The Arts
Past Events
This year marks the 650th anniversary of Giovanni Boccaccio’s passing. We explore his legacy in a interdisciplinary panel of Vassar faculty, followed by a keynote speech by Grace Delmolino (University of California, Davis) titled: “Boccaccio and Consent.” No reservation required
Campus community only, please
Artist Lyle Ashton Harris will give a lecture which will explore the intersections between his practice in photography and collage, examining ideas of gender, sexuality, and belonging.
This event is open to the public.
A Screening of Jennifer Reeves’ The Gloria of Your Imagination followed by a Q&A with the director.
A new schedule for this concert will be announced at a later date.
Join us for free drop-in family programs on select Sundays. Each date will feature different hands-on art activities inspired by art on view. Activities can be modified for all ages, but are best suited for children 5 and up.
Eduardo Navega, conductor
This event is open to the public.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
Elana Herzog is an installation artist and sculptor who uses material culture to consider aspects of ephemerality, entropy, pleasure, and pain, focusing on the global migration of culture and technology as seen through the lens of textiles. Herzog will give a talk on her work titled “Being Always in Relation.”
This event is open to the public.
A recital of works by Mozart, Chopin, Robert Schumann, György Ligeti, Unsuk Chin and Hans Abrahamsen evoking experiences of day and night. Performed by Thomas Sauer, piano, Adjunct Artist in Music.
This event is open to the public.
ALANA Fest is one of the Jeh Vincent Johnson ALANA Cultural Center’s core events, and it makes visible, celebrates, and builds community with students of color at Vassar.
This event is open to the public.
A recital of idiosyncratic songs by David Alpher, exploring his settings of uniquely American poetry from the Transcendentalists to the Beat Generation. Courtenay Budd, soprano, Sharon Harms, soprano, Robert Osborne, bass-baritone, and David Alpher, composer/piano.
This event is open to the public.
The Jeff “Siege” Siegel Quartet presents original compositions celebrating 21 years together, highlighted by four European tours, a tour of Africa, and performances throughout the northeastern U.S.
This event is open to the public.
With music of Schubert, Marais and Bartok-Arma, this concert celebrates the conjunction of theme and variation in printmaking and music. Susan Rotholz, flute, Anna Polonsky, piano.
This event is open to the public.
Come learn how to propagate plants from cuttings, and take home your very own in a custom painted pot! No plant experience necessary.
Monica Youn is an acclaimed poet and professor, a former constitutional lawyer, and a prominent literary leader.
No reservation required. Open to the public.
Join us for free drop-in family programs on select Sundays this fall. Each date will feature different hands-on art activities inspired by art on view. Activities can be modified for all ages, but are best suited for children 5 and up.
Join us in the Palmer Gallery for a conversation with artist Sean McCarthy about his exhibition Creature Feature, on view September 11–October 12, 2025.
This event is open to the general public.
Lauded by The New York Times as a pianist with “a huge, richly varied sound, a lively imagination and a firm sense of style,” pianist Soyeon Kate Lee presents a program featuring Schumann’s Carnaval and Kreisleriana.
This event is open to the public.
The “Sky Woman Women” project holds space for eighteen women storytellers from Mohawk, Seneca and Tuscarora tribal affiliations (enrolled, unenrolled, and not enrolled), telling and retelling a Haudenosaunee creation story to each other. A Q&A with the artist and featured storytellers follows the screening.
Free and open to the public
Join us at the Olmsted Greenhouse for a calm doodling session with Vassar's Counseling Center! No artistic skills necessary—we are just doodling for fun and to calm the mind. All ages welcome.
A leading practitioner of Iraqi maqam, Hamid Al-Saadi’s music combines classical poetry with a dizzyingly complex system of musical ornamentation, modulation and improvisation.
This event is open to the public.
Creature Feature is a survey of 20 years of Sean McCarthy’s work in drawing, painting, and comics, all featuring delicately drawn tragicomic monsters. McCarthy’s work is broadly allusive, engaging with literature, film, esoteric texts, and a wide range of art historical touchstones; it explores grotesque mysteries and uncomfortable psychological and emotional states in a language of expressive, exquisite draftsmanship.
This event is open to the general public.
Featuring over sixty works added to the Loeb Art Center’s collection between 2020–2025, Chronostasia explores various ways artworks can alter our perception of time. To mark the exhibition’s opening, artist Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) speaks with Vassar’s Molly McGlennen and curator Alyx Raz ’16 about his work.
Free and open to the public
Presented by members of the Music Department faculty. Thomas Sauer, piano, Iva Casian Lakos, cello, Ian Tyson, clarinet, Gail Archer, organ
This event is open to the public.
An art exhibition featuring the work of local artist Ivars Sprogis opens on August 7. A reception will be held on August 9 from 4–6 p.m. Sprogis favors the Realistic Impressionism style in his watercolor and oil paintings.
Brooklyn Museum curator Stephanie Sparling Williams shares insights into the process of creating Toward Joy: New Frameworks for American Art, a highly innovative reimagining of how contemporary audiences experience historic American art.
This event is open to the public.
Gabriela Mikova Johnson, soprano, Chris Cantu, tenor, Susan Brown, piano, Stephen Paul Johnson, narration
Artist Caleb Stein, Vassar Class of 2017, returns to Poughkeepsie to discuss his ongoing photographic engagement with the local landscape. Several photographs from his 2020 series, Down by the Hudson, featuring scenes from local watering holes, are on view at the Loeb this summer.
Music by Mozart, Wilson and Beethoven. Featuring Joseph Genualdi, violin, and Richard Wilson, piano
Brian Mann, piano, Lou Pappas, double bass, Craig Wuepper, drums, Iain Mann, violin & guitar, James Ruff, voice
The Hudson Valley's Bachfest Chorus & Orchestra returns to perform works by Vivaldi, Telemann and Bach. Christine Howlett, conductor. Open to the public—suggested donation: $30, and free to students and members of Vassar community with ID.
The Hudson Valley's Bachfest returns with works for organ and piano. Yalin Chi, piano, Ruthanne Schempf, piano, Sarah Johnson ’16, organ, Gail Archer, organ. Open to the public—suggested donation: $30, and free to students and members of Vassar community with ID.
Six studio art majors and correlates are presenting their culminating senior projects in an exhibition running until May 25.
Music by Schumann, Strauss, and Still. Isabel Crawford, horn
An evening of music featuring Handel, Fauré, Brahms, Heggie, and a selection of Broadway’s beloved classics.
An exhibition by Nicholas Adams and Barry Price.
Nicholas Adams will deliver a case-side talk about the exhibit and his collection at a reception, and an exhibition catalogue will be available courtesy of the Art Department’s Agnes Ringe Claflin Fund.
A talk by photographer Marisa Scheinfeld, author of the book The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America's Jewish Vacationland. A collaboration between the Loeb and Poughkeepsie Public Library, this illustrated lecture features Scheinfeld’s photographs of abandoned sites where resorts, hotels and bungalow colonies once boomed in the Catskill Mountains.
Featuring student winners of the soloist competition. Eduardo Navega, conductor
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
Join artist and researcher Sa’dia Rehman for an interdisciplinary conversation about art and architecture, ecocatastrophe, and the law, with Azra Dawood, the Loeb's Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programs, and Arpitha Kodiveri, Vassar Assistant Professor of Political Science and author of Governing Forests. This program is presented in conjunction with the Loeb exhibition Water/Bodies: Sa’dia Rehman.
Music by Dmitri Shostakovich, George Gershwin, Matthew Mauro, and H. Owen Reed. James Osborn, conductor
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
Join us for free drop-in family programs on select Sundays this spring. Each date will feature different hands-on art activities inspired by art on view. Activities can be modified for all ages, but are best suited for children 5 and up.
A Night at the Opera. Choruses from operas by Monteverdi, Gluck, Verdi, Offenbach, and others. Drew Minter, conductor.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
James Osborn, director
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
Harrison Brisbon-McKinnon, Vassar Class of 2026 and 2024 Ford Scholar/Pindyck Summer Fellow at the Loeb, discusses their current Spotlight exhibition, Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Black Space-Making from Harlem to the Hudson Valley. The exhibition complicates the myth of the Hudson Valley as a utopia, asking "Utopia for who?"
Join us for our 20–30 minute lunchtime recital series by members of the Vassar College Chamber Music Program. Eduardo Navega, director. Bridge for Laboratory Sciences