dye Garden at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds commemorates her fiber-arts legacy. She is survived by her children, John, Susan, and Kevin.

David Kettler, 94, died October 6, 2024. For 28 years, David was a research professor in the Division of Social Studies, authoring eight books, organizing academic symposia, and teaching students until his retirement five years ago. His primary scholarly focus was on the role of the intellectual in society, and particularly the work of Adam Ferguson, Karl Mannheim, Franz Neumann, and György Lukács. David also wrote on labor history and law and the theory of negotiation. His last academic project was an examination of exile and émigrés, particularly those from Nazi Germany, and the fate of intellectuals and artists whose careers began and flourished during the Weimar Republic. Born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1930, David and his family fled to America in 1940, sailing on the last Italian Line peacetime ship from Genoa to New York City and settling in New Jersey. In 1948, he was admitted to Columbia University where he earned his undergraduate degree in 1951 and his PhD in 1960. David’s academic career spanned almost seven decades and included faculty appointments at Ohio State University, Franconia College, and Trent University. He is survived by his wife, Janet; their twin daughters, Hannah and Katherine;

and a daughter from a previous marriage, Ruth.

David Nelson, 71, died September 24, 2025. David graduated from Wesleyan University, earned his master’s degree and rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College, and his PhD from New York University. Rabbi Nelson was the Jewish Chaplain at Bard from 2008 until his retirement in 2020. Before coming to Bard, he was the rabbi of a congregation in Long Island, New York, and worked for 15 years at the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a think tank and center for leadership education where he was a senior teaching fellow. He also taught at Adelphi University, New York University, and in the Cantorial School of Hebrew Union College. He was a writer and a scholar whose book Judaism, Physics and God: Searching for Sacred Metaphors in a PostEinstein World was published in 2005. In addition to his role as a tireless organizer of Jewish life on campus and his mentoring of the Jewish Student Organization, David taught in the religion program at the College. He is survived by his wife of 47 years, Rachel Jewelewicz-Nelson; three sons, Lev, Adin, and Ziv; and a sister who lives in Israel.

P. Adams Sitney, 80, died June 8, 2025. While still a teenager, Sitney was hired by Jonas Mekas to be the avant garde film editor at Film Culture magazine. He later studied Greek and Sanskrit at Yale University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in classics and PhD in comparative literature. In 1971—the year Jonas Mekas’s brother, Adolfas, became director of Bard’s Film Program—Sitney came to the College for the first time as a lecturer in film. He taught here, as well as at Trinity and Middlebury Colleges; Yale, Cooper Union, Cornell, and New York Universities; and finally Princeton University until his move to emeritus status in 2016. His book Visionary Film: The American Avant Garde, first published in 1974, is considered the standard text on American avant-garde film. Sitney is survived by his first wife, Julie, and his children Blake, Sky,

Augusta, and Miranda. He was predeceased by his second wife, filmmaker Marjorie Keller.

U Ba Win, 79, died April 20, 2025. Ba Win came to this country in 1962, fleeing the coup in Myanmar with his entire family. He had studied for one year at Myanmar University, earned his BA from Kalamazoo College, and pursued graduate study at Johns Hopkins University. In 1979, at the recommendation of Susan van Kleeck, then President Botstein’s assistant, Ba Win and his wife, Judith, came to work at Bard, when Simon’s Rock became part of the College. In the 1980s, Ba Win served as provost of Simon’s Rock, and took the lead in organizing the the first Bard High School Early College (BHSEC), in Manhattan, in 2001. In 2008, he went on to establish the second BHSEC in Queens and played a key role in the subsequent expansion of the BHSEC network. Throughout his career at Bard—from his beginning as co-dean with Judith to his retirement as vice president of Bard in 2018, when he was awarded the Bard Medal, the College’s highest honor—Ba Win also worked tirelessly on behalf of the improvement of education in his native country, helping to support orphanages and create liberal arts institutions. For four decades he recruited Burmese students to Simon’s Rock and Bard, mentored them, and opened his home to them. “I have never known or worked with a finer and more generous human being,” wrote President Botstein. “What made his generous attention to students and their families, colleagues, neighbors, and even strangers all the more remarkable was that Ba Win was a man of strong opinions. He was ethical, but not a moralist. He stood by his principles, but was capable of compromise and determined that just being right was not enough. One had to make the right things happen in the messy and complex web of reality.” In addition to Judith, Ba Win is survived by their children, Amey, Taya, and Zaw.

FRIENDS

Rt. Rev. Herbert Alcorn Donovan Jr., 94, died November 2, 2025. His father, a 1924 graduate of St. Stephen’s College (renamed Bard College in 1934), served as secretary to Bard’s President Bernard Iddings Bell. Herbert junior joined the United States Navy in 1955 as a chaplain and was a reserve officer until 1991; as a member of the Pastoral Care Team of the House of Bishops, he ministered to armed forces chaplains during Operation Desert Storm in Iraq. A graduate of the University of Virginia and Virginia Theological Seminary, Herbert was ordained deacon and priest in 1957; served as an Episcopal priest in Wyoming; canon to the ordinary in Kentucky; rector of St. Luke’s Church in Montclair, New Jersey; and in 1980 was elected bishop of Arkansas. In 1993 he became vicar of Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan and assisting bishop of New York. He served on the Bard College Board of Trustees as the representative of Mark Sisk and Andrew Dietsche during their tenures as Bishop of New York, reviving the College’s historic association with the Episcopal Church. The College awarded Herbert an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree in 2019. He is survived by his wife, historian, author, and professor Mary Sudman Donovan; and three children: Mary Ellen, Herbert Alcorn III, and Jane Elizabeth.

Jerome Kohn, 93, died November 8, 2024. After earning his BA in literature from Harvard, Jerry went on to study philosophy at Columbia. After reading two essays by Hannah Arendt in The New Yorker, he convinced her to let him audit a class she was teaching at the New School for Social Research. He became Arendt’s teaching assistant, literary executor, and friend, and was instrumental in the founding of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, where he was on the board of directors. Jerry edited five volumes of Arendt’s writings, and in 2022 was given an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Bard. He is survived by his partner, Gerard Hoolahan, and sister, Mary Kohn Lazarus.

BOARD

OF GOVERNORS OF THE BARD COLLEGE ALUMNI/AE

ASSOCIATION

Mollie Meikle ’03, President

Gerald Pambo-Awich ’08, Vice President

Kristin Waters ’73, Secretary, Communications Committee Cochair

Imran Ahmed ’02

Beatrice Ajaero ’12 MBA ’17

Hannah Becker ’11, Young Alumnx Committee Cochair

Connor Boehme ’17

Michael Burgevin ’10, Strategic Planning Committee Chair

Hannah Byrnes-Enoch ’08

Kathleya Chotiros ’98

Charles Clancy III ’69, Past President

Meghan Cochran ’93

Peter Criswell ’89, Past President

Caia Diepenbrock ’15, Events Committee Cochair

Nolan English ’13, Young Alumnx Committee Cochair

Randy Faerber ’73, Events Committee Cochair

Mark Feinsod ’94, Communications Committee Cochair

Anna Fink ’94

Andrew Fowler ’95

Richard Frank ’74

Eric W. Goldman ’98

Hanna Jane Guendel ’20, CEP ’22

Boriana Handjiyska ’02, Career Connections Committee Cochair

Sonja Hood ’90, Nominations Committee Cochair

Anna Kaczynska ’06

Nicole Katz ’02

Maud Kersnowski Sachs ’86

Arthur Kilongo ’20

Kenneth Kosakoff ’81

Isaac Lertola ’18, CEP ’18

Jake Lester ’20

René Macioce ’15

Darren Mack ’13

Ryan Mesina ’06, Nominations Committee Cochair

Matloob Naweed ’24

Anna Neverova ’07, Career Connections Committee Cochair

Karen G. Olah ’65, Past President

KC Serota ’04, Development Committee Chair, Past President

George A. Smith ’82, Events Committee Cochair

Thoko Soko ’20

Geoffrey Stein ’82

John Stevens ’94

Paul Thompson ’93

Maxwell Toth ’22

Brandon Weber ’97, Past President

Jennifer Woo ’25

Juliette Zicot ’23

Emeritus/a

Robert Amsterdam ’53

Claire Angelozzi ’74

Penny Axelrod ’63

Mimi Roskin Berger ’56

Jack Blum ’62

Cathaline Cantalupo ’67

Arnold Davis ’44, Past President

Michael DeWitt ’65, Past President

Michelle Dunn Marsh ’95, Past President

Robert Edmonds ’68, Past President

Naomi Bellison Feldman ’53, Past President

Barbara Grossman Flanagan ’60

Richard Gerber ’71, Past President

Michael Glass ’75

Diana Hirsch Friedman ’68

Charles Hollander ’65

Maggie Hopp ’67

Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65

William Lowe ’66, Past President

Peter F. McCabe ’70, Past President

Steven Miller ’70

Anne Morris-Stockton ’68

David E. Schwab II ’52, Past President

Roger Scotland ’93

Mackie Siebens ’12, Past President

Walter Swett ’96, Past President

Olivier te Boekhorst ’93

Toni-Michelle Travis ’69

Paul Weinstein ’73, Past President

John Weisman ’64, Past President

Barbara Crane Wigren ’68

BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF BARD COLLEGE

James C. Chambers ’81, Chair

Emily H. Fisher, Vice Chair

Brandon Weber ’97, Vice Chair; Alumni/ae Trustee

Elizabeth Ely ’65, Secretary; Life Trustee

Stanley A. Reichel ’65, Treasurer; Life Trustee

Fiona Angelini

Roland J. Augustine

Leon Botstein, President of the College, ex officio

Mark E. Brossman

Marcelle Clements ’69, Life Trustee

Asher B. Edelman ’61, Life Trustee

Kimberly Marteau Emerson

Barbara S. Grossman ’73, Alumni/ae Trustee

Andrew S. Gundlach

Glendean Hamilton ’09

The Rt. Rev. Matthew F. Heyd

Matina S. Horner, ex officio

Charles S. Johnson III ’70

Mark N. Kaplan, Life Trustee

George A. Kellner

Fredric S. Maxik ’86

Jo Frances Meyer, ex officio

Juliet Morrison ’03

James H. Ottaway Jr., Life Trustee

Hilary Pennington

Martin Peretz, Life Trustee

Stewart Resnick, Life Trustee

David E. Schwab II ’52, Life Trustee

Roger N. Scotland ’93, Alumni/ae Trustee

Annabelle Selldorf

Mostafiz ShahMohammed ’97

Jonathan Slone ’84

James A. von Klemperer

Susan Weber

MARGARET AND JOHN BARD

SOCIETY MEMBERS

Anonymous

Jamie Albright

Robert ’53 and Marcia Amsterdam

John Dennis Anderson

Claire Angelozzi ’74

F. Zeynep Aricanli ’85

Judith Arner ’68

Neil and Nancy Austrian

Penny Axelrod ’63

Mary I. Backlund

Donald Baier ’67

Dennis Barone ’77 and Deborah Ducoff-Barone ’78

Barbara Barre ’69

Joseph Baxer and Barbara Bacewicz

Wendy and Alexander Bazelow ’71

Stephen H. ’74 and Laurie A. Berman ’74

Sally Bickerton ’89

Carolyn Marks Blackwood

Jack Blum ’62

Leon Botstein

Anne T. Brown

Mary Burns ’73

Stacy Lyn Burnett ’23

Hannah Rose Byrnes-Enoch ‘08 and Gerald Pambo-Awich ’08

Anne Canzonetti ’84

Olivia Carino

Pia A. Carusone ’03

Steven M. Cascone ’77

John and Nancy Childs

Christophe J. Chung ’06

Charles B. Clancy ’69

Michelle Clayman

Noah T. Coleman ’92

Allan Coulter & Kim Knowlton

Peter Criswell ’89

Zachary Cutler ’94

Arnold J. Davis ’44

Matthew and Mary Deady

Brian Glenn Dean ’07 and Elizabeth I. Wand

Matthew Joseph DeGennaro ’96

Nicole de Jesus ’94

Michael ’65 and Wenny DeWitt

Jason P. Drucker ’93

Malia Du Mont ’95

Michelle Dunn Marsh ’95

Gretchen Dykstra

Robert C. Edmonds ’68

Elizabeth W. Ely ’65

Kimberly and John Emerson

Irene Esposito

Randy Faerber ’73

Mark L. Feinsod ’94

Barbara Williams Flanagan ’60

Autumn Joy Florenceio-Wain ’00

Diana Hirsch Friedman ’68

Emily H. Fisher

Jeanne Donovan Fisher

Neil Gaiman

Jennifer Gaudioso ’95

Christopher H. and Helene S. Gibbs

Annette M. Gilson ’86

Eric W. Goldman ’98

Nancy Goodstein ’87

Julia B. Greer

Barbara S. Grossman ’73

George Hamel Jr. and Pamela O. Hamel

Nikkya Hargrove ’05 and Dinushka DeSilva

Michaela (Misha) Harnick

Nancy Hass and Bob Roe

Helen Hecht

Marieluise Hessel

Charles F. Hollander ’65

Miranda May Holman

Maggie Hopp ’67

Elaine Marcotte Hyams ’69

Jill Jackson ’81

Henry Jarecki

Grace Judson ’79

George A. Kellner

Jessica Post Kemm ’74

Catherine M. Kleszczewski ’91

Kenneth Kosakoff ’81

Peter Kosewski and John Anderson

Gary and Edna Lachmund

Lawrence C. (Kit) Laybourne

Nancy S. Leonard

Gideon Lester

Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65

Steve Lipson ’65 and Serl E. Zimmerman

Jennifer Lupo ’88

Thomas M. Maiello ’82

Aimee Majoros ’94

Margit Malmstrom ’66

Norman and Cella Manea

Bonnie Marcus ’71

Ana Paula Martinez ’97

Jonathan Massey ’85

Fredric S. Maxik ’86

Rita Katherine McBride ’82

Lew Millenbach ’64

Steven Miller ’70

Jubilith Moore ’91

Anne M. Morris-Stockton ’69

Sarah Mosbacher ’04

Melka A. Myers ’99

Anthony Napoli

Mary L. Nathan ’76

Brian Nielsen ’71

Jennifer Novik ’98

Charles O’Bryne

Karen Olah ’65

Daniel F. O’Neill ’79

James H. Ottaway Jr.

Richard Pargament ’65

Edith Penty

Eric Perlberg ’69

Ellen Kaplan Perless ’63

Heather Petrie ’05 and Nathan Siler

Michele A. Petruzzelli ’76

Patricia E. Pforte ’08

William Pierce ’80

Susan Diane Pilla

Stacy Pilson ’91

Jennifer Gayle Plassman

Lorna H. Power

Janice H. Rabinowitz ’51

Lynda and Stewart Resnick

Steven Richards ’72

Irwin and M. Susan Richman

James Rodewald ’82 and Marella Consolini ’82

Catherine Ruggles ’98

Emily Sauter ’05

Elisabeth Semel ’72

Kendall (K.C.) Serota ’04

Alexandra Shafer ’78 and Denis Duman

Mostafiz ShahMohammed ’97

Sarah A. Shapiro ’02 and Nicholas J. Neddo

John and Marsha Shyer

Denise S. Simon

Rebecca L. Smith ’93

Richard Socher ’62

Martin Sosnoff

Eve C. Stahlberger ’97

William N. Stavru ’87

Lindsay A. Stanley ’12

Geoffery Stein ’82

Kenneth Stern ’75

John A. W. Stevens ’94

Charles P. Stevenson Jr.

Amy J. Strumbly ’11

Albert Stwertka ’48

David H. Swanson

Walter Swett ’96

Lance Tait ’78

Kornelia Tamm ’00

Olivier te Boekhorst ’93

Helene Tieger ’85

Rachel Tieger ’83

Taun Toay ’05

Janis H. Trachtman

Katherine C. Trimble ’94

Beth Uffner

Zubeida Bibi Ullah-Eilenberg ’97

Marylea van Daalen

Lisa Vasey ’84

Christine Wallich

Karen J. Watkins

Susan Weber

Wendy Weldon ’71

Tyler Williams ’19

Michael C. Wolf

WILL POWER

We can all use a little self-care these days. By taking care of yourself you can also take care of Bard. With a will you can secure your future and support Bard.

Bard College has partnered with FreeWill, a free, online resource that guides you through the process of creating a legally valid will in just 20 minutes. This opportunity allows you to secure your future, protect your loved ones, and create a legacy that will inspire curiosity, a love of learning, and an ongoing commitment to the link between higher education and civic participation. Get started by visiting freewill.com/bard.

All donors who support Bard through a planned gift become members of the Margaret and John Bard Society.

For more information, please contact Debra Pemstein, Vice President for Development and Alumni/ae Affairs at pemstein@bard.edu or 845-758-7405.

All inquiries are confidential.

COMMENCEMENT & ALUMNI/AE REUNION

MAY 22–24, 2026

WELCOME, CLASSES

2021, 2016, 2011, 2006, 2001, 1996. 1991, 1986, 1981, 1976, 1971, 1966, 1961, 1950s

BARD COLLEGE AWARDS

Bard Medal

Olivia Carino

Audrey Lasher Smith ’78

John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science

Amy Bernard ’91

Matthew DeGennaro ’96

Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters

Youssef Kerkour ’00

John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service

Erika McEntarfer ’95

Laszlo Z. Bito Award for Humanitarian Service

Imran Ahmed ’02

Mary McCarthy Award

Marilynne Robinson