News and Events

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.

Orange Blossom Trail, a new book of photography by Bard alumnus Joshua Lutz ’97 MFA ’05, documents the lives of workers along a 400-mile stretch of highway from Georgia to Miami. Three texts by author George Saunders accompany Lutz’s photographs, which display an “austere frankness,” writes Walker Mimms in a review for the New York Times. “Though not without dignity—see Lutz’s portraits of fruit inspectors, as they glance up from a conveyor belt of tumbling oranges—his photos lack any social agenda,” Mimms continues, an effect that is emphasized by inclusion of the Saunders texts. Mimms walks away surprised not only by the collaboration itself, but its commitment to portraying “the demoralizing American grind with an attitude between sympathy and resignation. An attitude that’s rare in art because we seldom admit it to ourselves.”

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.