MFA class of 2027: Reassembly

The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College (Bard MFA) is pleased to present Reassembly, the thesis exhibition for the class of 2027. The exhibition convenes 28 MFA candidates in the disciplines of Moving Image, Music/Sound, Painting, Photography, Sculpture, and Writing. The storied Bard MFA program is entering a new era for its 45th anniversary, presenting for the first time at Bard College’s recently-acquired 260-acre Massena Campus in nearby Barrytown, New York. Opening as St. Joseph’s Normal Institute in 1906, the present facilities first housed a school for those entering the priesthood. It later served as a training center for the Unification Church, an international religious movement founded in 1954 by Reverend Sun Myung Moon. 

Reassembly was on view from July 11 through July 19 at the Bard College Massena Exhibition Center in the hamlet of Barrytown, New York, located at 30 Seminary Drive. An opening reception was held on Saturday, July 11, from 1–4pm; the exhibition was then open daily July 11–19 from 11am–5pm. Additionally, candidates in various disciplines presented an evening of performances on Friday, July 10, on Bard’s main campus at Olin Hall, located at 35 Henderson Circle Drive, in Red Hook.

“The exhibition demonstrates a wide breadth of contemporary approaches to art-making,” writes Mike Curran, the exhibition coordinator. “But among their common interests are a remaking of seemingly stable artistic conventions, a reimagining of social structures, and a remixing of inherited grammars. Within this framework, the Massena Campus itself has become a site of reassembly.”

Thesis Exhibition Coordinator Mike Curran is a recent graduate of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. He serves as Curatorial Fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Letters.