The Arts
Past Events
Eduardo Navega, conductor.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
Join PHOCUS, Vassar’s only student photography organization, for a guest lecture by a multidisciplinary artist who will speak about their work involving photography, community, and issues of labor, class, queerness, and representation. Q&A to follow.
A talk by Ricardo Montez, Associate Professor of Performance Studies at the New School.
An inventive retelling of a Jacobean drama, Jen Silverman’s sharp, subversive fable debates how much our souls are worth when hope is hard to come by. Directed by Claire McHarg. Senior project members: Kelly Hatfield, Louise Ambler, Jack Francis, Emma Skinner, Rose Trammell, Presley Wheeler. Free and open to the public, reservations required.
A Dialogue on Art and Disability with Tatlock Fellow Finnegan Shannon and Gordon Hall, Assistant Professor of Art.
James Osborn, conductor.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
An evening of student artwork, poetry, and performances at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. Refreshments will be served.
Kitamura’s most recent novel is Intimacies—one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021 and one of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2021.
Join visiting artists and members of our campus and local communities for a conversation about Indigenous arts, land acknowledgments, and more.
Hailed as a ‘personable polymath’ in the London Times, Bill Barclay ’03 is a director, composer, writer, and producer. He joins us to discuss his work Le Chevalier, a full-length play detailing Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges’ true friendships with Mozart and Marie Antoinette, and his unknown contribution to the abolishment of slavery.
Welcome to Indian Country is an evening-length celebration of Native culture through music and storytelling. A world-class, five-piece musical ensemble is joined by storyteller and Washington State Poet Laureate Rena Priest. Together they weave new compositions and songs with witty, wise, and poignant poetry and satire to honor the elders and ancestors.
Audio
Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre performs works selected from the current repertory by faculty, students, and guest choreographers, including a special appearance by the Heidi Latsky Dance Company. Tickets are free but must be reserved.
From Requiem to Solace: Artwork Inspired by the Ashokan Reservoir. Artist Kate McGloughlin will speak about how the devastation endured by her ancestors during the creation of the Ashokan Reservoir influences and inspires her work. Sponsored by Late Night at the Loeb and the Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education.
Aki Sasamoto works in sculpture, performance, video, and more. In her installation/performance works, Sasamoto moves and talks inside the careful arrangements of sculpturally altered objects, activating bizarre emotions behind daily life.
A Library exhibition marking the 100th anniversary of the publication of Jean Toomer’s novel Cane. Curated by students in ENGL 319 during the fall 2022 semester.
Digital scores can change in real time during a performance, allowing for exciting and spontaneous interaction and improvisation. This workshop will explore this emerging performance practice using the software Indra, culminating in a conducted group improvisation. Participants should bring an instrument and a Mac laptop. A student-only event. Registration required.
Honoring the founders of MODfest, we celebrate the “meanings and measures” of modern musical works: Richard Wilson’s Avuncularities (2022) for solo trombone and Perplexities (2022) for oboe and English horn, violin, viola, and cello; and Serenity (2021) for solo piano by Jonathan Chenette.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
Sketching Loss and Remembrance: An Art Workshop. Work alongside Kate McGloughlin in creating your own original work using India ink. Art supplies provided free of charge. Please email creativearts@vassar.edu to reserve a spot, space is limited.
The Palmer Gallery exhibit Imploding Meaning: Tale-less Tales About Absolutely Nothing and Everything In Between features the work of M. Pettee Olsen, Michael Oatman, Rosanne Walsh, and Monica Church—all of whom will be speaking at this event.
Vassar College’s Muslim Students Association (MSA) presents excerpts from the new play Wedding Scraps by Arshia Iqbal ’23, a senior thesis project that serves as a funny peek into the world of diasporic Desi kids and their collective efforts to find home.
An exhibit of artwork by Kate McGloughlin depicts the beauty and sorrow inherent in the Ashokan Reservoir. Kate’s family lost both land and community to reservoir construction. There will also be an artist talk in the second week of the festival during Late Night at the Loeb. This exhibit is sponsored by the Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education.
The Palmer Gallery exhibit Imploding Meaning: Tale-less Tales About Absolutely Nothing and Everything In Between features the work of M. Pettee Olsen, Michael Oatman, Rosanne Walsh, and Monica Church.
Join us in kicking off this year’s festival with exciting exhibitions in three different gallery spaces on campus. Enjoy refreshments in the Loeb and Palmer Galleries to celebrate the wide range of visual art offerings for MODfest 2023.
How do artists help us see or shape the past and future? Works ranging from Matthew Vassar’s initial bequest in 1864 to the Loeb’s most recent gifts and acquisitions will cluster in visual dialogues thematizing past, present, and future as categories in constant states of flux and transformation.
This rotation of the Loeb’s In the Spotlight will feature a small selection of prints, drawings, paintings, and photographs depicting water in New York State
A Palmer Gallery exhibit featuring M. Pettee Olsen, Michael Oatman, Rosanne Walsh, and Monica Church. Though each artist’s approach is different, a through-line in their work is an embodied open-ness to interpretation, evoking experience and invoking a call to simply behold the work and the world.
This illustrated lecture by a Wesleyan University professor of art history and East Asian studies will focus on visual narratives spun by the Kumano nuns in early modern Japan for fundraising purposes and the paintings they used, called sankei mandara or “pilgrimage mandalas.”
Explore the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center while listening to music sung by the Vassar College Women’s Chorus and Choir at 6:30 p.m.
A lecture by Mark S. Cladis of Brown University, presented by the Vassar English Department in celebration of Professor Paul Kane’s long service.
This annual Advent service at the Vassar College Chapel features readings, choral anthems, and congregational carols, culminating in a candle lighting ceremony. Vassar College Choir, Chamber Singers, and Women’s Chorus, and Cappella Festiva Ensembles will perform.
This is an in-person event that was recorded.
James Osborn, director
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
Eduardo Navega, director
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
In this Drama Department senior project, Mrs. Lemarchand, a well-to-do woman and a study in megalomania, draws her innocent cleaner, Hilda, into a trap from which there is no escape.
Campus community only, please.
Drew Minter, conductor
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
Eduardo Navega, conductor
This concert is free and open to the public.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
The Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre presents three programs of new choreography by guest choreographers Mike Tyus and Amy Hall Garner, as well as faculty and student works. This is a free but ticketed event, reservations required.
One of the best-known artists on the world stage, Xu Bing has made real impact in China and abroad. His talk will be given in Chinese, with simultaneous translation provided.
Campus community only, please.
James Osborn, conductor
This concert is free and open to the public.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
Christine Howlett, conductor
Love Arrives: Music of Debussy, Poulenc, and contemporary compositions by Levente Gyöngyösi, Joan Symko, Tom Trenney, Mari Esabel Valverde, and arrangements of Gilbert and Sullivan by Joel Suben.
This concert is free and open to the public.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
Eugenides is the author of The Virgin Suicides, Middlesex (for which he won the Pulitzer Prize), and other works. This event will be hosted by Amitava Kumar, Professor of English on the Helen D. Lockwood Chair.
Latin GRAMMY winner Flor de Toloache is New York City’s first and only all-women mariachi group. Led by singers Mireya I. Ramos and Shae Fiol, the group’s members hail from diverse cultural backgrounds resulting in an edgy, versatile, and fresh take on traditional Mexican music.
An oratorio with silent film combines a performance of Richard Einhorn’s 1994 choral and orchestral work, Voices of Light, with Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 silent film classic, The Passion of Joan of Arc. At the Bardavon 1869 Opera House. Free tickets are available for Vassar students by emailing concerts@vassar.edu. Regular tickets are available for purchase at bardavon.com.
Chabitnoy, a Koniag descendant (Aleut) and member of the Tangirnaq Native Village in Kodiak, is an award-winning writer and an Assistant Professor of English at UMass Amherst. Her works include How to Dress a Fish, which addresses the lives disrupted by the Indian boarding school policy of the U.S. government.
A Drama Department senior project in which the ensemble cast tells the story of Pippin, a young prince who longs to find passion and adventure in his life. Campus community only, please.
Koestenbaum—a poet, critic, fiction-writer, artist, filmmaker, and performer—has published 22 books and received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature in 2020. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
Join us for our 20- to 30-minute lunchtime recital series by members of the Vassar College Chamber Music Program. Thursdays, October 27 and November 3, 10, & 17 at 12 noon.
Dr. Square is Assistant Professor at Parsons School of Design and a fellow in the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He will speak about his present research, which explores connections between histories of enslavement and the fashion system.
Blake’s work explores play, eroticism, and the subjective experiences of desire, power, and loss. Inspired by feminist theory and queer subcultures, they address the contradictions of representation in sculptures, drawings, performances, and videos, particularly as it relates to their own identity as a nonbinary multiracial artist.
An exploration of individual and collective history as viewed through multiple lenses, proposing alternatives to the systemic representations ordered by colonial narratives. Gallery talk & opening reception: October 28, 2022, 5:00–7:00 p.m.