The Arts
Past Events
An evening of new compositions featuring boldly expressive works by MODfest cofounder Richard Wilson and premieres by new faculty Alan Hankers and Celeste Oram, highlighting electronic-influenced textures and interdisciplinary explorations of music, language, and cultural history.
MODfest 2026
Join us for free drop-in family programs on select Sundays this winter and spring. Each date will feature a different hands-on art activity inspired by art on view. Activities can be modified for all ages, but are best suited for children ages 5 and up.
Free and open to the public.
Rescoring Richter is a multimedia project pairing contemporary sound artists with Hans Richter’s 1920s avant-garde films to create new scores, documented through short films and live performances that reveal and reanimate his revolutionary cinematic imagery.
MODfest 2026
Music department students perform for internationally renowned soprano Amy Burton and composer and pianist John Musto in a master class, featuring Musto’s musical works.
MODfest 2026
The Loeb welcomes acclaimed Chilean poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña for an artist talk in conjunction with the closing of Chronostasia: Select Acquisitions 2020–2025.
Free and open to the public.
7:30 p.m. on Friday, and 2:00 p.m. matinees on Saturday and Sunday
Note: The performance on Jan 25 has been canceled due to weather.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live.
MODfest 2026
Vassar is taking student play submissions for its 2025–26 Playwriting Awards (due Jan 19, 2026); winners can earn $1,000 and a staged reading.
Vassar students put on a performance of this English Baroque opera for this one-night-only free event. Directed by Anthony Orsi.
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.
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 Treble Chorus, and Cappella Festiva Chamber Choir will perform.
This event is open to the public.
Eduardo Navega, director
This event is open to the public.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
James Osborn, director
This event is open to the public.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
Thursday, December 4 and Friday, December 5 at 8:00 p.m.; Saturday, December 6 at 2:00 p.m.
Artist, writer, and publisher Paul Chan will give a lecture entitled “Content: a Postmortem,” on Monday, December 1st. The lecture will begin at 6:00 p.m. and will take place in Taylor Hall, Room 102.
Drew Minter, conductor
This event is open to the public.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
Eduardo Navega, conductor
This event is open to the public.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre presents three exciting performances of all-new ballet, contemporary, jazz, and modern dance works.
The Dalí Quartet is acclaimed for bringing Latin American quartet repertoire to an equal standing alongside the Classical and Romantic canon. Ari Isaacman-Beck, violin, Carlos Rubio, violin, Adriana Linares, viola, Jesús Morales, cello
This event is open to the public.
Tracing a path through the voices of nature, this program reflects on our search for peace, hope, and humanity. Christine Howlett, conductor, Susan Brown, piano, and Elizabeth Handman, viola.
This event is open to the public.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
Christopher Rothko speaks about his father, artist Mark Rothko’s work and the family’s caretaking of his legacy on the occasion of a special opportunity to view two early Rothkos side-by-side at the Loeb Art Center this year.
Free and open to the public
The Film Department will be screening Nickel Boys and there will be a Q&A with the filmmakers RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes afterwards.
James Osborn, conductor
This event is open to the public.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
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.
Christine Howlett, conductor
This event is open to the public.
This is an in-person event that will also be streamed live
Baye and Asa will perform their recent work Suck it Up. The program will also feature their dance film Second Seed. A Q&A session with the artists will immediately follow the performance.
Join us for the Pride and Prejudice Film Festival in celebration of the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. The first screening is on Friday, November 7, 2025 from 7–9 p.m. See the full schedule. This event is free and open to the public.
Professor Rosalind Galt of King’s College, London will be giving a giving a Dean’s Lecture on “Imperfect Archives.”
Oct. 30: 8:00 p.m.
Oct. 31–Nov. 1: 7:00 p.m.
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. Free and open to the public
MODfest 2026