Past Events
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.
Featuring performances and speeches by students, alums, faculty, administrators, and local community members—as well as food and stations highlighting mental health, artifacts, African cuisine recipes, and books written by Black authors. Attend in person or virtually.
A gathering to celebrate the first day of Black History Month, sponsored by the Jeh Vincent Johnson ALANA Cultural Center and hosted by leaders of the African Students’ Union (ASU), Black Students’ Union (BSU), and Students of Caribbean Ancestry (SOCA).
Campus community only, please.
Ross—a nationally recognized expert on racism and racial justice, women’s rights, and human rights who teaches at Smith College—will discuss how we must fight oppression and injustice by weaving our collective strengths together and using our differences as a platform for molding a positive future built on justice and love.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Vassar employees and their families are invited to attend this special admissions event. Poughkeepsie Day School is a private, independent, PreK-12 school with students from all over the Hudson Valley.
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.”
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.
Organist and Vassar music faculty member Gail Archer hosts a special one-night-only free concert at the iconic St. Patrick’s Cathedral to celebrate the music of both Ukrainian and Russian composers. The event will also be livestreamed.