Art and Public Space at Vassar and in Poughkeepsie

Kiana Duggan-Haas (she/her) is an actor and creative originally from WNY studying Theatre Arts and Linguistics at SUNY New Paltz. She is currently performing in Shakespeare in Delaware Park’s traveling production of Shakespeare & Love as Juliet, Helena, and other Shakespearian lovers. Some favorite past roles include: Arviragus et al. in Cymbeline at SUNY New Paltz, Romaine Patterson et al. in The Laramie Project at SUNY New Paltz, and Sive in Sive at Irish Classical Theatre Company (Artie Award Nomination, Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Play). She has enjoyed working with the Hudson Valley Performing Arts Laboratory on both iterations of Performing Art with the Dorsky in 2020 and 2021.

Christine Howlett conducts the Vassar College Women’s Chorus, Vassar College Choir, and teaches music theory and voice. Her choruses have sung at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall and have toured overseas in Cuba, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Turkey, and Uganda. The Vassar College Women’s Chorus performed at the National Collegiate Choral Association and ACDA Eastern Division Conferences. She is a regular guest conductor and chorus master for the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. Her edition of Francesco Gasparini’s Mass for Five Voices was published in 2019 by A-R Editions.

Howlett served as Chair of the Music Department from 2016–2020 and will return as Chair in Fall 2021. Under the Dean of Studies office, she has served multiple terms on the Committee on Leaves and Privileges and the Fellowships Committee since 2009.

Christine Howlett is the Artistic Director of Cappella Festiva, an auditioned choral ensemble with a 45-year history of performing in the Hudson Valley. She is the Past-President of the New York American Choral Directors Association, which supports over 600 choral directors statewide. A supporter of contemporary music, Howlett has commissioned and premiered choral works by notable composers, including Libby Larsen and Tarik O’Regan. In collaboration with Patrick Wood Uribe, violin, and Holly Chatham, piano, the trio released Love Raise Your Voice which contains commissioned works for soprano, violin, and piano by Carson Cooman, Tarik O’Regan, Richard Wilson, and others.

She studied Vocal Performance at the University of Toronto and earned a Master’s Degree in Early Music Voice Performance and a DMA in Choral Conducting from Indiana University.

Bryan Lee is an architect, educator, writer, and Design Justice activist. He is the founder/Design Principal of Colloqate Design, a nonprofit multidisciplinary design practice, in New Orleans, Louisiana, dedicated to expanding community access to design and creating spaces of racial, social, and cultural equity. He is a Design Critic at Harvard GSD and has led two award-winning youth community design programs. Bryan is a founding co-organizer of the DAP (Design As Protest) Collective and Dark Matter University. He was most recently honored as one of the 2018 Fast Company Most Creative People in Business, a USC Annenberg MacArthur Civic Media Fellow, and the youngest design firm to win the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices award in 2019.

Carmen Marchaline McGill, Celebrating the African Spirit, Co-Founder and Board Chair, is a retired admissions counselor and personnel administrator. She is an advocate for the rights and justice of all people, particularly sensitive to the needs of people of color. During her 45 years in Poughkeepsie, she has been active in the Kwanzaa Committee, Poughkeepsie City Schools PTA, Board of Education committees, the Black History Project Committee, the Dutchess County Historical Society Board, NAACP, AAUW and others, and she is a mentor to many people in the community.

BS Biology Colorado College, MS and PhD Botany University of Washington.

Mark Schlessman is an evolutionary biologist who loves plants. His research focuses on plant sex, in particular the ways that flowering plants adjust their gender by distributing stamens and pistils among their flowers in order to specialize more on either the female or the male component of reproductive success. Over 40 years at Vassar, Mark has taught a wide variety of courses in Biology, the College Course Program, Environmental Studies, American Studies, and Native American Studies, always striving to increase his students’ appreciation of the importance of plants and their value as research organisms. Mark co-chairs the College Arboretum Committee and oversees our class tree program.

Bart Thurber, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Director and Vassar College Lecturer in Art, is committed to expanding public access to the resources and programs at the Loeb. Since arriving in the summer of 2019—even during the pandemic—Bart and the rest of his team have fostered a more inclusive approach by partnering with local schools and organizations to diversify the range of its activities and outreach initiatives, including distributing art supplies to over 800 households with school-aged children last fall.

Assistant Professor of Art and Urban Studies; Bachelor of Architecture Federal University of Technology Minna, Nigeria; Master of Architecture University of Oklahoma; PhD Modern Architectural History Princeton University.

Adedoyin is an architect, artist and historian of modern and contemporary architecture and urbanism. Recent topics of research include: architecture, enculturation and assimilation of the African diaspora into modern Western African societies; as well as the triangular relationship between metaphysics, place and architecture. He offers courses on the experience of architecture and space in the modern era; “critical regionalism” and architecture; and modern and contemporary architecture in West Africa, as well as industrial design’s connection to modern and contemporary architecture.