Bard Graduate Programs in the News
October 2024 |
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10-01-2024 |
Bard MFA Faculty in Moving Image Tony Cokes has been named a 2024 MacArthur Fellow. Cokes, a media artist, is one of this year’s 22 recipients of the prestigious “genius grant” awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In a statement about his work, the MacArthur Foundation says, “Tony Cokes is a media artist creating video works that recontextualize historical and cultural moments. Cokes’s signature style is deceptively simple: changing frames of text against backgrounds of solid bright colors or images, accompanied by musical soundtracks. Like a DJ, he samples and recombines textual, musical, and visual fragments. His source materials include found film footage, pop music, journalism, philosophy texts, and social media. The unexpected juxtapositions in his works highlight the ways in which dominant narratives emerging from our oversaturated media environments reinforce existing power structures.”
The MacArthur Fellowship is a no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential. There are three criteria for selection of MacArthur Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or those in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations. Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential. MacArthur Fellows receive $800,000 stipends that are bestowed with no conditions; recipients may use the money as they see fit. Nominated anonymously by leaders in their respective fields and considered by an anonymous selection committee, recipients learn of their selection only when they receive a call from the MacArthur Foundation just before the public announcement. Fourteen Bard faculty members have previously been honored with a MacArthur Fellowship. Tony Cokes received a BA from Goddard College (1979) and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University (1985). He joined the faculty of Brown University in 1993 and is currently a professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media. He is a Bard MFA faculty member in the Moving Image Discipline and was a Bard MFA visiting artist in 2022. His work has been exhibited at national and international venues, including Haus Der Kunst and Kunstverein (Munich); Dia Bridgehampton (New York); Memorial Art Gallery University of Rochester; MACRO Contemporary Art Museum (Rome); and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Harvard University), among others. https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-2024/tony-cokes |
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September 2024 |
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09-26-2024 |
Mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce VAP ’19, alumna of the Bard Conservatory Vocal Arts Program, has won third prize in Operalia 2024, the world opera competition founded by Plácido Domingo in 1993 to discover and help launch the careers of the most promising young opera singers of today. Operalia’s goal is to attract singers between the ages of 20 and 32, of all voice types from and all over the world, to have them audition and be heard by a panel of distinguished international personalities, in the most prestigious and competitive showcase in the world.
The international jury, presided by Plácido Domingo, listens to each of the chosen participants during two days of quarterfinals. Twenty participants are then selected to continue on to the semifinals, and ten singers are chosen for the finals. The quarterfinals and semifinals are carried out in audition form, but the final round is presented in the form of a gala concert accompanied by a full orchestra. This year, Operalia was held at The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai, India, September 15–21. https://www.operaliacompetition.org/ |
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09-24-2024 |
The Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) and Bard College’s Human Rights Project announce architect and architectural historian Valentina Rozas-Krause as the 2024–25 recipient of the Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism. The appointment marks a decade since the fellowship was established in 2014 as an annual award bringing prominent scholars, activists, and artists to teach and conduct research on Bard’s campus. To date, the position has supported a diverse roster of artists, poets, theorists, journalists, and practitioners advancing sociopolitical engagement in their respective fields.
Rozas-Krause’s research interests lie at the intersection of the built environment and global cultural practices across the Americas and Europe. An assistant professor in design and architecture at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago, Chile, Rozas-Krause has written on strategies of oppression; resistance and memory within varying urban contexts; the absence of women in the global memorial landscape; colonialism’s sustained presence in the built environment; and the social, historic, and political dynamics of place more broadly. As the 2024–25 Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism at Bard College, Rozas-Krause will work on her book Memorials and the Cult of Apology, which examines the role that memorials play in processes of symbolic and material reparation after political conflicts. Following a series of case studies in Berlin and Buenos Aires, the book builds an empirical and theoretical understanding of multiple aspects of apology and memorialization, their material forms, the actors involved, and the diverse effects that built apologies can produce. “Valentina’s research unearthing the layers and complex symbols embedded in the built environment enables a deeper reading of the world around us,” said Tom Eccles, executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. “We look forward to having her on campus, where she will engage students in this critical study of the urban landscape, complementing and building on the rigorous examination of art objects and curatorial practices within CCS Bard’s program.” “To interpret memorials in all their political complexity requires a combination of aesthetic and historical knowledge that few scholars possess,” said Thomas Keenan, director of Bard’s Human Rights Project. “Valentina is a remarkable exception to that rule. Her work offers genuinely new insights into a carefully-chosen range of material objects and into the larger question of what can happen at the intersection between human rights and the arts.” The 10th anniversary of the Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism follows CCS Bard’s announcement this year of a new 12,000-square-foot addition to its library and archives named in recognition of a lead, $3M gift from the Keith Haring Foundation. The new Keith Haring Wing, expected to be completed in late 2025, builds on a longstanding partnership with CCS Bard and the Keith Haring Foundation, including the permanent endowment of the Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism in 2022. More information on previous appointees can be found at ccs.bard.edu. |
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09-24-2024 |
Artist Brandon Ndife MFA ’20, whose first solo exhibition, Clearance, is on view at Greene Naftali gallery in Chelsea, was profiled in the New York Times. “His art reminds its viewers that nature—even in the face of civilization—has an ultimately ungovernable power,” writes Zoë Hopkins. Ndife’s otherworldly creations fuse forms that resemble domestic objects, such as furniture, with elements derived from the natural world to evoke the sense of wild growth overtaking built environments. “They’re interchangeable to me, the native and the natural,” Ndife said. “There’s a mutiny that can happen in the work. I describe the sculptures as struggling to be, struggling to take hold in their environment. And I think that’s our story as Black people.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/21/arts/design/brandon-ndife-greene-naftali-art.html |
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July 2024 |
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07-30-2024 |
Bard alumna Micah Gleason GCP ’21 VAP ’22 was profiled in the New York Times for a piece which for a year followed five students attending the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Gleason is “an easygoing yet fiercely skilled conductor and singer,” writes Joshua Barone for the Times. “On the eve of graduation, Gleason presented a workshop performance of a chamber opera she was developing with Joanne Evans, a former classmate from Bard College and her duo partner.” The Curtis Institute of Music educates and trains exceptionally gifted young musicians to engage a local and global community through the highest level of artistry. Students at Curtis hone their craft through more than 200 orchestra, opera, and solo and chamber music offerings and programs, bringing arts access and education to the community.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/04/arts/music/curtis-institute-music-philadelphia.html |
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07-18-2024 |
For the fourth year in a row, the MBA in Sustainability Program at Bard College has been ranked as the Best Green MBA in the Princeton Review’s 2024 Business School rankings. This year, Bard's program also ranked no. 1 in the Review‘s Best MBA for Nonprofits, surpassing the MBA programs at Harvard, Columbia, Yale, and Stanford. The Review’s rankings follow on the Bard program’s recent no. 4 worldwide position in the Better World MBA global assessment.
The NYC-based Bard MBA has seen strong growth in demand for its unique educational program. Graduates are pursuing careers in both leading for-profit and nonprofit companies, where they are working to solve critical social and environmental challenges. “The Bard MBA’s overall focus on steering mission-driven organizations provides a powerful foundation for aspiring nonprofit leaders and managers,” said Unique Brathwaite, who anchors the nonprofit concentration at Bard. “Our graduates emerge with a profound understanding of prioritizing mission, while also ensuring the long-term financial viability of their organizations.” The Review’s honors were based primarily on a survey of more than 20,300 students enrolled at 244 US MBA programs during the past several academic years. The student survey asked students more than 90 questions about their school's academics, student body, and campus life, as well as their career plans. Only 28% the 244 On-Campus MBA Programs appeared in one or more of The Review’s 18 ranking lists: Bard and Stanford were the only MBAs to receive two no. 1 rankings in 2024. https://leadthechange.bard.edu/blog/bards-mba-in-sustainability-ranked-1-green-mba-for-fourth-straight-year |
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07-09-2024 |
Jacquelyn Stucker ’13, an alumna of Bard’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program, was reviewed in the New York Times for her role as Delilah in the opera Samson at the Aix-en-Provence festival. Samson, a never-performed opera by Voltaire and Rameau, two of Enlightenment France’s most important cultural figures, was performed as an updated production with pieces drawn from other Rameau works to replace the original score, which was lost some 250 years ago. The Aix production “retains the hypnotic continuity of Rameau’s complete operas, their steadiness and also their variety, veering from festive to soulful, from raucous dances to hushed, hovering arias and radiant choruses,” writes Zachary Woolfe for the New York Times. “The mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre (Timna) and the soprano Jacquelyn Stucker (Dalila) are both exquisitely sensitive in their floating music.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/08/arts/music/samson-pichon-guth-aix-festival-rameau-voltaire.html |
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07-09-2024 |
The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College has appointed Pavlina R. Tcherneva as its next president, succeeding Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, who has held the role since its founding in 1986.
“After 38 years as president of the Levy Institute, the time has come to pass the baton to the new generation,” Papadimitriou announced. “I can think of no one better than Pavlina to lead the Levy Institute into its next phase of development in exploring solutions to the economic challenges that lie ahead.” Papadimitriou will remain at the Institute as president emeritus and senior scholar. Tcherneva, who first joined the Levy Institute in 1997 as a forecasting fellow, has been a scholar at the Institute since 2007, specializing in modern money and public policy. She is a professor of economics at Bard College and founding director of the Bard-OSUN Economic Democracy Initiative. Her book The Case for a Job Guarantee (Polity 2020), one of the Financial Times economics books of 2020 and published in nine languages, is a timely guide to the benefits of one of the most transformative public policies being discussed today. “I am honored and energized to take this new role and am grateful to Dimitri Papadimitriou for building a world-class institution that has influenced economic policy in the US and abroad. I am especially excited to support the work of my colleagues whose research has placed the Levy Institute among the most-cited non-profits in the world,” stated Tcherneva. “My mission is clear: to continue to curate cutting-edge research, grow our graduate programs, and amplify the Institute's impact on policy. We have produced some of the most influential work on financial instability, money, inequality, gender, and employment policy and we will continue to make these impacts and expand the Institute's reach.” She added, “Our work matters. Financial markets crash. Mainstream theories fail. At the Levy Economics Institute, we will continue to do what we do best: make sense of the senseless, find patterns in the chaos of global economics, and produce actionable policies for a safe, sustainable, and stable economy.” Since 1986, the Levy Institute and its scholars have reinvigorated heterodox economics, with contributions to macroeconomic theory, modeling, and policy targeting financial and economic stability for the US economy and the rest of the world. The Levy Institute has also developed a distinct research program on the distribution of income and wealth featuring two measures of economic well-being (LIMEW) and time and income poverty (LIMTIP) that will help shift official measures of living standards in the years ahead; is one of few institutions with a focus on gender equality and the economy; and has graduated scholars from its MA and MS degree programs in Economic Theory and Policy, who go on to play significant roles in economic think tanks, international organizations, governments, and the world of finance. |
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June 2024 |
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06-17-2024 |
The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College (Bard MFA) presents Off Site, the Class of 2025 thesis performances and exhibition, which brings together the culminating work of third-year MFA candidates in the disciplines of moving image, music/sound, painting, photography, sculpture, and writing. This year, the exhibition will be split between two galleries in Hudson, New York: Basilica Hudson and Time & Space Limited (TSL). The show is curated by Mary Fellios. The opening weekend of events will begin with a catered reception from 7–8 pm to open the Music/Sound student performances at Basilica Hudson on Thursday, July 11, 8–11 pm, as part of Basilica’s Jupiter Nights, a series of summer performances. Thesis projects in various disciplines will be on view in the galleries at Basilica Hudson and Time & Space Limited, opening on Friday, July 12 with opening receptions from 5–8 pm held concurrently at both locations. Film screenings and readings will be presented at TSL on Saturday, July 13, 1–4 pm, followed by a reception from 4–6 pm. The TSL galleries will be open during the reception. The gallery exhibitions will be on view through Sunday, July 21.
Off Site presents the work of Bard’s MFA Class of 2025. The title references the nature of this year’s exhibition as both a logistical reality and resilient methodology in which art activates pathways between malleable pasts and potential futures. Off Site marks a new era of openness for the program as this is the first Thesis Exhibition to occur off campus. It is staged across two venues in Hudson, New York, Time & Space Limited and Basilica Hudson. Disruptions around the source of the authorial voice; the destabilization of boundaries separating real and artificial space; and forms of perceptual mapping are among the concerns that spark connections between the works on view. Off Site showcases 19 artists working across a variety of mediums—from painting to sound installation—alongside two nights of performances. The Class of 2025 Jasmine Amussen (Writing) Michaela Bathrick (Sculpture) Erin Hoffstetter (Photography) Jenny Jisun Kim (Painting) Kinlaw (Music/Sound) Alima Lee (Moving Image) Matthew Li (Sculpture) Tyler Little (Writing) Carolyne Loreé Teston (Photography) A. Mac (Sculpture) Alina Maldonado (Music/Sound) Chantal Michelle (Music/Sound) Cherry Nin (Moving Image) lucia reissig (Sculpture) Will Stovall (Painting) geetha thurairajah (Painting) Taryn Tomasello (Sculpture) Aynsley Vandenbroucke (Writing) Grace Villamil (Music/Sound) Mary Fellios is a curator who received their MA in Curatorial Studies from CCS Bard. They have completed research and worked on programs with Textile Arts Center (New York, NY), Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (San Diego, CA), Brooklyn Museum (New York, NY), Performa (New York, NY), and Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (Troy, NY). Founded in 1981, Bard MFA is a nontraditional school for visual, written, and time-based arts. At Bard, the community itself is the primary resource for the student — serving as audience, teacher, and peer group in an ongoing dialogue. In interdisciplinary group critiques, seminars, school presentations, as well as discipline caucuses and one-on-one conferences, the artist-student engages with accomplished faculty members while developing their individual studio practice. The program probes a diversity of approaches and fosters imaginative responses and insights to aesthetic concerns across the disciplines of film/video, writing, painting, sculpture, photography and music/sound. Bard MFA is a low-residency program that takes place over two years and two months. Students are on campus for three consecutive eight-week summer sessions and off campus for two independent study sessions completed during the intervening winters. For more information, please contact the Bard MFA Office at (845) 758-7481 or [email protected]. Off Site Class of 2025 Bard MFA Thesis Exhibition July 14–21, 2024 Basilica Hudson: Student Performances Thursday, July 11, 2024: Reception 7–8 pm, Performances 8–11 pm Opening Receptions at Basilica Hudson and Time & Space Limited Friday, July 12, 2024: Reception 5–8 PM at both locations Time & Space Limited: Student Performances and Screenings Saturday, July 13, 2024: Performances 1–4 pm, Reception 4–6 pm Basilica Hudson and Time & Space Limited Gallery Hours: Monday–Friday, 11 am–5 pm | Saturday & Sunday, 1–5 pm Basilica Hudson will be closed on Saturday, July 13 Basilica Hudson 110 Front Street, Hudson, NY 12534 Time & Space Limited 434 Columbia Street, Hudson, NY 12534 Hudson, New York is a 30-minute drive from the Bard College campus. Amtrak trains from New York City and points north stop at the Hudson Amtrak station. Please check Amtrak for schedules. The train station is a short walk to Basilica Hudson and about a 20-minute walk to Time & Space Limited. Both Basilica Hudson and Time & Space Limited will be open during Upstate Art Weekend on Friday, July 21, 11 AM–5 PM, and Saturday & Sunday, 1–5 PM. Please contact the Bard MFA Office at (845) 758-7481 or [email protected] for any questions or requests regarding accessibility, including audio or film descriptions. |
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06-04-2024 |
Soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, visiting faculty in vocal arts at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, has been awarded a 2024 fellowship from the Borletti-Buitoni Trust (BBT) in support of her professional projects. The BBT Fellowship Program rewards musical excellence demonstrated by outstanding young musicians—for individuals and ensembles that have been selected from over 32 countries—with fellowships in 2024 being given to seven artists, including Fitz Gibbon. BBT winners are awarded between £20,000 and £30,000. There are no set criteria for how artists spend their budget. Winners are encouraged to be creative and to use their awards in a way that will help to establish and build their careers. Over the next three years, BBT’s fellowship funding will support Fitz Gibbon in the commissioning of new works, performances, and recordings. BBT also will provide advice, guidance, contacts, and public relations exposure. BBT artists join a supportive family that helps to advance their careers.
“I am overwhelmed with gratitude to have received one of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust’s 2024 Artist Fellowships. The nomination process asked me to dream about what I could accomplish with the kind of latitude that this funding and administrative support would represent, but I found the range of possibilities almost too tantalizing to imagine, as if I could permit myself only an oblique gaze at what might be,” wrote Fitz Gibbon upon receiving the fellowship. Lucy Fitz Gibbon is noted for her “dazzling virtuoso singing” (Boston Globe) and believes that creating new works and recreating those lost in centuries past makes room for the diversity of voices integral to classical music’s future. Spotlighted as a Rising Star of Classical Music for 2024 in the February 20, 2024, edition of the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) Music Magazine, Fitz Gibbon is one of 15 young classical musicians that the BBC has identified worldwide who are making a prominent stamp on the industry, whether with concert performances, opera roles, or dazzling new recordings. https://www.bbtrust.com/artist/lucy-fitz-gibbon/biography/ |
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April 2024 |
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04-30-2024 |
The exhibition Sonia Delaunay: Living Art at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery was featured as a Critic’s Pick in the New York Times. “Some very strong moments of exhibition design (no easy feat with so many oddly shaped, fragile and iterative objects) pay off in a wall of crepe silk swatches from Sonia’s workshop,” writes Walker Mimms for the Times. Mimms continues, “Only in Bard’s dense wardrobe of a show do the sources of Sonia’s painterly voice become obvious: the bunchable, joinable, repeatable textures of cloth.” The exhibition reflects Delaunay’s kaleidoscopic output through all periods of her career, tracing lifetime of creative expression and presenting an innovator who transcended conventional artistic boundaries and devotedly lived her art.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/arts/design/sonia-delaunay-artist-bard-textiles.html |
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04-22-2024 |
Renowned Earth Scientist Naomi Oreskes to Give Commencement AddressBard College will hold its one hundred sixty-fourth commencement on Saturday, May 25, 2024. Bard President Leon Botstein will confer 395 undergraduate degrees on the Class of 2024 and 229 graduate degrees, including master of fine arts; doctor and master of philosophy and master of arts in decorative arts, design history, and material culture; master of science and master of arts in economic theory and policy; master of business administration in sustainability; master of arts in teaching; master of arts in curatorial studies; master of science in environmental policy and in climate science and policy; master of music in vocal arts and in conducting; master of music in curatorial, critical, and performance studies; and master of education in environmental education. Bard will also confer 40 associate degrees from its microcolleges. The program will begin at 2:30 pm in the commencement tent on the Seth Goldfine Memorial Rugby Field.The Commencement address will be given by internationally renowned earth scientist, science historian, and author Naomi Oreskes, who is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. Honorary degrees will be awarded to Naomi Oreskes, President of Al Quds University Imad Abu Kishek, sculptor El Anatsui, Chancellor of New York City Public Schools David C. Banks, scholar R. Howard Bloch, health economist Richard Frank ’74, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, and actor Rachel Weisz. Other events taking place during Commencement Weekend include Bard College award ceremonies. The Bard Medal will be presented to Sandy Zane ’80 and The Right Reverend Andrew M.L. Dietsche; the John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science to Daniel Fulham O’Neill ’79 and Andrew Zwicker ’86; the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters to Adam Conover ’04 and James Fuentes ’98; the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service to Paul J. Thompson ’93 and Erin J. Law ’93; the Mary McCarthy Award to Karen Russell; the László Z. Bitó ’60 Award for Humanitarian Service to Golden McCarthy ’05, Adam Khalil ’11 and Zack Khalil ’14; and Bardian Awards to Myra Young Armstead, Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky, Joel Perlmann, and Tom Wolf. ABOUT THE COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER Naomi Oreskes is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. She is an internationally renowned earth scientist, science historian, and author of both scholarly and popular books and articles on the history of earth and environmental science. Her authored or coauthored books include The Rejection of Continental Drift (1999), Plate Tectonics: An Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth (2001), Merchants of Doubt (2010), The Collapse of Western Civilization (2014), Discerning Experts (2019), Why Trust Science? (2019), and Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know about the Ocean (2021). Oreskes has been a leading voice on the science and politics of anthropogenic climate change. Her 2004 essay “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” (Science 306: 1686)—the first peer-reviewed paper to document the scientific consensus on this crucial issue—has been cited more than 2,500 times. It was featured in the landmark Royal Society publication, “A Guide to Facts and Fictions about Climate Change,” and in the Academy Award–winning film, An Inconvenient Truth. Her 2010 book, Merchants of Doubt (coauthored with Erik M. Conway), has been translated into nine languages and was made into a documentary film produced by Participant Media and distributed by SONY Pictures Classics. Her 2014 TED Talk, “Why We Should Trust Scientists,” has over 1.6 million views. In 2018 she was named a Guggenheim Fellow for a book project with Erik M. Conway, The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market. It was released by Bloomsbury Press in February 2023, and has been widely reviewed, including in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the New Yorker. # |
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