Our Programs
Programs in the Division of the Arts include:
- Architecture
- Art History and Visual Culture
- Dance
- Film and Electronic Arts
- Music
- Photography
- Studio Arts
- Theater and Performance
Coursework and Requirements
As a student progresses to the Upper College, the coursework increasingly consists of smaller studio discussion groups and seminars in which active participation is expected. Advisory conferences, tutorials, and independent work prepare the student for the Senior Project. This yearlong independent project may be a critical or theoretical monograph, a collection of essays, or, for a large proportion of students, an artistic work, such as an exhibition of original paintings, sculpture, or photography; performances in dance, theater, or music; dance choreography or musical composition; or the making of a short film with sound. In designing their Senior Project topics, students may have reason to join their arts studies together with a complementary field or discipline, including programs or concentrations in other divisions. Plans for such integrated or interdivisional projects are normally created on an individual basis with the adviser.
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Photo by Paula Court
Live Arts Bard
“When I was a student at Bard, I was drawn to the Fisher Center because of Live Arts Bard. LAB is pushing the frontiers of these art forms, all of which are becoming more open and fluid.” —Sam Miller ’15
Live Arts Bard (LAB) is the interdisciplinary residency and commissioning program of Bard’s Fisher Center. Since its launch in 2012, Fisher Center LAB has supported residencies, workshops, and performances for hundreds of artists, incubating new projects and engaging audiences, students, faculty, and staff in the process of creating contemporary performances.
Live Arts Bard (LAB) is the interdisciplinary residency and commissioning program of Bard’s Fisher Center. Since its launch in 2012, Fisher Center LAB has supported residencies, workshops, and performances for hundreds of artists, incubating new projects and engaging audiences, students, faculty, and staff in the process of creating contemporary performances.
Arts News and Events
Featured News
Bard Dance Program and New York City-based Movement Research Announce Three-Year Professional Partnership
During the creative residency, teaching artists will offer technique and repertory courses for dance majors and non-majors.
Bard Dance Program and New York City-based Movement Research Announce Three-Year Professional Partnership
Movement Research is a leading laboratory for the investigation of dance and movement-based forms. Photos by Rachel Keane
“Movement Research has been a major player in the dance world for over forty years,” said Tara Lorenzen, associate professor of dance and dance program director. “They serve as a home base for many dancers and choreographers in New York City, and the teaching faculty they support are among some of the most artistically rigorous practitioners in the field. The Movement Research Performance Journal has been a guiding text for dance scholars and practitioners alike. I am thrilled to share their work with the dance program, the Bard campus, and the Hudson Valley.”
Since 2009, the Bard Dance Program has hosted an in-residence dance company or organization within the program, who infuse their technique and composition with the academic program. Previous resident companies have included the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Trisha Brown Dance Company, American Dance Festival, Gibney Dance, and, most recently, the French cultural institution Villa Albertine.
During the new partnership, Movement Research will also offer scholarships to Bard dance majors to attend the company’s Winter MELT Intensive, a daily workshop series focusing on technique, somatics, improvisation, and composition, among other areas. This expanded opportunity reflects the shared values of the Bard Dance Program and Movement Research, which both emphasize exploration, experimentation, and access.
“The ethos of the Bard Dance Program is deeply symbiotic with Movement Research’s mission and values,” said Barbara Bryan, the company’s executive director. “The comprehensive education and expansive opportunities offered at Bard uniquely prepare students to thrive as professional artists. Upon graduation, Bard dance students naturally gravitate toward Movement Research to continue their training and connect with the professional dance community in New York City and beyond.”
Bryan continued: “We at Movement Research, alongside our faculty of teaching artists, are deeply excited to collaborate with Bard on this thoughtfully designed partnership, which builds upon decades of organic connections between our organizations.”
Post Date: 10-14-2026
Recent News
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Multiple Bard Alumni/ae Named to 2026 TIME100 Art List
Multiple Bard Alumni/ae Named to 2026 TIME100 Art List
Three Bard alumni/ae and an Artist in Residence have been named to the TIME100 Art list for 2026, which identifies the 100 most influential curators and artists working today. Those alumni include Christine Sun Kim MFA '13, a visual artist who pairs drawings with sound, and Artist in Residence Jeffrey Gibson, a sculptor whose work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The list also includes Cecilia Alemani MA-CCS '05, director and chief curator of New York City's High Line, and Diya Vij '08, commissioner of cultural affairs for the City of New York.Cecilia Alemani MA-CCS '05, director and chief curator of New York City's High Line, is among the three Bard alums included in the TIME100 Art list.
“Artists don’t work in a vacuum,” TIME writes. “They are supported by a massive ecosystem, from philanthropists and nonprofits who fund work, to gallerists and advisers who shape careers, to curators, museum leaders, [who] make art possible.” Asked by TIME about her work with New York’s Cultural Stability Fund, Vij said, “I was really interested in making gathering spaces where people could surface the ideas of what it looks like [to] live together differently, to govern differently, to build a different world.”
Bard’s programs include the undergraduate Studio Arts Program, which provides a breadth of expanded offerings while retaining a strong core of courses that provide a firm grounding in artistic techniques and principles. They also include Bard’s MFA Program, a two-year multidisciplinary program focused on individual process and work in progress, as each student confronts the conceptual and practical questions at the core of all artistic production.
Post Date: 09-23-2026
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Exhibition Curated By Professor Jack Ferver Reviewed in ArtForum
Exhibition Curated By Professor Jack Ferver Reviewed in ArtForum
Assistant Professor of Performing Arts Jack Ferver is the curator of a new exhibition at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, titled “Martha Graham: The Mother of Psychological Dance,” which was reviewed by ArtForum. Composed of five subsections focused on different aspects of the famous dancer and choreographer’s work, like “Joy and Grief” and “Technique,” the exhibition includes videos as well as photographs, sculpture, and writing, providing a background to Graham’s career. The exhibit “offers a deep examination of the artist’s legacy and unpacks the influence of psychology on her choreography [and] how she made the unconscious visible by using dance to give form to our innermost experiences,” writes ArtForum.Assistant Professor of Performing Arts Jack Ferver.
Ferver teaches in Bard’s Theater and Performance Program, which offers an interdisciplinary, liberal arts-based approach to the making and study of theater and performance, and embraces a wide range of performance practices, from live art and interactive installation to classical theater from around the globe.
Post Date: 09-16-2026
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Visiting Artist Tschabalala Self ’12 Profiled in L’Officiel
Visiting Artist Tschabalala Self ’12 Profiled in L’Officiel
Bard Visiting Artist Tschabalala Self ’12 was profiled by L’Officiel on the occasion of her sculpture’s unveiling in Trafalgar Square on September 10. Self is the second American artist in two decades to have her work selected for display on the famous fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, one of the world’s most prestigious public art commissions. Self’s sculpture depicts a Black woman in motion, described by the artist as an everywoman figure. “Her presence is in fact very quotidian and mundane,” says Self of her sculpture, yet she sees its installation in Trafalgar Square as “a kind of social experiment.” “I’m interested in the ways people build their own worlds around my work and see a part of themselves,” says Self.Tschabalala Self ’12. Photo by Paula Virta
In an overview of Self’s artistic career, L’Officiel notes that her sculpture and textile work has appeared in exhibitions from MOMA PS1 to the Yuz Museum in Shanghai. “Self weaves figures that feel both invented and strikingly familiar,” writes Osman Can Yerebakan for L’Officiel. “In just a few years, she [has] established herself as one of the most closely watched artists of the last decade.”
Post Date: 09-15-2026
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Visiting Artist Tschabalala Self’s ’12 Lady In Blue Unveiled in London’s Trafalgar Square and Featured in the Guardian
Visiting Artist Tschabalala Self’s ’12 Lady In Blue Unveiled in London’s Trafalgar Square and Featured in the Guardian
A sculpture by Visiting Artist Tschabalala Self ’12 was unveiled in London’s Trafalgar Square on September 10. Lady in Blue stands prominently on the Square’s fourth plinth, one of the world’s best-known commission spaces for public art. The fourth plinth has been host to a rotating series of contemporary artists including Mark Wallinger, Katharina Fritsch, and David Shrigley.Tschabalala Self’s sculpture Lady In Blue.
The Guardian also featured Self in advance of Lady in Blue’s unveiling. Speaking about the sculpture, which the artist describes as an image of an everywoman striding forward into the future, and “a beacon that could shed light into a possible future,” she says, “it’s about there being space for all in places that were formerly weighted down by antiquated gestures, belief systems and impossibilities." The Guardian describes her work as “a lurid, vivid, super-colourful, mega-joyful celebration of everyday bodies” embodying “simplicity, joy, and above all freedom.” Lady in Blue will remain on the plinth for two years.
Self is a visiting artist in Bard’s Studio Arts Program, which provides a breadth of expanded offerings while retaining a strong core of courses that provide a firm grounding in basic techniques and principles, in an era when much contemporary art cannot be contained within the traditional categories and technology is transforming the production of visual images.
Post Date: 09-09-2026
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Exhibit Curated by Professor Susan Aberth Opens at Andrew Edlin Gallery
Exhibit Curated by Professor Susan Aberth Opens at Andrew Edlin Gallery
Conduits of the Unseen: Women Artists Imagine Other Worlds, a new exhibit curated by Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History Susan Aberth, has opened at Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York City. Centering the work of Paulina Peavy, a visionary artist known for her paintings, drawings, and ornamented masks, the exhibit also includes artists Leonora Carrington and Agnes Pelton, among others, alongside mediums like Madge Gill and Emma Kunz. In a press release, the gallery said the exhibition presents artists who “gave visual form to alternate realities, spirits, cosmic forces, and other planes of consciousness . . . united by a shared desire to give form to their inner visions, expressed across landscapes, portraits, narratives, and pure abstraction.” The exhibit opened on September 9 and runs through October 31, 2026.Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History Susan Aberth.
Aberth teaches in the Art History and Visual Culture Program, which introduces students to visual material across a broad range of periods and societies.
Post Date: 09-09-2026
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Spencer Vazquez ’22 Awarded a Residency from Visual Studies Workshop
Spencer Vazquez ’22 Awarded a Residency from Visual Studies Workshop
Photographer and filmmaker Spencer Vazquez ’22 has been awarded a 2027 artist’s residency from the Visual Studies Workshop, an artist-run organization that has offered more than 500 artists residencies since 1969. The residency, which will take place between February and March 2027, provides resources and space for artists at any stage of their career who are pushing disciplinary and conceptual boundaries in film, photography, or new media. Vazquez’s debut solo show, Glue Traps, was on view earlier this year at the Camera Club of New York. His work has been featured in publications including ARTnews, Hypebeast, Interlocutor, and Musee Magazine. “Vazquez's work explores the intersection of memory, digital media, and the everyday image,” writes Broadway World.Spencer Vazquez ’22. Photo by Zayira Ray
Vazquez graduated from Bard’s Film and Electronic Arts Program, which encourages interest in a wide range of expressive modes in film and electronic arts including animation, narrative and non-narrative filmmaking, documentary, performance, and installation practices. The program emphasizes imaginative engagement and the cultivation of an individual voice that has command over the entire creative process.
Post Date: 09-08-2026
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