Several exhibitions and a book fair will be held at Vassar in conjunction with Making Meaning: A Collage Symposium, a three-day symposium at the Vassar Institute for the Liberal Arts. 

The following events are free and open to the public.

In The Patient Looks Back: Portraits of My Therapist, Catskill-based painter Joyce Polance reverses therapy’s usual direction of attention by turning the patient’s gaze toward the therapist. Painted in oil entirely with her fingers, the three-year series moves between likeness and disruption, testing how much close looking can—and cannot—reveal.

Writer, essayist, translator, and editor Eliot Weinberger delivers the Elizabeth Bishop Poetry Lecture.

This event is free and open to the public.

A talk by Anita Varma ’08 based on her 2026 Columbia University Press book Solidarity in Journalism, about journalism and social justice. The talk will explore how conventional journalistic norms discourage reporters from taking sides; journalists are supposed to remain neutral, impartial, and objective.

This event is free and open to the public.

This event free and open to the public.

The reading will be delivered by Ayana Mathis. 

This event is free and open to the public.