“Representing the US and Critiquing It in a Psychedelic Rainbow”: Jeffrey Gibson Profiled by the New York Times
Jeffrey Gibson, artist in residence at Bard College, was once advised to tone down his work: to make it less colorful, less bold. “We’ve been dismissed as garish and too much, because of our use of color,” Gibson told the New York Times. Now, Gibson will be the first Native artist to represent the United States in the Venice Biennale with a solo exhibition—his embrace of color having propelled him to this stage. In a profile of Gibson for the Times, Jillian Steinhauer traced Gibson’s history as an artist and his preparation for the Biennale, where he “aims to interweave a Native American narrative with other histories of struggle and freedom.”
“Representing the US and Critiquing It in a Psychedelic Rainbow”: Jeffrey Gibson Profiled by the New York Times
Jeffrey Gibson, artist in residence at Bard College, was once advised to tone down his work: to make it less colorful, less bold. “We’ve been dismissed as garish and too much, because of our use of color,” Gibson told the New York Times. Now, Gibson will be the first Native artist to represent the United States in the Venice Biennale with a solo exhibition—his embrace of color having propelled him to this stage. In a profile of Gibson for the Times, Jillian Steinhauer traced Gibson’s history as an artist, his preparation for the Biennale, and his relationship to the US. “I have a complicated relationship with the United States,” he said. His project for the Biennale “aims to interweave a Native American narrative with other histories of struggle and freedom,” borrowing its title from a poem by Bard alumna Layli Long Soldier MFA ’13. “‘The space in which to place me’ seemed like this idea of both decentralizing things and making things central that are oftentimes on the periphery,” Gibson said. The 2024 Venice Biennale runs April 20 through November 24, 2024.
Bard College alumna and Studio Arts faculty member Tschabalala Self has won the prestigious Fourth Plinth Commission with her sculpture Lady in Blue. Her work will be installed in Trafalgar Square in 2026 in what Justine Simons, London’s deputy mayor for culture and the creative industries, refers to as “the most successful public art commission in the world.” Self shares the honor with Romanian-born artist Andra Ursuţa, whose Untitled will be installed in 2028.
Visiting Artist in Residence Tschabalala Self ’12 Wins London’s Fourth Plinth Commission
Bard College alumna and Studio Arts faculty member Tschabalala Self has won the prestigious Fourth Plinth Commission with her sculpture Lady in Blue. Her work will be installed in Trafalgar Square in 2026 in what Justine Simons, London’s deputy mayor for culture and the creative industries, refers to as “the most successful public art commission in the world.” Self shares the honor with Romanian-born artist Andra Ursuţa, whose Untitled will be installed in 2028.
“My work Lady in Blue will bring to Trafalgar Square a woman that many can relate to,” Self said in a statement. “She is not an idol to venerate or a historic figurehead to commemorate. She is a woman striding forward into our collective future with ambition and purpose. She is a Londoner, who represents the city’s spirit.”
To celebrate the 81st edition of the Whitney Biennial, the New York Times sent three critics to report “on the highs and lows of the exhibition everyone will have an opinion about.” Their consensus? Bard faculty and alumni/ae are ones to watch. Read what the Times critics had to say about works by Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio ’12, Lotus L. Kang MFA ’15, Carolyn Lazard ’10, and Diane Severin Nguyen MFA ’19.
Bard Faculty and Alumni/ae Are New York Times Critics’ Favorites at 2024 Whitney Biennial
To celebrate the 81st edition of the Whitney Biennial, the New York Times sent three critics to report “on the highs and lows of the exhibition everyone will have an opinion about.” Their consensus? Bard faculty and alumni/ae are ones to watch. Jason Fargo called Lotus L. Kang MFA ’15 “an artist of rare precision,” calling her work, In Cascades, a “richly sedimented, beautifully vulnerable installation in a perpetual state of becoming.” Fargo went on to praise the film In Her Time by Diane Severin Nguyen MFA ’19, calling it “a vibrant case study of digital-political bafflement and the hazards of projecting the present onto the past.” Travis Diehl, meanwhile, asks, “Should art comfort?” Reviewing Toilette by Bard alum Carolyn Lazard ’10, “a small maze of chrome medicine cabinets standing on the floor,” the answer, for Diehl, is a resounding no. “The piece addresses you, the viewer, as someone with a body,” Diehl writes. “These works ask, ‘Are you comfortable?’ and don’t expect you to say yes.” Paloma Blanca Deja Volar/White Dove Let Us Fly by Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio ’12, a “block of shifting, pre-fossilized amber, embedded with plants and even typewritten documents,” was named one of the best works in the show by Martha Schwendener. The 81st edition of the Whitney Biennial is now open to the public and runs through August 11, 2024.
“I can draw through space, and it’s infinite”: Rita McBride ’82 Interviewed by Art Newspaper
Rita McBride ’82 spoke with Art Newspaper about her exhibition Particulates, which was on view at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibition, which built on McBride’s past work Portal, was “composed of high-intensity laser beams, water molecules, and dust particles dancing mid-air.” The exhibition was installed in conjunction with a renovation of the Hammer Museum, which McBride said influenced her artistic process. “I was thinking about it as a corporate ruin: what things were important to keep and what things were important to get away from as they went forward with their renovations,” McBride said. “Particulates can exist anywhere—any size, any scale—so it can take on hermetic situations or, like this one, open to the street and to a more narrative space than at Dia or in Liverpool.”
New Public Artworks by Bard Students in Dutchess and Columbia Counties
Student Artwork Exhibited on Billboard in Hudson and in Temporary Installation in Richard Abraham’s Memorial Park in Red Hook
Bard Community Arts Collective and the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard are pleased to announce the installation of several student artworks in Dutchess County and Columbia County.
How Long Will We Be Driving by Bard student James Wise ’26 is on view at a billboard located at 3391 US-9, Hudson, NY 12534 from December 20, 2023 to January 17, 2024. This work is presented through a partnership with Shandaken Projects’ public art initiative 14x48, which has exhibited new work by contemporary artists on billboards across New York State since 2021.
Additionally, works from students in the Studio Arts Program at Bard have been temporarily installed in Richard Abraham’s Memorial Park in Red Hook, as part of a pilot partnership with the Village ofRed Hook’s Public Spaces Initiative Committee.
These projects originated in an Extended Media course taught by artist Julia Weist in the Studio Arts Program at Bard. This class explores the potential of presenting art in an expanded field of engagement, including in the public realm, asking students to consider how the interpretation of their work changes when it is experienced in a mass media or civic context. In addition to exercises and instruction in the classroom, students visited the offices of Shandaken Projects and met with the Village of Red Hook’s Chair for the Public Spaces Initiative Committee, Ash Bradley-Rickard, and the Red Hook Village Board to learn more about opportunities for artists in the public sector. Each student created a two-dimensional billboard proposal, reviewed by Shandaken Projects, and a three-dimensional public art proposal, which was presented at a Village Board meeting on November 13, 2023. One billboard proposal was selected by Shandaken Projects for production, and every student proposal was approved for temporary installation in Richard Abraham’s Memorial Park.
The selected billboard, created by James Wise, was created by layering more than 50 AI-generated images. At first glance from the vantage of a moving car, the image appears to be a standard insurance ad. A closer look reveals that the uncanny advertisement includes only one legible question—“How long will we be driving?”—along with other text-like elements that are distorted and nonsensical. The billboard’s question highlights several challenging issues related to emerging technologies and the future of our planet, such as the loss of human autonomy that may come from an increased reliance on AI (including through self-driving cars) and the impact of driving carbon-polluting cars on a warming climate. The figure at the center of the ad, the avatar created by artificial intelligence to represent an insurance salesman, represents another troubling facet of algorithmic technology: these tools often closely reflect those who create them. The AI field is predominately white and male, and Wise’s artwork asks us to consider if those individuals who are in the driver’s seat of our tech future broadly represent the diverse communities that will use artificial intelligence. Wise said of the project, “Making a piece for the public takes what I’ve been doing within a class environment to a larger, more diverse audience, so I approached it as such. I sought to create something with enough depth to conjure a diverse array of reactions, regardless of what I intended, and I hope to see that reflected in public feedback to the project."
The student artwork installed in Richard Abraham’s Memorial Park spanned a variety of materials, from sculptures made from wood and steel to large format photographic prints. Each was developed with the park’s landscape and context in mind. Several of the pieces are interactive and all were made to be installed without impacting the local habitat native to the site. Although the temporary installation was not open to the public, this project served as a pilot program allowing the Village and Bard Community Arts Collective to imagine future collaborative opportunities. A student in the course, Elena Schneider ’27, said of the project, “Being able to make something to be displayed in the landscape where we live pushed me to create something I really care about and am proud of. I put a lot of work into my sculpture and it was very rewarding to see it come to life in such a beautiful place. I hope to have more opportunities to present student work in public places.”
Visiting Artist in Residence Tschabalala Self ’12 on Creating Nicki Minaj’s Digital Vogue Cover
Tschabalala Self ’12, visiting artist in residence at Bard, talks about being asked to do a portrait of Nicki Minaj for Vogue’s December digital cover—using photographer Norman Jean Roy’s cover shoot as a starting point. “I do not usually delve too deeply into realism,” she says, “so by working on this project, I realized something I already suspected, which is that a portrait is more about capturing someone’s aura, as opposed to their appearance.”
“The Beauty Is a Strategy:” W Magazine Interviews Bard Artist in Residence Jeffrey Gibson
For W magazine, Camille Okhio interviewed Bard Artist in Residence Jeffrey Gibson about representing the United States in a solo exhibition at the upcoming Venice Biennale in 2024, his global journey as an Indigenous artist of Cherokee and Choctaw lineage, and his work. “Our motto in the Choctaw is self-determination,” says Gibson. “After college, my chief said to me, ‘You would be more effective out in the world; you don’t need to come back here. You are fulfilling what I have said our tribe will do one day if you go out and you are successful.’ I hope, through my practice, that I’m letting Indigenous people know they can move around the world freely.” Asked what has been left out of his narrative, Gibson answers: “The work is not beautiful for beauty’s sake. The beauty is a strategy.”
Bard Faculty Member and Multimedia Artist Jeffrey Gibson Will Represent the United States at the 2024 Venice Biennale
Jeffrey Gibson, artist in residence at Bard College, will represent the United States at the 60th Venice Biennale Arte in 2024. Gibson, who is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, is one of the first Indigenous artists to represent the country at the Biennale. The Biennale Arte 2024 is being curated by Adriano Pedrosa, who received this year’s CCS Bard Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. Gibson told the New York Times: “The last 15 years of my career have been about turning inward and trying to make something I really wanted to see in the world. Now I want to expand the way people think about Indigeneity.” According to the Times, the artist’s Hudson Valley studio is working on a multimedia installation and performances that will open in April 2024 and be titled “the space in which to place me,” referring to a poem by Layli Long Soldier MFA ’14, a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation.
Bard Professor, Artist Nayland Blake ’82 Designs Capsule Collection with Proceeds to Support the Transgender Law Center
Artist Nayland Blake ’82, professor of studio arts and codirector of the Studio Arts Program at Bard, has collaborated with fashion label JCRT to launch the inaugural capsule collection of ATDM (“Artist, Title, Date, Medium”), a new clothing line of limited-run collections created with contemporary artists. Blake’s designs include a shirt printed with the phrase “This is clothing of the opposite gender”—a commentary on Arizona’s anti-LGBTQ+ Senate Bill 1026, which targets drag performances. “Blake, who is nonbinary, intends these pieces to function as wearable messages of resistance and support for trans people and anyone caught wearing the ‘wrong’ clothes,” writes Hyperallergic. In honor of Pride Month, all the profits from this ATDM x Nayland Blake collection will be donated to the Transgender Law Center, the largest trans-led organization for trans advocacy in the US, with $30,000 raised once all 400 of the limited-edition shirts are sold.
Fisher Studio Arts Building5:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Setats Detinu An exhibition by Felicia Flores Opening Saturday, December 3, 2022, 5–7 pm Fisher Studio Arts Building Center Gallery
Saturday, December 3, 2022
Bard Exhibition Center5:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Opening reception for What Happens in the Goldilocks Zone, an exhibition by Ava Lee. UBS, 7401 S Broadway, Red Hook, NY 12571.
Wednesday, September 7, 2022
Meditation Garden, Fisher Studio Arts Building6:30 pm – 8:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Studio Arts students, faculty, and staff: Please join us for the Annual Fall Semester Meet and Greet! There will be refreshments and s'mores!
Wednesday, September 7, 2022
Fisher Studio Arts Building6:30 pm – 8:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Please join us for the annual Faculty Exhibition in Fisher Studio Arts!