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ON AND OFF CAMPUS: ALUMNI ACCOLADES
das Abendmahl (Last Supper), Word Book, ©Paul Chan Studio & Badlands Unlimited
Artist Paul Chan MFA ’03 defies easy categorization. He works with charcoal and on computers, engages politics and erotica, and mixes the ancient with the cutting edge. For Word Book—the first English translation of Wörterbuch für Volksschulen (Dictionary for Elementary Schools) by the influential philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein—Chan did the illustrations with his nondominant left hand, giving the images an appropriately childlike feel. The dictionary was written in 1925, when Wittgenstein was already famous for Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. But the philosopher had become disenchanted, so he left his career behind and taught for six years in an elementary school in rural Austria. There he saw the need for a good dictionary for children and compiled nearly 6,000 words and phrases. It’s easy to see why such a project would interest the Hong Kong–born, Nebraska-raised Chan, who retired from art making shortly after participating in the 2009 Venice Biennale, but returned after his own six-year hiatus with an exhibition in 2015 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Of that show, Holland Cotter wrote in the New York Times, “Chan’s work is always surprising and as smart as art gets, which means, among other things, that it’s smart enough not to always give us the art we think we want.”
Paul Chan MFA ’03 received the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters from Bard College in 2021.
John Yau ’72 is one of eight visual art journalists to receive this year’s $50,000 Rabkin Prize from the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation. Yau has been publishing reviews and essays on art and literature since 1978. He writes for the online magazine Hyperallergic Weekend, which he cofounded in 2012. Yau has published monographs on Liu Xiaodong, Thomas Nozkowski, Catherine Murphy, John Philip Taaffe, and Jasper Johns. He is a professor of critical studies in the visual arts department at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. His latest book of poetry, Genghis Chan on Drums, was published in October.
Marie Schleef ’14, photo by Hendrik Lietmann
From an initial slate of 285 theater productions, an independent jury of critics in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland selected 10 to comprise this year’s 10er Auswahl, which are at the heart of Berlin’s Theatertreffen, one of the most prominent German speaking theater festivals. Name Her. Eine Suche nach den Frauen+ (Name Her. A search for women+) by Marie Schleef ’14, a solo, long-durational performance piece in which forgotten women are called to the stage in alphabetical order to have their stories told, was one of the works chosen. #womenwhoshouldnotbeforgotten
Evan Tims ’19 is Bard’s first Luce Scholar. Tims, who earned a joint BA in human rights and written arts, was one of 18 finalists chosen from the semifinalist pool of 164. The scholarship program, which “provides stipends, language training, and individualized professional placement in Asia,” aims to enhance the understanding of Asia among potential leaders in American society. Tims plans to explore the field of climate justice, relationships between nature and culture, and the futureoriented practices of social change, as well as write stories and novels that explore the changing global environment. This is by no means his first big win: as an undergraduate he earned two Critical Language Scholarships, which funded Bangla studies in Kolkata, India; and the Bard Written Arts Prize. His Senior Project, which explored the intersections between climate and social justice using a combination of experimental fiction and academic research, garnered him the Christopher Wise Award in environmentalism and human rights. After graduation, Tims’s passion for human rights led him to become an investigator for the Civilian Complaint Review Board of New York City (CCRB), the largest police oversight agency in the United States.
El Ruido del Bosque Sin Hojas/The Sound of the Forest Without Leaves Courtesy of the artist and El Museo del Barrio, photo by Martin Seck
Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio ’12 was one of 42 artists included in El Museo del Barrio’s Estamos Bien— La Trienal 20/21, the museum’s first national large-scale survey of contemporary Latinx art, which ran from March 13 through September 26. His piece, El Ruido del Bosque Sin Hojas/The Sound of the Forest Without Leaves, is part of a series in which he makes recurring visits to ficus trees— planted all over Los Angeles in the 1950s and ’60s, the trees grew so quickly that the roots often broke through sidewalks; many are now being cut down—and paints rubber on them until it is thick enough to peel off. “I’m interested in the ways in which human carvings happen to the tree, but over time the trunk heals itself and abstracts the marks,” he told Cultured magazine. The work also tells the story of a species being utilized and then discarded, which Aparicio sees as a “stand-in for contemporary immigration and periods of the 20th century in which the United States’ involvement in Mexico and Central America perpetuated all of these inhospitable situations.”
Isis Pinheiro ’21, photo by AnnAnn Puttithanasorn ’23
Isis Pinheiro ’21, a transfer student from Bard High School Early College Manhattan who majored in literature with a concentration in Africana studies, was one of 42 college seniors selected from a nationwide finalist pool of more than 150 to receive a Watson Fellowship for the 2021–22 academic year. She will spend the year traveling to England, Japan, China, Italy, and Guyana. Pinheiro is a Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities student fellow; last year she was a fellow of the center’s Courage to Be Program, which explores the philosophical and religious foundations of moral and spiritual courage.
Jillian Reed ’21, photo by AnnAnn Puttithanasorn ’23
Jillian Reed ’21, a musician and activist who earned dual degrees in human rights and flute performance, won a $10,000 Davis Projects for Peace grant on behalf of Thrift 2 Fight, which she cofounded to address the need for funding among activist groups. The grant allowed Reed, who is co-CEO and director of partnerships and communication, to spend the summer traveling across New York State on a “racial justice fundraising tour through the sale of used clothing.” Reed, whose Senior Project addressed institutional ableism and disability identity and resources in the classical music world, taught flute as a 2019 MusAid Summer Teaching Artist at El Sistema in El Salvador.
Kate Belin ’04 MAT ’05 received the Muller Award for Professional Influence in Education from Math for America. Belin, who has taught mathematics at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School in the Bronx for 17 years, was a recipient of the 2011 Sloan Award for excellence in teaching science and mathematics, and was a Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Fellow to Botswana in 2016. The Muller Award is given to two New York City public school teachers who, during their tenure as Math for America Master Teachers, have influenced the teaching profession in exceptional ways. Belin received $20,000, and her school was awarded $5,000.
George Hambrecht ’95, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland College Park, specializes in zooarchaeology with a focus on historical archaeology. He is a principal investigator on the Central North Atlantic Marine Historical Ecology Project, funded by a $1.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Navigating the New Arctic Program. The two-year project, which launched in January, will subject bones from cod and other coastal species that have been excavated from archaeological sites in Iceland and the Faroe Islands over the last 30 years to a variety of biochemical analyses that will help to track population size, body length, and feeding changes over the last millennia. These analyses will be combined with archaeological and historical methods to build a new and deeper record of the relationship between cod, humans, and the environment in Iceland that will serve as an important tool in managing this relationship.
