Dear Alumni/ae,

Happy December! 

Yesterday was the first day to register for the spring semester. It's not as hectic as it used to be, no more long lines, heartfelt pleas to be let into an oversubscribed class, determined students marching from one department to another. It's all online. The course list is always an inspiring read. I'm thinking about maybe an acting class this year.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Alumni/ae Holiday Party last week at Wall Street's oldest clubhouse, 60 Pine. I'm happy to say that the Holiday Party is definitely back as a Bard tradition. Please save the date for Friday, December 5th, 2025. 

Last week we also hosted the annual Margaret and John Bard Society Luncheon in New York City—an event we hold to thank alumni/ae and friends of the College who have put Bard in their estate plans. (If you make Bard a beneficiary of any IRA or life insurance policy, at any level, you would be invited, and, just a reminder that all commitments made now count towards the challenge grant provided by George Soros and the Open Society Foundations.) Thanks to estate planning attorney Morgen Bowers '90 for leading an estate planning webinar the day after the luncheon. Never too early to get it all together. Also, Bard’s partnership with FreeWill enables you to build a legacy with Bard College in just 20 minutes.

Monday, December 9th was SPROJ (Senior Project) day for students finishing in the fall semester. This year we had almost 60 students turning in some fascinating projects including Environmental Devastations caused by the Implications and Impositions of settler colonialism: Is Resistance Inevitable? (Architecture), Black Coats and Brownstones: Spatial Portraits of Crown Heights (American and Indigenous Studies, Environmental Studies, Jewish Studies), and Seed Pathogens and Plant Interactions in Old Fields (Biology). The Office of Alumni/ae Affairs hosted a celebratory toast in the library and welcomed the newest Bardians to the Alumni/ae Association.

New Bardians are eager to meet fellow graduates. If you haven't already, please sign up for the Bard Career Network to connect with students and alumni/ae. 

And BardWorks will be back in January, in Annandale and in NYC. If you would like to share your professional experience and advice with juniors and seniors at the BardWorks alumni/ae reception in New York City, please save the date for Friday, January 24th, from 4:30-6:30pm. Location and details to come. If you would like to be involved in other ways, please let us know.

OK, it's the end of the year. If you are giving gifts, we encourage you to “Buy Bardian” through the Alumni/ae Holiday Gift Guide. 

I would also like to ask you to consider a gift to Bard before December 31st. This year especially, I believe my Bard education and my Bard community are more meaningful than ever. Your gift, of any size, keeps Bard going, and is a vote of confidence for the value of the liberal arts at this bold and unique place. We really do need all of you. I am proud to be a supporter, please join me. 

Classes ending in 5s and 0s: your reunion is coming up. Before December 31st is the best time to join your classmates and make your class gift. Save the date for May 23rd-25th, 2025 for the best party of the year in Annandale!

Wishing you all a healthy and fun season. I know I will be looking for new shows to watch over the break. Love to know what you are watching?

Be seeing you,
Jane '89

P.S. Thanks to everyone who wrote responded to my quiz question. I'm afraid I didn't get one right answer, but lots of fun ones. Chevy Chase? That would be funny if he moonlighted as a mystery writer. Chat GPT thought the answer was Peter Orlovsky, “a poet and longtime companion of Allen Ginsberg, attended Bard briefly and drew inspiration from his experiences there for the script.” NOT. The answer was Alvin Sapinsley '42 who wrote for The Night Gallery, and set the episode “There are No More McBanes” at Bard College. Fun fact—the person who wrote the story that it was based on was Sam Hall, the creator of Dark Shadows and longtime Bard neighbor in Rhinecliff. (I asked this question in last month’s issue after hearing about Sapinsley from a student who said decided to apply to Bard because he was watching the show late one night and heard Bard mentioned.)

P.P.S. Anyone remember the Grand Union Streaker of 1974? 

How Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt Made Rob Brunner ’93 Confront His Family’s Holocaust History

Bard alum Rob Brunner ’93, politics and culture editor at the Washingtonian magazine, writes about how Tom Stoppard’s Tony Award–winning play Leopoldstadt—which follows the story of the Merz family, a wealthy, deeply assimilated family of Viennese Jews, from the cultural heyday of Vienna’s pre-war period, through two world wars, and their terrifying aftermath—made him finally confront his own family's tragic history.

Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio ’12 Named ARTnews 2024 Emerging Artist of the Year

Artist and Bard alumnus Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio ’12 has been recognized by ARTnews as a 2024 Emerging Artist of the Year. For his first solo museum presentation, which took place earlier this year, Aparicio was selected by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles to take over part of its sprawling Geffen Contemporary location for the relaunch of its “MOCA Focus” exhibition series, which featured works he made between 2016 and 2023 alongside three site-specific commissions.

Suzanne Kite MFA ’18 Interviewed for NBC News

Suzanne Kite MFA ’18, aka Kite, distinguished artist in residence, assistant professor of American and Indigenous Studies, and director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI at Bard, was interviewed by News10 NBC for an article about how Indigenous engineers and artists are using artificial intelligence for cultural preservation projects. “My question is simple: How do we create ethical art with AI by applying Indigenous ontologies?” Kite said. “I try to resist Western personification of AI and instead dig into the hyperlocal, grounded and practical frameworks of knowledge that American Indigenous communities provide.”

Stevenson Library Converts to Geothermal Heating and Cooling

Bard celebrates the completion of a major project to convert the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library’s outdated fossil fuel–fired heating system to a state-of-the-art geothermal heating and cooling system. A leader and early adopter of geothermal technologies, Bard College has ground source heat exchange systems on campus dating to the 1980s. Almost 50% of buildings on the main campus utilize geothermal technology for heating and cooling, and it is the default for all new construction projects on campus.

Bard Conservatory Orchestra Presents Concert with Maestro Leon Botstein on December 14

Featuring soloists from the Bard Graduate Vocal Arts Program and conducted by Leon Botstein, the concert program includes Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B Minor “Unfinished”; Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s Psalm 42, Op. 42, Wie der Hirsch schreit (As the hart cries out); and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93. The performance will be held on Saturday, December 14, at 7 pm in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater.