CENTER FOR CURATORIAL STUDIES’ 30TH ANNIVERSARY On August 26, the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) announced a landmark donation of $25 million from the Marieluise Hessel Foundation in honor of CCS Bard’s 30th anniversary. The donation, part of Bard’s $1 billion endowment challenge campaign (see page 2), will be matched dollar for dollar by a commitment from investorphilanthropist George Soros, resulting in the creation of a $50 million endowment for CCS Bard. The endowment will enable the Center, cofounded in 2009 by Marieluise Hessel, to continue its work in perpetuity. The yearlong celebration of 30 years of CCS programming included the exhibitions Closer to Life: Drawings and Works on Paper in the Marieluise Hessel Collection and With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972–1985.
“It is a privilege to be able to celebrate three decades of sustained, transformational inquiry and experimentation into curatorial studies and exhibition-making with this gift. I know that this program will continue to lead the way in finding new stories to tell, artists to champion, and boundaries to push.” —Marieluise Hessel, cofounder of CCS Bard
Marieluise Hessel and Leon Botstein, photo by Susan Stava
Look Away! Look Away! Look Away!, Kara Walker, 1995, CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, photo by Susan Stava
Closer to Life: Drawings and Works on Paper in the Marieluise Hessel Collection, an exhibition of drawings and works on paper by more than 50 artists, tracked a lifetime of collecting by philanthropist Marieluise Hessel, who cofounded the Center for Curatorial Studies in 1990. Accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue that documents the entire collection of some 300 works on paper, the exhibition presented highlights that reverberate with questions of gender, sexuality, race, and politics.
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