winter 2013–14
10 the making of Bennington’s
th
President
Bennington College Mariko Silver President Paige Bartels Vice President for External Relations Zeke Bernstein Director of Academic Planning Duncan Dobbelmann Associate Dean of the College
Bennington College Board of Trustees As of October 13, 2013
Janet Lape Marsden Vice President for Admissions and Communications Holly McCormack Dean of Field Work Term
Priscilla Alexander ’58 New York, NY
Jason Moon ’13 Ridgewood, NY
David Rees Senior Vice President for Planning and Administration
Susan Paris Borden ’69 Calgary, AB, Canada
Aarti Rana ’06 Toronto, ON, Canada
Isabel Roche Dean of the College
Suzanne Brundage ’08 Cambridge, MA
Daniel B. Rowland Lexington, KY
Matthew Clarke New York, NY
Charlene Solow Schwartz ’54 Newtown, PA
Barbara Ushkow Deane ’51 New York, NY
James Simon ’97 Akron, OH
William Derrough New York, NY
Sara Steines Milwaukee, WI
Michael Hecht New York, NY
Deborah Wadsworth New York, NY
John J. Kenney Bronxville, NY
Penelope Perkins Wilson ’45 Malvern, PA
Bobbie Knable Brookline, MA
LifeTIME Trustees
Alan Kornberg ’74, Chairman New York, NY
Karen Johnson Boyd ’46 Racine, WI
Insiyah Mohammad ’12 Brooklyn, NY
Mary Hammond Storer ’46 Rancho Mirage, CA
Oceana Wilson Director of Library and Information Services BENNINGTON MAGAZINE Briee Della Rocca Editor/Creative Director Carol June Jessop Graphic Designer Susan P. Huggins Production Designer Brian Davidson Writer Kate Godin Writer Lise (Johnson) Miller ’01 Contributing writer Marisa Crumb Copyeditor/proofreader Editorial and Production Team Nicole Arrington Daniel Braun ’14 Amanda Haar Ellen Janis Marie Leahy Nancy Mitton Sara White Brodock, Utica, NY Printer Bennington is published twice a year for alumni and friends of the College.
On the cover
President Mariko Silver leads a community-wide sustainability conversation. Photo by Briee Della Rocca
Direct correspondence to: Bennington magazine Office of Communications Bennington College One College Drive Bennington, VT 05201-6003 Phone: 802-440-4743 communications@bennington.edu www.bennington.edu Bennington magazine is the Recipient of a University College Designer’s Association (UCDA) Excellence Award and a Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District I Publication Honorable Mention.
alive “ I
a
m
m
o
s
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when I am teaching
what I am on the cusp of
knowing. ”
–Nick Brooke, faculty member
winter
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“Bennington, I’m quickly learning, is an adjective—the meaning of which is nearly impossible to articulate, yet rather easy, when staring back at you, say, on stilts and playing saxophone, to identify.” —Mariko Silver, President
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CONTENTS
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On the cusp of knowing
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SURPRISE US An excerpt of Convocation remarks delivered to the Class of 2017 by faculty member Nick Brooke
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#BENNINGTON Snapshots of our social media channels
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5x7 A gallery of alumni expression
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BENNINGTON BOOKSHELF Recently published works by Bennington faculty and alumni
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DISSIDENT GARDENS An excerpt of the new novel Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem ’86
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THE MAKING OF BENNINGTON’S 10TH PRESIDENT, MARIKO SILVER The story behind Bennington’s first presidential search in 26 years—and the extraordinary candidate who emerged
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CHASING A CURE How Princess Yasmin Aga Khan ’73 and Spencer Cox ’90, touched by Alzheimer’s and AIDS, took it upon themselves to do everything to find a cure
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FORENSIC PORTRAITS The “Stranger Visions” of Heather Dewey-Hagborg ’05 RETURN VOLLEY Alumni artists give back to Bennington by donating their work for auction in an exhibition curated by Erin Parish ’88
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FINDING FOCUS Rebecca Nakaba ’13 on using Field Work Term as exploration
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FACULTY NOTES Recent achievements and newest additions
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HONORING ELIZABETH COLEMAN Keeping the culture of ideas alive at Bennington
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ALUMNI ONLINE COURSE Americans in Paris, an online course for alumni, taught by faculty member Stephen Shapiro
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OVERHEARD Highlights from the All-Class Reunion
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CLASS NOTES
an unexpected gift The story behind a surprise six-figure gift given by a mystery donor
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Fiscal Year 2013 Donor Report Grateful recognition of our supporters IN MEMORIAM
BRIEE DELLA ROCCA
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welcomings
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An excerpt of Convocation remarks delivered to the Class of 2017 by faculty member Nick Brooke
Surprise Us. Your next four
years are a performance. Surprise us. There’s enormous leeway in what you’re about to do. You can read, sing, debate, derive, snorkel, hack, jeté, mux, mig-weld, bisect a fruit fly. The 1930 charter of Bennington cites education as a “sensual as well as ethical experience,” and I love any sentence that uses both “sensual” and “ethical.” Like a good metaphor, I don’t know what it means. But I keep thinking about it. Like a good Plan question, we don’t tell you the requirements. We have no idea what you’re about to do. Surprise us. You don’t have think of performance as artifice, or part of the performing arts. Nor do you have to larp around campus, dressed as Tyrion Lannister, Bennington’s esteemed graduate. But do think of the many modalities that could make up your education. Think of performance as any social choice in the world, because culture is always a performance. Sociology and psychology have used the concept to useful ends, and the innovative field of performance studies has broken down disciplinary walls by seeing all social acts, including the arts, on one spectrum. In this hothouse of 700 seventeen-somethings, culture becomes strikingly legible, and maybe no time more than this first week. Background, gender, language, orientation, and finances come starkly into view. Advice here seems arrogant, except: Please, keep in touch with yourself. And us when you need it. 4 • b e n n i n g t o n ma g az i n e
Process this info, talk, think, write journals, walk in the hills, find others who speak your language. The path through college can only be as bewildering as the term “music,” which also confounds any core experience. The term “music” has been used to refer to Frank Ocean, Beethoven, yodeling contests, and highly amplified glaciers. I’m delighted by that. It’s why I chose the field. Even the idea that music is about “sound” is breaking down along with the recording industry. Bennington is a microcosm of this musical universe, and the school’s past 80 years show that music can’t be pinned down. Here are four stories.
1952.
A reel-to-reel tape recorder is discovered in Germany in World War II, and the newfound technology starts to be commercially available at a few radio stations in the U.S. The composers Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky steal a recorder—for a month—from the radio station at Columbia, and drive up to Bennington, putting the contraption in the Carriage Barn. Over the summer, they record anything they get their ears on. There’s a recording of a cocktail party in the Carriage Barn that sounds like this: “Hey, what are you doing back there?… …swwwtvvvt.” They take these sounds, slice up, reorder, speed up, slow down, and reverse them. By the fall, Ussachevsky and Luening finish their collages and give what’s billed as the first electronic music concert in the U.S. at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Time
magazine heralds it as a new era. Electronic music is born.
1965.
The composer Henry Brant is not someone you want in your kitchen. He takes ANY spice —cayenne, Old Bay, allspice—and just throws it in the pot, regardless of what you’re cooking. His music’s like that. While teaching at Bennington, Brant moonlights for Hollywood, creating splashy orchestrations for Dragonslayer and Cleopatra, but his heart lies in enormous, multi-orchestra spectacles. He wants to “evoke the new stresses, layered insanities, and multidirectional assaults of contemporary life,” and does this by writing for jazz bands, several orchestras, a drum corps, chorus, a gamelan—all in one piece. He calls this “spatial music” because hundreds of performers are placed surrounding the audience, as in his Pulitzer-Prize winning work Ice Fields. Later, when you’re in Greenwall, and not registering, look up. This space was built with Brant in mind. There are ramps everywhere, behind you, up in the crow’s nest. The performance can be anywhere.
1973.
Trumpeter Bill Dixon and drummer Milford Graves have come to Bennington, and they bring the illuminati of the free jazz scene. Over a decade, Dixon develops a rich, improvisation-based curriculum called Black Music, with the Carriage Barn at its center. And for years, one of the best places to practice listening was with drummer Milford Graves,
Briee Della Rocca
who drilled out polyrhythms in an act of miraculous number crunching.
1990.
I grew up a half hour south of Bennington. One summer, home from college on break, I scan the local paper. I find an ad that reads “Experimental Orchestra. Anyone welcome. Sunday at 1.” I go to Bennington College, third floor of Commons, where I open a door onto an enormous vault, the original theater on which Martha Graham danced. There, in this cathedrallike space are 2 nine-foot banjos, 16 triangular cellos, a dumpstersize zither, bells made from propane tanks, and 8 disemboweled pianos. Gunnar Schonbeck hands me something looking like a kitchen utensil. He says “play.” So I play, for hours, with students and townspeople, in a raucous improv. So, in a word: play. The next performance that Bennington will see is your own. And learning, like jamming on a propane tank, is a curious and dangerous act. As a teacher, I find curve balls thrilling, when wellresearched. During college, John Cage had this tactic: if you’re assigned to read x book for x exam, the only rule is, don’t read that book. Instead, read every book above, below, or on either side of the shelf in the library. Read every book in the library, please. Just not that one. Cage aced his exams, after becoming valedictorian of his high school. I’m not sure what to call his perverse study act [… ] maybe discipline. The only thing left when borders collapse between music and reading, dance and biology, is that discipline you call your own. Here, discipline is no longer an established field, but your own assured practice. But lest I become a punkin chunker of pedagogical chestnuts, let me say: I don’t think teaching is SO different from studying. Teaching has that restless curiosity. At Benning-
“The only thing left when borders collapse between music and reading, dance and biology, is that discipline you call your own.” ton, the faculty is told to teach what keeps us awake. Truth is, I’m most alive when teaching what I’m on the cusp of knowing. So, as I become a student, I wish you luck. Surprise us. Play. You’ll figure it out. B Music faculty member Nick Brooke has written many pieces for a range of instruments. His work has been performed throughout the United
States and in Indonesia. His opera Tone Test premiered at Lincoln Center in July 2004. He has been awarded numerous fellowships, residencies, and prizes, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation residency, and an ASCAP Young Composer’s Award. Prior to joining Bennington’s faculty in 2004 he taught at Oberlin Conservatory, Princeton University, Adelphi University, and Manhattan College.
Check out Nick discussing collaboration, teaching, and invention at Bennington. Go to: bit.do/nickbrookeatbennington W i n t e r 2013–14 • 5
#Bennington Snapshots of our social media channels
GO AHEAD, ASK US. he College’s student-authored group Tumblr blog, TappedIn, has become the go-to for Bennington’s
Q:
prospective students (and a growing number of alumni). The blog has had more than 119,000 visits since it launched two years ago and has gained nearly 700 followers so far. TappedIn is authored by a group of rotating interns (approximately five percent of the student body) who respond to questions posed by (predominantly anonymous) prospective students. The questions are what you might expect, but the answers are decidedly not. Miss that Bennington spirit? Follow our students: benningtonstudents.tumblr.com.
Q: A:
A:
Hey, so I got an email from one of you around May, but I didn’t respond because my cat was dying and then I had finals. By the time it had blown over I figured you guys would be on break so I didn’t respond and I feel SO bad about it because I am really, really interested in Bennington but I’m afraid it looks like I just didn’t care.
Sorry to hear about your cat and I hope finals went well. It’s really not a big deal. We’re bad at email too. To help you figure out who emailed you, we compiled a list of everyone who was working in May that is also working here next fall with a couple of things each person probably would have mentioned (just to jog your memory)…
There are the kids you would expect: the actors who talk like they are always on stage (this isn’t a Tennessee Williams scene, we are just having lunch) and the stage managers and tech people who are dedicated beyond belief (you will never have lunch with these people because they’ve convinced themselves they don’t have time and that the show is more important than individual concerns like their own well-being), BUT you’re also meeting students of other disciplines in theater classes. Disciplines/communities are very fluid and permeable so any group or “label” attracts a wide range of folks. So, they’re different because they also have a passion for, say, physics. —Alan ’15
Anushka—Video games, Texas, and being a sweetie Liam—Working out, Taylor Swift, binge eating vegetarian cuisine Sarah G. —Television, mid-century modern furniture, otters Alan D. —The ’70s, cult TV and slasher movies, existential crises Julia—Elegance/being perfect, alternative medicine, tarot cards/astrology Glennis—Buckminster Fuller, gluten-free life, Alaska Parke—Hello Kitty, Russian literature, Silver Springs by Stevie Nicks Rachel—Women’s rights, The Bennington Free Press, ’90s clothing Selina—Conflict resolution, Argentina, baking and ice skating and biking and knitting and spinning Michael—Prank-calling Selina during work, Iceland, fixing the world Alana—Maine, queer politics and the like, dancin’!
Nobody at Bennington is typical. The actors here are no exception. —Tommy ’16
You can always strike up a correspondence with us. —Alan ’15
Would you describe the kids who study acting to be typical thespians? How are they different?
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Q: A:
?
I read candles are not allowed in dorms... how strictly is that enforced?
I had a friend who was fined $1,400 for a smattering of tiny tea candles that had been previously lit and were no longer lit. They had dripped some wax onto the desk.
Q: A:
$1,400. Here are some things you could purchase for $1,400:
1. 1–4 Pedigree, Title-Winning, Award-Worthy Goats (according to Yahoo answers, that is)
When will the Common App Supplement be posted???
I have some good news. This is the moment you have all been waiting for. No jokes. No lies. No small print. The Bennington College supplement is back. And it’s better than ever. It will make your dreams come true. It will take your dreams and replace them with new ones. Better ones. It will teach you a new language. It will show you the proper way to fly a kite. It will show you the way your soul looks at night. It will wrap you in its warm, supplementary embrace and whisper softly in your ear, “graded analytic essay.” —Tommy ’16
2. 4 of these modern gramophone-lookin’ dudes
Q: A:
What is the best way to get from Bennington to NYC?
I don’t know about the best way to get from Bennington to NYC, but this is what you could do: 1. Drive. 2. Make someone drive you (hey, you deserve it) 3. Get a ride to Albany > Take a train to NYC 4. Get a ride to Albany > Take a bus to NYC 5. Take the Yankee Trail to Albany > Take a bus/train to NYC 6. FLY (like Superman).
3. And, last but not least…roughly 200 medium-size choose-your-own-topping Domino’s pizzas.
—Carlos ’14
Q: A:
So don’t bring candles, okay. Light as many as you want now, get your kicks out, have a whole séance if you like… it’s not worth it in the long run. —Parke ’15
What is the best hidden gem at Bennington?
Sherry Kramer. —Parke ’15
Yes, but also Peter Jones. —Alan ’15 Also, Andrew Cencini. —Glennis ’14
Nobody’s mentioned Betsy Sherman? —Evan ’13
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W i n t e r 2013–14 • 7
The All Class Reunion weekend kicked off with a packed opening reception for the 5x7 alumni art exhibition and auction to benefit student scholarships. Seventy-six alumni contributed 105 original works in a range of media—the only constraint was works needed to be created on a 5x7-inch mat board. The pieces were displayed on shelves made by John Umphlett MFA ’99 with repurposed wood railings from Dickinson Science Building in the first floor of the Deane Carriage Barn. Atticus Lazenby ’13 provided the lively music for the reception.
5x7 Alumni artists Margot Starr Kernan ’48 Ann Slocum ’51 Renee De Yoe Ayers ’53 Anne Stodder Adams ’54 Carol Kardon ’56 Magi la Pides Schwartz ’59 Lynn Johnson ’60 Robin Posin ’61 Paula Epstein Eisner ’62 Harriet Joseph Ottenheimer ’62 Marylyn Motherbear Scott ’62 Barbara Goldberg Rohdie ’63 Erica Stoller ’64 Betsy Walker Hasegawa ’64 Jaqueth Hutchinson ’64 Gael Rockwell Minton ’64 Diane Sherer Tucker ’64 Barbara Glasser ’65 Suzanne Stanton ’65 Barbara Furstenberg ’66 Martha Rockwell ’66 Lois E. Wilkins ’67 Flenita Muniz ’68 Deborah Ann Carter ’70 Joanna Clark Swayze ’70 Madeleine Dubrovsky ’71 Janis Pryor ’71 Victoria Woolner Samuels ’71 Mary Ann Chiasson ’72 Francesca Lyman ’72 Jane Ferris Richardson ’73 Marcia Weese ’73 Susan Cantrick ’74 Jennie M. Duke ’74 Lise Gerhard ’74 Deborah Almeida Land ’74 Sarah Jane Rodman ’74 Benje LaRico ’76
Michael Stern ’77 Mel Watkin ’77 Jed Donavan ’78 Mary Meriam ’78 Winston Robinson ’78 Rondi K. Sewelson ’78 Donna Catanzaro ’81 Andrew Austin ’82 Pamela Hochschartner Viola ’82 Roshan Houshmand ’82 Shahin Heshmat ’83 Jennifer Blaikie ’84 Aimee Chappell-Hertog ’84 Teresa Booth Brown ’85 Amanda Donta Green ’85 Rhea Nowak ’85 Gioia Connell Chilton ’89 Valerie Marcus Ramshur ’89 Rafe Churchill ’91 Ourania Panos ’91 Amanda Spooner Frank ’92 Alison Dennis ’94 Alicia Hermann ’98 Taliesin Thomas ’98 Lauren Seiden ’03 Scott Wyman Neagle ’05 Shira Sternberg ’05 Lawson Wulsin ’05 Caitlin Loehr ’06 Hannah Dibner ’07 Ian Rogers ’07 Christina Martinelli ’08 Timothy Kretchmer ’10 Bennett Stone Taft ’12 Nick Janikian ’13 Tilke Elkins MFA ’99 Kelsea Habecker MFA ’03
To check out photos of all the pieces, and images from the exhibition, visit the Bennington Alumni Flickr page.
Bennington Bookshelf
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Recently published works by Bennington alumni and faculty
Poetry Whit Griffin ’04 A Far-Shining Crystal (The Cultural Society, July 2013)
Camille Guthrie visiting faculty member Articulated Lair (Subpress, January 2013)
“Guthrie’s work is decidedly voyeuristic.” –Publisher’s Weekly
fiction
Bob Shacochis Master of Fine Arts in Writing writer-in-residence The Woman Who Lost Her Soul (Atlantic Monthly Press, September 2013)
Jill McCorkle Master of Fine Arts in Writing faculty member Life After Life (A Shannon Ravenel Book, March 2013)
“In its quiet way, Life After Life is a daring venture—an attempt to tell a big story inside a tiny orbit.” –The New York Times
“Shacochis has choreographed a spellbinding dance of 20th-century atrocities and countermeasures to explore the foundations of America’s millennial ambitions and the human cost of such hubris.”
–The Washington Post
nonfiction Phillip Lopate Master of Fine Arts in Writing faculty member Portrait Inside My Head (Free Press, February 2013)
“...a memoir by glimpses, each from a different angle.” –The New York Times
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Mark Edmundson ’74 Why Teach?: In Defense of a Real Education (Bloomsbury USA, August 2013)
“Edmundson’s critique is both personal and idealistic, drawing on his deep belief in the democratic mission of liberal education…” —The New York Times
Phillip Lopate Master of Fine Arts in Writing faculty member To Show and To Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction (Free Press, February 2013)
“A thoughtful guidebook for writers of literary nonfiction.”
–New York Times Book Review
Donna Tartt ’86 The Goldfinch (Little, Brown and Company, October 2013)
“Ms. Tartt has made Fabritius’s bird the MacGuffin at the center of her glorious, Dickensian novel, a novel that pulls together all her remarkable storytelling talents into a rapturous, symphonic whole and reminds the reader of the immersive, stay-up-allnight pleasures of reading.”
–The New York Times
In addition to near universal acclaim, The Goldfinch was chosen in November as Amazon’s Book of the Year.
Paul Yoon Master of Fine Arts in Writing faculty member Snow Hunters (Simon & Schuster, August 2013)
“A poetic portrait of a man’s life in loneliness.” –The Boston Globe
Jonathan Lethem ’86 Dissident Gardens (Doubleday, September 2013)
“Lethem is as ambitious as Mailer, as funny as Philip Roth and as stinging as Bob Dylan...Dissident Gardens shows Lethem in full possession of his powers as a novelist, as he smoothly segues between historical periods and internal worlds… . Erudite, beautifully written, wise, compassionate, heartbreaking and pretty much devoid of nostalgia.” –Los Angeles Times
Barbara Alfano faculty member The Mirage of America in Contemporary Italian Literature and Film (University of Toronto Press, July 2013)
Douglas Bauer faculty member What Happens Next? Matters of Life and Death (University of Iowa Press, September 2013)
Martha Aladjem Bloomfield ’73 My Eyes Feel They Need to Cry: Stories from the Formerly Homeless (Michigan State University Press, July 2013)
Noah Coburn faculty member Derailing Democracy in Afghanistan (Columbia University Press, January 2014)
Matt Kohut CAPA Fellow Compelling People: The Hidden Qualities That Make Us Influential (Hudson Street Press, August 2013) Susan Sgorbati ’72, MFA ’86 faculty member Chapbook 4: Emergent Improvisation (Contact Quarterly, September 2013)
Getting published? Contact the Communications Office by phone at 802-440-4743, by email at communications@ bennington.edu, or send a copy of your book to the Communications Office, Bennington College, One College Drive, Bennington, VT 05201. B
Jack El-Hai MFA ’09 The Nazi and the Psychiatrist (Public Affairs, September 2013)
W i n t e r 2013–14 • 11
Excerpt
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An excerpt of the new novel Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem ’86
The ashtraywas a pure fetish: obloid,
smooth-polished black granite, weighing enough to use as a stop against a pressure-hinged door or indent a man’s skull. Finding it full yet again of Pall Mall stubs, you’d lug it to the kitchen with both hands to overturn it in Alma Zimmer’s trash. Then rinse it in the sink, for Alma, Rose’s unwilling mother-in-law, had made it plain she liked to see it come back gleaming again—never mind that three or four smokers, Albert’s comrades, might be waiting to stub by the time you returned. Imagine making room for that ashtray in your bags as you fled Lübeck! Alma had done so. Who knew who’d hoisted that baggage, whose wrists the ashtray and the load of paper-wrapped Meissen had strained? Surely not Alma’s. Porters, Rose supposed, and when no porter was available, Alma’s brother, Lukas, or Alma’s son, Albert. Albert Zimmer. Rose’s future husband, a rich Jew deluded he was German even as the Nazis marched. And who could say what other treasure had been left behind, in favor of these things? The ashtray, souvenir of Alma’s deceased husband’s bank desk, was a chunk of German reality, imported against absurd obstacles, to prove the unreality of Alma’s present circumstance. That being: Broadway and Ninety-Second, the Knickerbocker Apartments. A one-bedroom on this island of Manhattan, furnished conspicuously with what could be saved apart from the ashtray, the half set of china, a crucial framed photograph or two (showing Alma among cousins, on Alpine vacations, they might as easily have been Nazi memorabilia to Rose’s eye), Viennese-lace curtains. An apartment less a home than a memorial to the life abandoned. Two windows staring onto Broadway traffic to replace a house placed high enough in Lübeck’s posh district to give panoramas of both river and mountains, next door to none other than the family home of Lübeck’s 1 2 • b e n n i n g t o n ma g az i n e
great scion Thomas Mann, the Buddenbrooks house. Alma and her banker had more than once conversed with the visiting author, across the distance of two back porches. Another life. Before exile. Alma, formerly an opera singer on Lübeck’s greatest stages. Alma, flower of Lübeck. (Rose got her fill of this word, this holy name, Lübeck.) More German than German, barely Jew at all until the degraded sons of Bavaria had wrenched the nation to pieces. All this is what that ashtray knew, up to and likely including the exact sums Alma had used to buy herself and her brother, Lukas, and her son, Albert, escape to New York, at that last minute when, after the approaching nightmare had induced the banker’s heart attack, Alma’s and Albert’s denial had been torn from them: Jew, not German. Alma had had to sell it all, maybe was lucky even to keep the ashtray. Here at the Knickerbocker was the “parlor,” the sole public room, really, where, sitting over cups of tea, Rose abased herself to Alma’s contempt in order to win grudging approval to marry. Albert was that much a mother’s boy. Here, the same room, Rose had then learned to open her voice at serious Communist meetings, to smoke and argue with the men, while Alma, sealed in her aristocratic German, unwilling or unable to learn English, had, gratifyingly, been reduced to a hostess for their cell’s meetings. And here, spring of ’47, was the site of Rose’s first living-room trial, the one that mattered, that changed everything. The meeting where, with classic party perversity, Albert, wrongly accused of spying when he was only an incompetent blabbermouth, was made a spy. The trial in which Albert was aided and abetted in flight from his family, his wife and seven-year-old daughter, by the party. Where was Miriam? Right there. The daughter Albert was abandoning was the whole while in Alma’s bedroom. She sat through the trial as she’d sat through previous
meetings, gobbling the foil-wrapped Mozartkugeln Alma always provided the granddaughter with whom she couldn’t converse in English, only coo at, to the solitary child’s increasingly evident boredom. Miriam sat amid a litter of the unwrapped foil, playing quietly with her rag doll, likely smearing it with the German chocolate, and understanding, God help her, who knew how little or much of the things she overheard. The expulsion that would reverse-exile her father from New York, from America forever. As for Rose, her voice wasn’t for once available to be overheard. Knowing, that day, that if she spoke she’d scream, Rose never said a word that would have given Miriam, as she listened from the next room, the least alarm. Nothing to alert her that this meeting was out of the ordinary, that the party men were handing down anything other than Albert and Rose’s next irritating errand, the next recalcitrant shop steward or union chief to pester with their pamphlets and talk, the next cultural gathering to uselessly infiltrate. If anything alarmed the seven-year-old girl, it would have been the absence of her mother’s voice. The voice that crosscut through every room and situation, the voice never stilled, for once stilled. If anything alarmed Miriam, it certainly would have been this: the absence of her mother’s voice even when her mother paused in the doorway, on a trip bearing the unbearable ashtray from kitchen to parlor, and hovered there, stared at the girl with tight lips, possibly moist eyes though she’d have disclaimed this, then leaned to fondle her daughter’s head, to mold her hand along the darling skull to the small hairs at the neck. Spoke not a word, most uncharacteristically, about the minefield of foil. Instead, still clutching the ashtray like a bludgeon, impulsively grabbed at one of the few remaining Mozartkugeln, bared it of wrapper, and grimacing, gobbled it whole, then stepped from the doorway still unspeaking, to return the ashtray to its place before any smoker’s ash grew unsupportably long. If the girl recalled it—unlikely—it would have been the sole instance in a lifetime that she’d seen a piece of German chocolate cross her mother’s lips. From that day it would be just the two of them, mother and daughter, in the Gardens apartment. In Rose’s constellation of memory, this was Ursa Major, the real trial. Something of which to be mordantly proud: that the top men in New York Communism had taken notice of Albert and decided he needed correction, needed to be adjusted, from the status of dissolute husband and father, a Commie lush conducting “meetings” at McSorley’s tavern—where he’d been overheard by visiting undercover Soviets!— and pressed into service overseas. Returned to Germany,
where his courtly manners made him an asset instead of a sore thumb. A dandy Jew with a trace of German accent tainting his English? Not of such terrific value to an American Communist Party looking to get folksy with the workers. A native German with impeccable English and total dedication, willing to repatriate? Of maximal attractiveness to the new society forming in the ragged shadows and rubble. So Albert was sent to become an East German citizen and spy. Rose could really savor the pomp and menace of the committee who’d come to Alma’s little parlor to drink tea and put the seal on the destruction of her marriage. She could shroud herself properly in this memory, of the trial that had cost her everything, sent her slinking back to her candy-store peasant family to admit that no, you couldn’t hold a man, couldn’t, at last, keep that posh refugee. See? Rose’s marriage, minus God, had flopped. And so she’d been cast into her life’s purgatory: Real’s Radish & Pickle, single-motherhood, and Queens without Manhattan, exile to that suburb of the enraged. And Albert Zimmer escaped back to Europe. What was Rose’s failed marriage except evidence, against the whole fable of American history, that European chains could never be shrugged off?
and what,
after all, were Albert Zimmer and Rose Angrush but an implausibility briefly entertained? Tolerated for an instant before being demolished, dismantled from at least three directions at once: her family, his family, and the party. The high assimilated German joining up with Rose the Polack, Rose the Russian, Rose the immigrant, second-generation Brooklyn Jew? Unlike every comedy ever devised by Jewish writers mocking class difference from the sanctuary of Hollywood, these were divisions that exactly couldn’t be closed by the bonds of love. This wasn’t screwball, it was you’re screwed. Not It Happened One Night but It Happened Never. How came it even to attempt happening? Simple. At a packed meeting hall near Gramercy Park, under a high ornate ceiling echoing with voices, a mole met a mole. Rose seated there, on one side, in one creaky wooden folding chair; Albert seated here, across the room, in the same sort of chair. Both seeking to take the meeting’s floor, to steer its innocence and idealism in a given direction, both eager to run back to their contacts and brag of enlisting the group, and both obstructed, largely, by the other. Oh, it was ripe: Albert and Rose discovered each other because they’d been assigned, by their separate and poorly coordinated cells, to insinuate themselves into the same organization, the Gramercy W i n t e r 2013–14 • 13
Park Young People’s League. To introduce the possibility of solidarity with the coming workers’ revolution into this vague, well-intentioned gathering. Both therefore forced, at some point, to bite a tongue and hear the other. Until, as they tussled for dominance in pursuit of an identical outcome, some other form of tussle emerged in the thinking of both, and the hall’s other occupants melted away into irrelevance. Albert thinking: Who is this young Emma Goldman, this zaftig Brooklyn shtetl girl in the hand-sewn dress, covering the Yiddish parts of her speech with elegant rhetoric, with comical double-feature at the Loew’s Britishisms? Rose thinking: Who is this fair Germanic professorially handsome fellow in suspenders and gold-rimmed glasses—and can he possibly be, as he claims in his speech, Jewish? This was, you did have to admit, screwball comedy, but such as no Red-leaning Jew playwright, vamoosed to Hollywood, would ever dare committing to paper: Sent to convert the Young People of Gramercy, the two lost sight of their marks, becoming each other’s marks instead. Their infatuation was above all a meeting of two intellects gleaming with the same exalted certainties, two wills emboldened by the same great cause, and they were still uncovering this extent of their political sympathies (though “political” was too limited a term, insufficient to describe what joining the greatest movement of human history had done for their sense of what life itself was for), gabbing a mile a minute, barely able to stop talking
Then, when Rose missed three menstruations, married. What could be so wrong? They were two Jews. Two humans. Two believers in revolution. In the eyes of anyone but their families, a matched pair. Any “real American” would have heard his German accent as close kin if not identical to her parents’ Yiddish. He was fair and she was dark, sure. But spiritually, they could be taken for brother and sister. Certainly Albert and Rose found themselves allied utterly, proudly so, in the glance of any hater of Jews or revolutionists. Wouldn’t the cause soon erase all such distinctions of class and creed and race, weren’t enlightened and secular Communists abandoning inhibition to mate furiously with goyim, female comrade seeking camaraderie with male comrade whether Irish or Italian or otherwise? Wasn’t any child seeded across some obsolete boundary or prohibition an ideal mongrel citizen of the future world every comrade ought to seek to bring into being? Try telling it to the Jews. At their futzed-together, hasty wedding (which nevertheless had no reason not to be as sweet as their own private love still could be in that time) (never mind how soon that time had been destined to pass) (never mind the appetites that had been lit in Rose in that brief interval) (never mind, never mind), Alma and her brother high-hatted the Angrush clan, that whole chaotic array of Rose’s sisters and their husbands and their broods, the innumerable cousins, as though the shtetl progenitors had been summoned to populate a Brooklyn they’d been
“If anything alarmed the seven-year-old girl, it would have been the absence of her mother’s voice. The voice that crosscut through every room and situation, the voice never stilled, for once stilled.” to eat the food that sat cooling on the table where she’d cooked it for him in the kitchen of his flat, or to sip the wine they’d poured but in their intoxication with the cause hardly needed, when Albert first unbuttoned her dress and his trousers. So the tussle, begun in full public view, now was consummated behind closed doors. For a little while, Rose and Albert lapsed in their attendance to all urgencies, except those of a cell of two. Two fronts moving as one. Full synthesis achieved and lost on a nightly basis. 1 4 • b e n n i n g t o n ma g az i n e
mistakenly informed was vacant of Jews. Alma and her brother, the vain and elderly and most probably inverted Lukas, treated Rose’s family like the servants they’d been forced to terminate just before fleeing Lübeck. The Zimmers, the progressive, the enlightened, the worldly Zimmers, in the face non-German Jews, semireligious Jews, village Jews, felt their own place instantly: above them. This union was not what world revolution was meant to make possible, thank you very much!
Then, as if to prove that the cosmos wanted no such union, the pregnancy lapsed, in the privacy of night leaking out of Rose in gobs and streams, so discreetly she was left to explain it to Albert herself, just weeks after the wedding. That, only after a doctor explained it to her, saying it hadn’t been much of a pregnancy to begin with, if five months along it could dissolve more or less painlessly in the night. Something hadn’t taken, only tried to. It was a mercy, a mitzvah even. Not to bear any longer the thing incompletely forming within her. Now, girl, eat red meat and salad, avoid exotic fruits such as bananas, and try again. Try again? She bit her tongue. They hadn’t been trying. He’d meant to pull out. Now, married, they’d try. By now they’d settled, out of Manhattan, but not out of the heart of the world’s happy controversies: no. Instead they’d made their home in the official Socialist Utopian Village of the outer boroughs, Sunnyside Gardens. Designed, as they discovered, and ironically, on a German basis, Lewis Mumford borrowing from the Berlin architects’ vision of a garden city, a humane environment grounded in deep theory, houses bounded around courtyard gardens, neighbors venting their lives one to another across a shared commons. Yet with such struggles as overtook Rose and Albert in that utopian zone, truthfully, they might wish to be a little better partitioned from their neighbors’ overhearing. That first accord between them, had it only been a fever of hormones? Their marriage, only a panic of pregnancy, in the wake of brain-befogging stints of sheer fucking? A baby would make it right. They tried and tried. Synthesis of this sort was denied them. Four years of trying before his seed would take in her again and make Miriam. The girl arrived at the doorstep of the war, ready shortly to be assigned her own booklet of ration stamps. Born into a new world unresembling that nascent utopia in which Rose and Albert had sought to start a family, against the skepticism of two armies made of different species of Jewish uncles, aunts, and cousins. Would it have grounded the union to make issue earlier? Was Albert unmoored for want of a child at home? No. Rose could revere, in her morbid way, the Kafkaesque penalty of her first trial because she knew the party was only putting something out of its misery after all. The marriage had failed. Wrecked on reefs of personality, the incongruity and nonsupport of the two alienated families, and on Albert’s vanity, his uselessness to the task of anything but distant and unreachable revolutions. He was either above or beneath mere work: Given even a sheaf of pamphlets to distribute, you’d find them stuffed into his suit pockets, Albert’s campaign to
distribute them among the working classes having ended in some dialectical flirtation over drinks with a fellow pamphleteer he’d just happened to run into. As for the demands of parenting, once the girl came along, forget it. Rose had been a single mother before she was made a single mother. The fact of which Rose was proudest was that one she’d never utter aloud, ... not even to Miriam, the daughter who was the repository for Rose’s whole self, her insurance against being forgotten. Yet it was her signature triumph: the containment of murder. Rose Zimmer emptied and rinsed the Lübeck ashtray three times during the course of her first trial. Ferrying the granite weapon back and forth through the crowded room, the smoky air, Rose didn’t swing it to shatter Albert’s cranium. Nor Alma’s, which would have surely collapsed as easily as an eggshell, tight-combed and hairpinned white wisps drowning in blood as she fell to the carpet. Nor did Rose crown any of the high party operatives. No, though they made it so easy, leaning in lusciously to plop sugar into their teacups, bending to stuff lit matches into mossy pipe bowls, no, though it would have been so beautiful to watch them riot in fear of her and her granite boxing glove. Nor did she go in and murder the newly fatherless girl, whose small body Rose would still have been able to hoist through the window to hurl down onto the pavement of Broadway, drawing cops to whom Rose would then immediately denounce the cell of Reds she’d uncovered (You gentlemen revolutionaries are sidelong-eyeing this peasant-stock housewife for a reaction? Well, there’s your reaction!), no, no, no, on the night Rose Zimmer had discovered she possessed not only the capacity but the desire for murder, she’d let the most delectable array of possible victims go completely unmurdered. She’d killed not even one of them. She’d carried the ashtray out filthy and carried it back in as spotless as the best-paid Lübeck housekeeper could ever have made it. B Now that was a trial! Jonathan Lethem ’86 is an essayist, short story writer, and author of nine novels. In 2005, after being awarded the MacArthur Genius Award, he returned to Bennington to deliver the Commencement Address. He was named the Disney Professor of Writing at Pomona College, where he currently teaches. From the book DISSIDENT GARDENS by Jonathan Lethem. Copyright © 2013 by Jonathan Lethem. Reprinted by arrangement with Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Group, a division of Random House, Inc. W i n t e r 2013–14 • 15
cover story
Photos by Briee Della Rocca
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The story behind Bennington’s first presidential search in 26 years—and the extraordinary candidate who emerged—by Brian Davidson
10 the making of Bennington’s
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P r e s i d e n t, M a r i k o S i lv e r
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the summer of 2001, at a cocktail party in Manhattan to benefit the National Endowment for the Arts, a man was taking in a nearby conversation. It was the kind of small talk that might have been overheard at any number of parties in New York that evening—a young woman back in the city after three years abroad—but that’s not what caught this man’s attention. The expat whom the conversation revolved around was Mariko Silver. Guests were discussing that she had just returned from Bangkok, where she had been working as a business strategist for a publisher of international travel magazines. She had a history degree from Yale, a master’s in science and technology policy from the University of Sussex, in England, and now, after a year in Southeast Asia, was deciding between a finance job in New York, or business school. She seemed to be leaning toward the latter. W i n t e r 2013–14 • 17
The man, mid-40s, brown hair but for a touch of grey around the ears, turned and politely inserted himself into the conversation. “Excuse me,” he said. “Did I hear you say the woman you are talking about has a master’s in science and technology policy from Sussex?” Indeed he had. “Here,” he said, offering his card. “Have her give me a call.” The card identified the man as Michael Crow, executive vice provost of Columbia University. Prior to that title—the University’s third highest administrative post— his card had read: “Professor of Science and Technology Policy, School of International and Public Affairs.” With a master’s in the field himself—from Syracuse, in 1985— he was well familiar with the Sussex program. Formally known as the Science and Technology Policy Research Unit, or SPRU, insiders like Crow regard it as one of the very best in the world. Silver had declined her acceptance to Oxford to attend. She did accept Crow’s invitation for a phone call, though—which quickly turned into an invitation for an interview. The interview turned into a job offer, on the spot, and before Silver knew it, she had a Columbia business card of her own. It read: “Technology Policy Specialist, Office of the Executive Vice Provost.” She was 23 years old.
the others couldn’t match, another appeal was that its cofounder and principal, Jane Phillips Donaldson, had been a Bennington Board member from 2006 to 2010, and had headed undergraduate admissions at Wesleyan and Yale before launching the firm in 1991. “She came in knowing full well what Bennington is all about, which was exceedingly helpful,” said trustee Bobby Deane ’51, who has been involved in Bennington’s last five presidential searches. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that it’s not easy to explain this place to someone who hasn’t experienced it for themselves.” By mid-October, the search was well into what Phillips Oppenheim calls “Phase One.” The Board had organized a presidential search committee of eight trustees—six of them alumni—and faculty members Susan Sgorbati ’72, MFA ’86 and Robert Ransick. The committee’s first order of business was to draft a position description defining what the College was seeking in a candidate. They engaged the entire Bennington community in the process, holding two days of on-campus discussions with faculty, staff, and students; hosting a series of nine focus groups with alumni and parents in five cities across the country; and creating a page on the College’s website for submitting comments and feedback related to the search. “We wanted to hear on a genuine, grassroots level what all of our constituents had to say,” said Board chair
When ASU was exploring the possibility of an institutional relationship with China, Crow sent Silver there with a one-way ticket and no itinerary. Working closely with faculty, she would return with China’s sitting vice minister of education in tow.
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n September 19, 2012, shortly after 1:00 p.m., Bennington students, faculty, and staff received an e-mail from President Coleman announcing her retirement after 25 years. At the time of Coleman’s announcement, the trustees had already embarked on finding her replacement. They had interviewed three executive search firms to help guide the process, ultimately deciding on the smallest, Phillips Oppenheim, a 10-person New York-based firm specializing in finding leaders for nonprofit organizations including colleges. While its smaller size afforded a level of attention 1 8 • b e n n i n g t o n ma g az i n e
Alan Kornberg ’74. “Fortunately, we found that there was
a very strong consensus.” That consensus was stated clearly in the position description itself, which was posted online and in several targeted publications shortly before Thanksgiving. “Above all,” it pronounced, “Bennington’s new president will be expected to embody and champion the core values of this unique institution … and to nurture and extend their expression both on campus and to the rest of the world.” Within three months, more than 160 candidates would apply.
President Silver in her office in the Barn. On the wall behind her hangs a series of Ansel Adams originals from the College’s collection.
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ess than a year after Crow hired Silver at Columbia, he received a job offer of his own. In July 2002, he was appointed 16th President of Arizona State University (ASU), the largest public university in the country. At Columbia, Silver had been working with Crow on technology transfer initiatives (the translation of academic research into practical applications to be brought to market) and on the University’s research response to the events of 9/11. By the time Crow was tapped by ASU, he was so impressed that he offered her a job in Tempe. “She had a very rare mixture of intellect, wisdom, global awareness, and a high degree of empathy that was well beyond her years,” he said. “She had a clear understanding of how the world works, but also, of how people work. And in our line of work, that’s incredibly important.” Inspired by Crow’s vision for ASU, Silver accepted a position in his administration as “Director of Strategic Projects.” Over the next few years, as Crow oversaw the development of what he called a “New American University” focused on the pursuit of research and knowledge for the common good, he would come to rely on Silver for “solving what everyone else thought was impossible.” Silver worked with the Arizona state legislature on a
number of economic development projects that changed the way the University was funded and strengthened its role as an economic asset in the community. She helped secure state funding for a major public-private partnership in support of the sciences and led the creation of the Arizona Indicators Project, a central resource for data to inform policy making and to increase public awareness around state issues. “A group of us would be in a meeting and decide that we wanted this or that to happen, but without any idea of how to get there,” said Crow. “That’s when we’d hand it off to Mariko.” When ASU was exploring the possibility of an institutional relationship with China, Crow sent Silver there with a one-way ticket and no itinerary. Working closely with faculty, she would return with China’s sitting vice minister of education in tow. Silver spearheaded the resulting collaboration, the International Institute for University Design, which brought together university leaders and researchers from the U.S., China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and Europe. “How many people can take a completely nonexistent relationship with entities that have never even communicated, and convert it into an intellectually grounded, flexW i n t e r 2013–14 • 19
President Silver speaking with alumni at the 5x7 opening reception.
ible, productive working relationship in relatively short order?” asked Crow. “Where Mariko developed the ability I have no idea, but she’s an absolute master.” Crow did everything in his power to keep Silver near his working side, which mostly meant challenging her with interesting projects, but also, in 2006, allowing her to pursue her PhD in economic geography from UCLA. For a year and a half, Silver would fly from Arizona to Los Angeles on Tuesday, take classes until Thursday, and return to her office in Tempe on Friday. She focused her dissertation on “Transnational Corporations, Institutional Change, and Economic Development,” examining
She joined Napolitano’s administration “on loan” from ASU, meaning she would return to the University at the end of the governor’s term. But when Napolitano was nominated by President Obama to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security in 2009, Silver was among the select group to join her. As Acting Assistant Secretary for International Affairs and Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Policy at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Silver led an office of 40 staff members and supported a network of thousands of department personnel deployed overseas. Over three years, she developed the first departmentwide international strategy; designed a global initiative to enhance aviation security; created the first U.S.-India Homeland Security dialogue; and led collaborations with foreign governments and international organizations to counter terrorism, secure borders, enforce immigration laws, safeguard cyberspace, and ensure resilience to disasters. “Whether balancing the needs of diverse communities, or championing projects that serve both public and private needs,” Napolitano said, “Mariko Silver has the ability to develop and advance big ideas.” How she does this is difficult for most leaders to describe. But Silver boils it down to creating complementary practices among disparate groups, even groups with competing agendas. Take, for instance, her work building bridges—sometimes literally—to align U.S points of
In February 2013, Silver was in her office working on an international development project involving a partnership with the World Bank when she received an unexpected e-mail. The subject line read: “Bennington College— Presidential Search.” case studies in China and Vietnam, where she concurrently had been working to expand ASU’s international portfolio. In 2008, shortly after Silver married Thom Loubet, a professional musician, the two were out to dinner in London—where Loubet had a gig—when she received a phone call. It was from the office of Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano. Her policy advisor for innovation, economic development, and higher education was stepping down; they wanted Silver to step in. 2 0 • b e n n i n g t o n ma g az i n e
entry with those being established by Canada and Mexico. While it may be self-evident that such efforts require coordination, actually creating a joint process to go about that work is another matter altogether. “I guess on a certain level this kind of work may not seem like the sexy work you’d imagine when you conjure the work of the Department of Homeland Security,” Silver explains. “But it is work that is fundamental to a functioning government.” In February 2013, Silver was in her office working on an international development project involving a
“ What we heard more than anything is that Mariko listens.” —Chairman of the Board, Alan Kornberg ’74
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partnership with the World Bank when she received an unexpected e-mail. The subject line read: “Bennington College—Presidential Search,” sent from Jane Phillips Donaldson.
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hillips Oppenheim refers to the three-month outreach period as Phase Two. This is when the applicant pool is established, vetted, and pared down for the interview phase, or Phase Three. Most candidates come unsolicited, others are nominated, and a few are sought out and recruited by Phillips Oppenheim through its expansive database, various professional networks, or original research. Silver was among the latter, having been recommended to Donaldson by someone in her network. After Silver responded to Donaldson’s e-mail, the two spoke on the phone for nearly two hours. Donaldson then collected her CV and references and added her to a list of eight candidates who would move on to Phase Three. In early March, Silver flew to New York to interview with the search committee at Alan Kornberg’s office. Kornberg was immediately struck by her “liveliness, fierce intellectual power, and dynamic personality,” he
Kumi, and another child on the way. On Wednesday, Silver met with groups of faculty, staff, and students over three sessions, followed by two staff and student meetings on Thursday, and a final meeting with representatives from various College committees on Friday. “I think of the hundreds of comments on the candidates,” Kornberg said, “What we heard more than anything is that Mariko listens.” On June 27, three days before the official last day of President Coleman’s tenure, her successor was announced: “Dr. Mariko Silver Appointed 10th President of Bennington College.”
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ilver had a feeling the moment she stepped foot on campus, as many do, that if given the opportunity to come to Bennington, she would take it. That feeling became a certainty over the following days as she spoke, and listened, to the community. “When I came here to interview, I didn’t get the standard questions,” she said. “I got much better, more insightful versions that were rendered and articulated in ways that indicated that people really care about this place—in nuanced and subtle ways.”
“How many people can take a completely nonexistent relationship with entities that have never even communicated, and convert it into an intellectually grounded, flexible, productive working relationship in relatively short order?” asked Crow. “Where Mariko developed the ability I have no idea, but she’s an absolute master.” said. But what most impressed him was the way she spoke about Bennington. “It was scary how accurate her perception of the school was,” he said. “I don’t know how she was able to do that, but it was as if she’d been sitting in on our meetings the whole time.” Added Bobby Deane, “She got Bennington, and she thought the rest of the world should too.” Silver was one of three finalists invited to campus for an intensive, three-day round of group sessions with faculty, staff, and students. She arrived on Tuesday, April 30, with her husband, Thom, their young daughter, 2 2 • b e n n i n g t o n ma g az i n e
When her name became public as a candidate for the presidency, she learned another thing about Bennington: its alumni are everywhere. A friend’s grandmother called. Another friend’s daughter sent an e-mail. Notes from all over the country began pouring in. “People were coming out of the woodwork,” Silver said. “And what struck me was the passion that people feel for this place—the degree to which it’s captured their hearts as well as their minds, and shaped their ways of being in the world.” She also heard from search firms working on behalf
President Silver talks with alumni, students, family, and friends during an open Q+A session at Alumni and Family Weekend.
of other institutions. Some were much larger and wealthier. Others were better known. “But none,” she said, “were as interesting.” “Bennington is very distinctive,” she said. “Given the national conversation about the importance of thinking interdisciplinarily, the Bennington approach of applying creativity across the curriculum—not privileging one kind of intelligence over another, but seeing how you can maximize all different kinds of intelligence when trying to answer a question—is a huge part of what Bennington has to contribute to the world. And we should be shouting it from the rooftops.” Silver has been doing exactly that. Already at work championing the value of a Bennington education in the press and with external groups, Silver is also examining ways to improve upon the College’s signature programs and to reclaim its position as the place where rigorous innovation and experimentation define an education. “Bennington is the longest running experiment in higher education in the United States and I think our alumni stand as evidence that it has also been one of the most successful. The absolute resourcefulness a place this size demands of its students, its faculty, its administrators—it permeates everything—and has a huge impact on teaching and learning. In a world of diminishing resources, understanding how to ask the questions that really matter and to find creative, elegant, actionable solutions
“She got Bennington, and she thought the rest of the world should too.” is crucial. It’s an ethos that has been with Bennington since its founding and one higher education needs to be reminded of.” Silver has invited the community to join her in a vigorous interrogation of what makes Bennington “so Bennington,” with the explicit goal of raising the College’s profile nationally and globally. It is one thing for the College to speak to those who have experienced the power of a Bennington education, she says; making it real for people who have yet to encounter it firsthand is a challenge she is particularly excited about undertaking. “Bennington has a lot going for it,” she said. “But there’s a lot more work to be done.” B If you cannot be on campus to celebrate President Silver’s inauguration on April 26, or if you do not plan to attend one of the regional events planned for earlier in the spring. Check out her video interview with recent graduate Jason Moon ’13: bit.do/conversationswithmariko W i n t e r 2013–14 • 23
Impossible stories
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How Princess Yasmin Aga Khan ’73 and Spencer Cox ’90 took on health crises, by Kate Godin
chasing a cure
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Photo by Patrick McMullen
The 2013 Alzheimer’s Association Rita Hayworth Gala 30th Anniversary (from left to right): Harry Johns, President and CEO of the Alzheimer’s Association, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan ’73, Diana Krall, and Gala Chair, Nicole Sexton.
ometimes the unexpected thing is the most defining; the most cataclysmic turn of events shows you who you are. You are 21 years old and learn you are HIV positive at a time when there is no cure and no treatment for AIDS. Or, you stand beside your mother, who is debilitated by Alzheimer’s, looking into a mirror together and she asks, “Who are you?” You hear the call. Do you rise to meet it? Do you flee or fight? This is the story of two fighters: Princess Yasmin Aga Khan ’73 and Spencer Cox ’90, Bennington alumni studying here at different times, coming from different backgrounds, and working in very different contexts. But both made the audacious choice to jump into the fray of an urgent but little understood health crisis—Alzheimer’s disease and AIDS, respectively—with no formal credentials besides their Bennington education and their own determination to chase a cure.
Spencer Cox arrived at Bennington from Atlanta, wouldn’t trade that information for anything.” Georgia in 1986 to study drama and literature. In 1989, Seven companies now produce protease inhibitors, instead of returning for his senior year, he moved to which are estimated to be saving eight million lives today. Manhattan to become involved with the AIDS Coalition “Spencer single-handedly sped up the development and to Unleash Power (ACT UP), the direct-action advocamarketing of the protease inhibitors,” says TAG Execucy group whose mission is to end the disease through tive Director Mark Harrington. “He was absolutely brilliant, just off-the-charts brilliant.” research, treatment, and policy. He also learned that he was HIV positive. When ACT UP demonstrated at St. Vincent’s Hospital, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the International Conference on AIDS, among other places, Cox was front and center. When they shut down the FDA for a day and stormed the NIH, Cox was there. But as powerful as those events were, Cox’s lasting impact began in 1992 when he was among a small group that formed the Treatment Action Group (TAG), a think-tank-like organization that splintered off from ACT UP to focus tightly on accelerating AIDS treatment research. “That was the secret to Spencer,” says playwright and LGBTrights activist Larry Kramer, “he was doing Spencer Cox appears in the 2012 documentary How to Survive a Plague, all these things on his own. ACT UP was a lot directed by David France. like that—everyone was doing things on their own, but very few were as startlingly original and productive as young Spencer.” At that time, there was no leadership and no strategy around advancing AIDS treatment or cure. So TAG developed a national research agenda that would help get the most effective drugs to the people who most needed them. Cox delved into the work with particular vigor, teaching himself the science of AIDS, the ins and outs of drug trials, and the intricacies of the government approval process. He developed a meticulous commitment to data and espoused an activism driven by science. He was invited to sit at the table by the FDA and the drug companies. “It was a wonder watching him wow the FDA, and in meetings with the biggest names in AIDS research,” says Peter Staley, AIDS activist and TAG co-founder. “Spencer was not a science guy,” notes his friend and classmate Andrew Lindsay Cohen ’91, “but he had this phenomenally powerful intellect. When he discovered he was HIV positive, he just decided to learn everything he Cox died in December 2012 from AIDS-related needed to learn so he could do what needed to be done.” causes. Remembered as a stunningly influential activist And what Cox did in 1995 was to design a clinical drug who slammed the status quo and as an extraordinary trial for one of the earliest antiretroviral drugs, protease citizen-scientist, Cox was a veteran in the fight against inhibitors. Not only did his design optimize data collection and streamline the approval process, but it also AIDS with the prescience to see the long-term psychological impacts of the epidemic on survivors. Last June, showed within six months that the trial group taking the Center for Comprehensive Health at St. Luke’s Roothe drug had half the mortality rate of the group taking sevelt Hospital in Manhattan, the largest provider of the placebo. It was the dreamed-of breakthrough in drug HIV/AIDS care in New York City, formally changed its therapies to treat AIDS. “What I learned from that is that name to the Spencer Cox Center for Health. miracles are possible. Miracles happen,” said Cox. “I
Cox delved into the work with particular vigor, teaching himself the science of AIDS, the ins and outs of drug trials, and the intricacies of the government approval process.
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“In most of the world, things are regimented and divided up in such a way that a playwright does not become a scientist and an actor doesn’t face down the establishment,” remarks Lindsay Cohen, “But Spencer didn’t see it that way.” Nor does Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, a trained lyric colora-
tura soprano, who has become one of the most influential advocates for those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and those who care for them. After graduating from Bennington in 1973 with a concentration in music, she moved to New York City to pursue a career as a classical singer. This plan was cut short by the deteriorating condition of her mother, the actress Rita Hayworth, who was experiencing younger-onset Alzheimer’s disease—though they did not know it at the time. “It was just so horrible to watch,” says Aga Khan. “She had to know. She had to know her mind was being robbed.” Aga Khan writes candidly about the confusion and devastation that overtook her mother. “She would move her personal items from her bedroom to other closets around the house, including mine. She would throw all the food out of the cupboards. She would imagine voices outside and thought someone was trying to break into her home,” Aga Khan recalls. “I remember the many times she would call me at college and ask me the same questions over and over again.” Alzheimer’s was not well known in the 1970s, and the best that doctors could come up with was that Hayworth was suffering from alcoholic dementia, a misdiagnosis that was not unusual at the time. Finally, in 1981, the correct diagnosis was made. Having a name, knowing the disease they were up against, gave Aga Khan a toehold from which to take action. “At first I felt a sense of relief—here was a medical explanation,” she says. “But now what?” That year, she joined the board of directors of the Alzheimer’s Association, which had been incorporated only the year before. One of her first efforts was to develop the Rita Hayworth Gala, a tribute to her mother and now a major, annual event that has raised more than $61 million to date to support the Association’s care, support, and research programs. As honorary vice chair of the Association, Aga Khan has also taken the lead in advocating for federal funding for Alzheimer’s research. She is a particular champion of researchers early in their careers, arguing that these scientists at the height of their creativity might offer the best hope of finding a cure. Although her mother passed away in 1987, Aga Khan continues her work at a rigorous pace. “I do not waste time. Time is very important,” she says. “I saw how fast it went for my mother.” In addition to her work with the Alzheimer’s Association, Aga Khan serves as president of Alzheimer’s Disease International, which works globally 2 6 • b e n n i n g t o n ma g az i n e
toward policy change from governments and the World Health Organization. “It was not surprising to me that she would want to get to the bottom of her mother’s illness, understand as much as was known about it at the time, and provide her mother with the best quality of life possible,” says Alan Kornberg ’74, chairman of Bennington’s board of trustees as well as Aga Khan’s classmate and friend, “but she went so much farther. By applying her talents on a much larger scale, Yasmin became a key player.” Harry Johns, president and chief executive officer of the Alzheimer’s Association concurs: “Many of our recent milestones—the creation of a National Alzheimer’s Plan, the establishment of diagnostic criteria, and the willingness of well-known people with the disease to stand up and speak candidly about it—have been made possible because of Princess Yasmin’s early leadership and continued inspiration.”
Aga Khan has accomplished something essential: With her mother, she helped to give a face to Alzheimer’s disease. At the heart of what Aga Khan has accomplished is something essential: With her mother, she helped to give a face to Alzheimer’s disease. And that has helped to de-stigmatize a long misunderstood ailment and to draw support not only for those who suffer from it but also for those who care for them. By raising the disease’s profile—which has meant increased awareness, research, and philanthropic support—Aga Khan found a way to root it in what is deeply human. “I tried to understand myself and my mother’s condition,” she says, “That’s how I found the strength to go on.” Spencer Cox and Princess Yasmin Aga Khan were and are self-taught advocates and self-made activists, whose tenacity changed lives numbering in the millions. “You keep evolving and you keep progressing,” Spencer Cox said in his final interview. “You make your life as meaningful as you can make it.” B
“I LOVE GOING
AFTER SOMETHING
THAT YOU KNOW
EXISTS BUT CAN
NOT ALWAYS
SEE —Rebecca Nakaba ’13
Blurring the lines
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The Stranger Visions of Heather Dewey-Hagborg ’03, by Lise Johnson Miller ’01.
forensicportraits
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e do a lot to secure our identity—send bills and receipts through shredders, generate multiple and elaborate passwords, delete browser histories, wipeout hard drives and lock computers and phones. But in the course of our everyday lives we unconsciously surrender the secrets of our DNA. And that is where the work of information artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg ’03 comes in. Collecting what she dubs “genetic artifacts”—cigarette butts, chewing gum, coffee cups, shed skin cells, and hair left behind in public spaces—Dewey-Hagborg builds portraits of strangers through the sequencing and analysis of a person’s DNA to hypothesize about its owner. Her series of portrait hypotheses, Stranger Visions, features masks she has created based only on the genetic material found in the hairs and saliva residue on gum she gathered in diverse New York City neighborhoods. Because our current association of specific genes with specific traits is too rudimentary to provide anything but a familial resemblance, the portraits are gestural rather than literal. Although, as Dewey-Hagborg points out, scientists learn more every day about how genes are expressed by the body, and in 10 to 20 years the likeness yielded by a single hair will be far more accurate. For now, the portraits are meant as a provocation on the subject of privacy. The questions that Dewey-Hagborg’s work provokes have ignited serious attention by more than just The New Yorker, TED, CNN, and American Public Radio—the surveillance industry is tuning in to her art exhibition, Stranger Visions—and the thought of use by this industry is precisely what makes viewers uneasy. “DNA is as important as we let it be, culturally,” she says. “If we think our DNA defines us, it
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tronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she focuses on bio art, algorithms, and new forms of surveillance, Dewey-Hagborg’s use of surveillance technology to create artwork is longstanding. In 2008, she experimented with eavesdropping systems. She also worked with facial recognition algorithms in an installation that imagined what facial recognition systems might dream about. This was a riff on interests, she says, that predate college. “I came to Bennington interested in exploring the work of John Cage, who composed
music by chance methodology. That led me to study studio sound recording and electronic music with (former faculty members) Joel Chadabe, Tom Farrell, and Randall Neal. And then after studying with (former faculty member) Ruben Puentedura and faculty member Paul Voice, my focus pushed on computer science. I was bent on learning how we learn language and how that could be modeled on a computer,” she explains. This natural draw to the subject of artificial intelligence led DeweyHagborg to befriend fellow student
“ I enjoy the science and new technologies, and yet I’m critical of how it can be used. The art reflects my ambivalence.”
W i n t e r 2013–14 • 29
Photos by Dan Phiffer
becomes incredibly important. If we diffuse the importance of DNA, it’s much less sensitive. It’s what makes the work timely. I’d like to think I’ve provoked public discussion, inspired people to think about a fascinating and complicated subject.” She maintains that she is not making a statement; nor is she attempting, for example, to feed paranoia or to help put people at ease. “I enjoy the science and new technologies, and yet I’m critical of how they can be used. The art reflects my ambivalence.” Currently earning her PhD in Elec-
“What I’ve carried with me since then and think back on very fondly is the encouragement to work against boundaries and not concern myself with disciplines.” Virgil Polit ’05, who had already been working within the art and tech areas for several years before coming to Bennington. “I think in the first week of school he built a robot and put it out on the lawn,” she laughs, remembering. Polit helped her with the technology and inspired her ideologically and artistically. (Dewey-Hagborg has since spent time in the San Francisco Bay area working in robotics.) The book Information Arts by Stephen Wilson further broadened her vision by portraying science and math as integral to—rather than separate from—art and culture. Her time at Bennington solidified her personal synthesis of disciplines. “What I’ve carried with me since then and think back on very fondly is the encouragement to work against boundaries and not concern myself with disciplines. I believe that I can learn anything, and my art is this process of learning; it always begins with questions.” The question that her forensic portraiture attempts to answer arose during a therapy session, when Dewey-Hagborg became riveted on a crack in the glass of a painting, and then on something under the glass: a captive human hair. As she described in her TED interview, “I couldn’t stop thinking about that hair. Whose hair it could be, what they might look like, what they might do. I kept thinking about all these forensic shows we watch on TV and the fascination we 3 0 • b e n n i n g t o n ma g az i n e
have with the science of trying to figure out from evidence who was there.” Her walk home seemed as rife with forensic evidence as any crime scene. How available have we unwit-
tingly made our identities to whoever wants to find us, track us, know us? How vulnerable are we? In order to explore these questions she has had to dig deep into biology and genetics—areas she had no formal academic training in, which didn’t stop her. Working at GenSpace in Brooklyn—a community biotechnological laboratory where anyone can apply for membership to use equipment necessary to extract DNA—Dewey-Hagborg spends sev-
eral weeks gleaning the genetic profile of a single hair. A great deal of her artistry goes into writing the computer program that translates the genetic markers into characteristics of a face, which a 3D printer then outputs in sand and glue: a realistic mask that differs from others by its skin tone, eye color, distance between eyes, distance between nostrils, and several other traits we are just beginning to associate with certain base pairs. Dewey-Hagborg’s self-portrait is no driver’s license photo (and thank goodness for that), but it shares her fair skin and blue eyes, freckles, typical weight, and Northern European ancestry. Another volunteer DNA donor, Kurt Andersen, host of public radio’s Studio 360 was pleased with the portrait Dewey-Hagborg’s process yielded from a swab of his inner cheek. Not because the fresh-faced mask was an accurate resemblance, but because it imagined to this father of two daughters a new possibility. “It’s the Matt Damon version of me,” he explained. “I’m thinking, wow, this could be my son—my cloned son.” Indeed, the public response to Stranger Visions has been enthusiastic. As Dewey-Hagborg told Smartplanet.com, “The predominant reactions I get from people are fascination and curiosity and interest. Most of the e-mails I get are from people who want to send me samples and have their own portrait done.” Given that the process takes several weeks and the cost (not including her time) can reach $1,000, the artist is holding off on fulfilling these requests, although she is considering them. She has discovered something artists historically discover: Human vanity makes painting portraits profitable. And who can blame us for wanting to be seen? B Heather Dewey-Hagborg returned to campus in late November to deliver a talk about her work, which is documented in brief in this TED video: bit.do/deweyhagborgTEDvideo
BRIEE DELLA ROCCA
Alumni art exhibition
RETURN VOLLEY
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Curated by Erin Parish ’88
Thirty-eight Bennington alumni artists representing the past five decades donated works of art to the College for a benefit exhibition and auction during last fall’s Reunion that raised more than $6,000 to benefit VAPA, the College’s 120,000-square-foot Visual and Performing Arts Center. The exhibition Return Volley was organized by Miami Beach-based artist Erin Parish ’88. “When I was at Bennington, we were always bouncing ideas off one another,” said Parish, who has organized benefit exhibitions for several causes in her career. “It was an intellectual sport, of sorts—throwing up lobs, seeing who catches it, hoping it will be returned. This is a continuation of that idea—a chance for people to have a piece of art on their wall from someone with whom they’ve shared a common experience, which will hopefully make them think back to their time at Bennington, while also directly benefiting the College.” “VAPA was like home to me,” said Parish. “I was raised by artists in a 5,000-square-foot studio in Detroit, so everything about VAPA—the smell, the people, the work—was like home.” Parish first had the idea to organize the benefit during a March 2012 alumni gathering in Las Vegas. What better way to support VAPA, she thought, than by auctioning the work of those who developed as artists within its walls for the benefit of the arts at Bennington. “All the visual arts faculty, and our students, were grateful to the alumni who participated,” said faculty member Jon Isherwood. “It was a true demonstration of a community-wide effort.”
Participating Alumni Artists Alix Bailey ’89 Rhea Nowak ’85 Paul Baumann ’84 Mabrie Jeanne Ormes ’68 Melinda Best ’89 Erin Parish ’88 Susan Cantrick ’74 David Anthony Perez II ’06 Lisa Feder Castenskiold ’86 Emily Rauch ’86 Donna Catanzaro ’81 Jazmine Raymond ’08 Monica Church ’87 Michael Sylvan Robinson ’89 Annie Coggan-Crawford ’85 Jo Ann Rothschild ’71 Sydney Cooper ’88 Mary Seibert ’88 C. Fuller Cowles ’84 Sandy Sorlien ’76 Kit Demirdelen ’84 Joanna Clark Swayze ’70 Walter “Gator” Dunnington ’84 Cara Tomlinson ’86 Raania Azam Khan Durrani ’03 Eileen Travell ’88 Kimberly Morgan Eden ’88 Susan Mauss Tunick ’67 Marilyn Gold ’84 Regina Walker ’86 Ariel Herwitz ’06 Paul Wallace ’87 Noah Loesberg ’90 Laura Watt ’89 Catharine Maloney ’05 Ellen Wiener ’76 Charly Nelson ’04 Lois Wilkins ’67 Check out all artwork and photos from the reception; visit the Bennington College Flickr page.
FINDING FOCUS
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Field Work Term as exploration, by Briee Della Rocca
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efore Rebecca Nakaba ’13 graduated in May she already had helped NASA scientists refine an experiment to fix repeatability problems, had written a computer program to help astronomers studying dim galaxies separate giant stars from dwarf stars, modeled the mechanics of a light collimator for scientists at Boston University, designed a website for an engineering competition, built an irrigation system for a farm in the south of France, researched and published articles for a travel website, presented at two scientific conferences, and researched star formation rates in nearby galaxies. Nakaba’s extensive experience was built, as she will tell you, at the nexus of Bennington’s Field Work Term and Plan Process. Taking full advantage of the structures, Nakaba embraced Bennington’s hallmark invitation to explore broadly, practice extensively in the field, and return to campus—to the Plan Process—to reflect on and articulate the connections driving an individual’s interest. Although it may seem, as is often the case with Bennington graduates, that Nakaba had a focused Plan from the beginning—she did not. In fact, like many students graduating with a science-centered Plan at Bennington, she never expected the sciences to be her driving intellectual pursuit.
1 4 2 5 3 Step One: Hypothesize
Step Four: Test
For her first FWT, Nakaba wanted to stay close to home. At the time she also thought she wanted to be a travel writer, so she secured a job with Atlas Obscura, founded by Dylan Thuras ’04. “It was a good experience— one that taught me a lot about myself. I realized that something can influence my identity without defining it. So for me that meant coming to the realization that even though I like reading travel writing, I’m not actually a travel writer.”
Her next experience was at Boston University working on a NASAfunded cube satellite project for the NANO Satellite competition. In the span of seven weeks, she shadowed electrical and mechanical engineers, built a website, and redesigned a light collimator using a CAD 3D modeling program, SolidWorks—something she literally learned to do on the job. “I loved that something with my fingerprints on it could be sent into space—but it wasn’t until working at the Photonic Center that I realized what I’m interested in is more human than technical. I love going after something that you know exists but can’t always see.” Knowing this, Nakaba headed to NASA’s SETI Institute, winning another NSF grant.
Step Two: Observe
During her second year she wanted to travel to Europe. So Nakaba worked on an olive farm in exchange for room and board. She farmed, designed and built an irrigation system, installed a sink, and adjusted her “overly romanticized notion of manual labor.” When Nakaba came back to campus, between her FWT experiences and the Plan Process, she re-discovered her passion for science, specifically astronomy—something she never expected. “I was getting really involved in astronomy and my professor recommended that I get more research experience in the field, so I started to look for opportunities supported by the National Science Foundation.” She found one. It was a Research Experience for Undergraduates grant, a program that funds internships for promising undergraduate scientists.
Step Three: Find Focus
That summer she went to work for an astronomer at Haverford College, where she worked with another undergraduate to write a program that would help identify dwarf stars and giant stars in dim galaxies around the Milky Way. At the end of the 10-week internship, she presented her work at a conference along with several other students. “After I presented, a scientist approached me to ask if I had a mentor. I didn’t. And that’s when I realized that was what was so different about my experience compared to the other students presenting—I was shaping my experience. I researched the grant programs. I found internships and jobs. The other students had mentors who were shaping their work. Because I have done this work, I know how to do it. And I’m not influenced by someone else’s idea of what I should be doing. Faculty support my work but I am driving my focus—and that is important.”
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Step Five: Repeat
When she arrived at SETI, scientists were experimenting with rocks— putting them under stress as a way to test whether or not they experienced electrical activity, which could pave the way to forecast earthquakes earlier. She was also researching if the rocks oxidize the surrounding water, a process that could be a contributor to the mass amounts of oxygen we have today and might point to the origins of life as we know it. But there was a problem. The experiment wasn’t repeatable. “My job was to figure out what was wonky.” After studying the experiment and looking closely at all of the parts, she found that the materials were causing atoms to tunnel, creating background noise. By replacing the materials with higher density plastic and steel rather than aluminum, they were able to cleanly repeat the experiment. The scientists were impressed, really impressed. They made her an offer to fund a position allowing her to continue the research if she chose to go to graduate school in California. Dream job? She laughs. “Yeah, I guess it’s a dream job. I loved working there. But a real dream would be to repeat my Bennington experience out in the world.” Rebecca Nakaba is not the only recent graduate sending something with her fingerprints into space. Her classmate and recent graduate Pratham Joshi ’13 completed a processing pipeline project for the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, which helped sort target solar systems. B
BRIEE DELLA ROCCA
“ I loved that something with my fingerprints on it could be sent into space— but it wasn’t until working at the Photonics Center that I realized what I’m interested in is more human than technical.” —Rebecca Nakaba ’13
W i n t e r 2013–14 • 33
faculty notes
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Faculty news, work, and accomplishments
Faculty Barbara Alfano’s new book, The Mirage of America in Contemporary Italian Literature and Film (University of Toronto Press, 2013), examines the use of images associated with the U.S. in Italian novels and films released between the 1980s and the 2000s. The book explores how the individuals portrayed in these works— and the intellectuals who created them— confront the cultural construct of the American myth. Douglas Bauer published a book of personal essays, What Happens Next: Matters of Life and Death (University of Iowa Press, 2013). Funded by a grant from the United States Institute of Peace, Noah Coburn spent the summer in Afghanistan studying political mobilization among youth. His book, Derailing Democracy in Afghanistan: Elections in an Unstable Political Landscape (Columbia University Press, 2014), was just released. David Edelman, whose current research involves putting octopuses through mazes, discussed how alien minds might function on the popular Science Channel program Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman. Marguerite Feitlowitz has recently published essays and translations at The Los Angeles Review of Books, Words Without Borders, and Paragrafiti. She was a panelist last November at the Harvard Conference on “Democracy and Memory in Latin America,” giving a talk on recent Argentine fiction. An extended interview with Feitlowitz is included in The Breath of Theatre: Conversations & Reflections, 2003-2013 by Caridad Svich, (NoPassport Press, 2013). Michael Giannitti completed his fourth season as Producing Director at the Dorset Theatre Festival. Giannitti’s recent lighting design projects include Clybourne Park at Barrington Stage Company, The Mountaintop at Capital Rep, and Water by the Spoonful at the Studio Theatre in Washington, DC. 3 4 • b e n n i n g t o n ma g az i n e
A public art installation by faculty member and TED Senior Fellow Susie Ibarra offers a musical pilgrimage through 12 culturally significant locations in lower Manhattan, each featuring an original composition inspired by the history of the site itself. The project, Digital Sanctuaries, created in collaboration with award-winning composer Roberto Juan Rodriguez, takes participants on an interactive “soundwalk” in which they experience each composition at its corresponding site through a downloadable mobile app, which invites users to “remix” the music, and post about their experience. The lower Manhattan walk includes stops at the National Museum of the American Indian, the African Burial Ground, Titanic Memorial Park, Pier 15, and the New York Stock Exchange, among other historical sites. The project has received attention from TED and Fast Company, which featured Digital Sanctuaries in November. Jon Isherwood’s interview with influential sculptor and former Bennington faculty member Anthony Caro, who recently died, was published in the July/August issue of Sculpture Magazine. His new sculpture work was exhibited at the John Davis Gallery in Hudson, NY, and a show of five new sculptures continues to be shown through spring at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. In addition to showing his work, Isherwood has delivered lectures at Yale, The School of Visual Arts, Bowling Green University, and he traveled to China last November to lead a panel at the Dingli Technology Center. Collaborating with faculty from Yale University, NJiT, NYiT, William Patterson University, Denver University, and Bennington, the group brought students and faculty to Garfagnana Inovazione in Italy for a month-long residency. Eighteen participants worked to produce work with robotic-controlled stone carving equipment. Completing her fourth year as the Artistic Director of the Dorset Theatre Festival, Dina Janis directed a production of the well-reviewed new play, The Whipping Man by Mathew Lopez, as part of the 150th Year Anniversary of the Civil War.
Mary Lum’s work has been published in two books recently—The Age of Collage: Contemporary Collage in Modern Art (Gestalten, 2013) and Architectural Inventions: Visionary Drawings (Laurence King Publishers, 2012). Andrew McIntyre spoke at the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques and Concordia University in Montréal last April and the Korea Institute for Advanced Study in Seoul, South Korea last June about his joint work with Professor Jinsung Park of the Korea Institute for Advanced Study. McIntyre addressed the Canadian Mathematical Society winter meeting in December, 2013; conducted a workshop on Global Invariants and Moduli Spaces at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study last May; and delivered a talk about Integrable Systems and Moduli Spaces at Banff International Research Station in August, 2013. Kathryn Montovan uses computer simulation modeling to better understand self-organized storage patterns in honey bees. This work is described in a recently published paper “Local behavioral rules sustain the cell allocation pattern in the combs of honey bee colonies (Apis melifera),” which appears in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. Global Change Biology will also publish a paper authored by Montovan, “Direct and indirect effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 on net ecosystem production in a Chesapeake Bay tidal wetland.” Her work in Global Change Biology presents data from a long-term elevated carbon dioxide experiment and helps explain how wetland ecosystem carbon uptake changes when the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide increases. Carol Pal won the 2013 Joan Kelly Memorial Prize for her book Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2012). The Kelly Prize is awarded annually by the American Historical Association (AHA) to honor the book in women’s history and/or feminist theory that best reflects the high intellectual and scholarly ideals exemplified by the life and work of Joan Kelly. “Deftly combining biography, social, religious,
cultural, and intellectual history, Pal’s Republic of Women challenges everything we thought we knew about the supposedly masculine republic of letters,” noted Sheryl T. Kroen, the 2013 Kelly Prize committee chair. deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum has named Ann Pibal winner of its prestigious Rappaport Prize, which awards $25,000 each year to a contemporary artist with ties to New England. While on sabbatical last fall, Mirka Prazak worked on completing a manuscript on genital cutting in East Africa and will return to Kenya to continue her longterm research and ethnography work. Sue Rees traveled to the Kattaikkuttu Theatre School in India to make a promotional video for the school in anticipation of a Global Girls from Chicago residency; to complete a short piece for Shell International; and to begin a documentary of Rajagopal, co-founder of the school. During the summer, Rees produced prop pieces for three plays—King Lear directed by Terry O’Brien, All’s Well That Ends Well directed by Russ Tyrez, and Three Musketeers directed by Chris Edwards at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. Rees continues her work on an animation of The Alphabetical Adventures of Zelda Zingaro and The Gypsy Queen by Len Jenkin. Allen Shawn’s new CD Allen Shawn: Piano Music volume III, was praised by American Record Guide and Fanfare. American Record wrote, “This is music of high intelligence and considerable poetry.” Fanfare reviewed it this way: “Shawn’s music reveals a lovingly detailed and carefully ‘orchestrated’ coherence that enhances its often ardent expressivity. The music thus ‘speaks’ simultaneously on several planes...on the basis of this recording I’d hazard a guess that Robert Carl’s assessment...that ‘this is one of the most substantial and memorable bodies of work for the instrument of any living American composer,’ is not far off the mark.” Shawn’s 1994 “Three Dance Portraits” was recorded on the album Mosh Pit and was released last April. Also recorded was Shawn’s “Fantasy,” composed in 2012. Last
May, Bennington’s Sage City Symphony performed his “Five Orchestral Scenes.” This past September, Megan Schubert ’05 performed Shawn’s “Songs from Nothing,” (lyrics by John Cage) at the Resonant Bodies festival in Brooklyn’s Shapeshifter Lab. In October, German pianist Julia Bartha recorded an album of Shawn’s piano music, which spans 30 years. Three recent paintings by Andrew Spence were included in a summer group exhibition Season Review: A Selection at the Edward Thorp Gallery in New York City. Several recent paintings were also shown at the same gallery last spring, as part of the group exhibition Painting Advanced. In May 2013, the Philadelphia Museum of Art accepted one of Spence’s earlier paintings, Sleeping Bag (1994, oil on canvas, 90 x 45 inches) as part of their permanent collection. Bruce Williamson performed Fred Hersch’s jazz/theater piece “My Coma Dreams” at Columbia University. Last April, Williamson performed an East Coast tour with pianist Art Lande’s quartet and later recorded with Lande and woodwind player Paul McCandless. His recordings include a new film score by Elliot Goldenthal for the upcoming Julie Taymor film, Transposed Heads; a new recording of Elliot Goldenthal’s ballet music, Othello; and a recording of Richard Martinez’s musical score for the PBS documentary, The Undocumented. Michael Wimberly has produced the recently released vocal CD The Nearness of You, featuring vocalist Lila Ammons. He was interviewed in Drum magazine last April. Wimberly conducted Louis Calabro’s “Processional,” and composed a New Orleans-styled work, “Joyful Noise” for Bennington’s graduating class recessional. He has performed at the 18th annual Vision Festival with the Roy Campbell Quintet and Positive Knowledge Ensemble in Brooklyn, NY, and the Summer Solstice with Paul Winter at St. John the Divine in New York City. Wimberly composed and created the sound design for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was performed by the Classical Theatre of Harlem held at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater, New York. In addition to his
recording and performance work, Wimberly leads the Michael Wimberly Cooperative Together with Music organization, which instructs children on the power of drumming, lessons he recently brought to children in Ponta Delgada, Portugal and to orphans at the Bawjaise Home for Children in Ghana, West Africa. Kerry Woods published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) titled, “Microclimate moderates plant responses to macroclimate warming.” This multi-authored, “meta-analysis” is based on a collection of long-term data sets from Europe and North America. The BBC and Belgian national TV/radio reported on the study, first published in the PNAS. The journal Applied Vegetation Science will publish Woods’s commentary, on detection of vegetation response to climate change titled, “Problems with edges: tree lines as indicators of climate change (or not).” The New Republic published “White Fur,” a poem by Mark Wunderlich and American Poet published his essay on Sylvia Plath. Wunderlich read at the Academy of American Poets, Poets Forum, and received a fellowship from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. He also collaborated with printmaking faculty member Thorsten Dennerline on an artist book that combines Dennerline’s design and printmaking art and Wunderlich’s poetry.
GRADUATE FACULTY + CAPA FELLOWS Peter Trachtenberg published an essay “Tomorrow and Tomorrow” in the Kenyon Review Online and was interviewed by Bookforum last August about his book Another Insane Devotion: On the Love of Cats and Persons, released as a paperback in October. Matthew Kohut co-authored the cover story of the Harvard Business Review’s July/ August 2013 issue. The article, which compares warmth versus fear-based leadership models, came in advance of Kohut’s new book, Compelling People: The Hidden Qualities That Make Us Influential, which he co-authored with John Neffinger. W i n t e r 2013–14 • 35
faculty news
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New faculty at Bennington
new faculty
A timeless through line of every Bennington experience is the profound impact the faculty have on a student’s education. This year Bennington welcomes six new faculty members, whose work is concentrated in disciplines that range from literature to voice, mathematics to language. Each of these teacher-practitioners emerged as finalists following extensive and highly competitive national searches. Accomplished, ambitious, interesting, and diverse—the College welcomes the following faculty members to our extraordinary community.
BENJAMIN ANASTAS LITERATURE Anastas is the author of the novels An Underachiever’s Diary (Dial Press Trade, 2009), recently re-released in paperback by the Dial Press, and The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor’s Disappearance (FSG, 2002), which was a New York Times notable book. His memoir Too Good to Be True (Little A / New Harvest) was published in October 2012. Other work has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, Bookforum, The Yale Review, and The Best American Essays 2012. He has taught at Columbia University and is a core faculty member in Bennington’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing program. MFA, University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop; BA, University of Rochester.
NOËLLE ROUXEL-CUBBERLY FRENCH Rouxel-Cubberly is back at the Isabelle Kaplan Center for Languages and 3 6 • b e n n i n g t o n ma g az i n e
Culture after 12 years at the City University of New York. She served as an assistant professor and acting coordinator of the French Program at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). Involved in the education of French teachers at the Graduate Center, she also developed an internship program for CSI students in a French duallanguage program at PS58, a Brooklyn elementary school. Her most recent publications include a chapter on Claire Denis’s opening sequences as well as articles on film and pedagogy, such as “The Film Trailer Project: French Films as Textbooks.” Her book Les titres de film (Michel Houdiard, 2011) examines the economics and evolution of French film titles since 1968. Over the last 15 years, she has also worked as a translator and linguistic coach for two U.S. biotech companies. Her current projects include an article, “University and Elementary school students learning (French) together” and the publication of a
19th-century literary correspondence. PhD, CUNY’s Graduate Center.
ROBIN KEMKES PUBLIC POLICY Kemkes teaches public policy, specializing in the political economy of the environment and behavioral and institutional economics. She is interested in the interconnections between social and ecological systems, and her research focuses on community forest governance and rural development in post-socialist states. She has conducted fieldwork in the Republic of Georgia, where she assessed the impact of changing forest policies and commercial development on rural household livelihoods in the Greater Caucasus. She was the recipient of the 2013 Galbraith Prize for outstanding dissertation research from the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts. PhD in Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; MS, Community Development
and Applied Economics, University of Vermont; BS in Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
BENJAMIN ANASTAS
KATHRYN MONTOVAN MATHEMATICS Montovan is an applied mathematician who uses modeling and analysis to better understand animal behavior, ecosystem interactions, and self-organization in biological systems. She is interested in determining what can cause the evolution of cooperative behaviors. Specifically, she has found simple rules for the behavior of individual honey bees that give rise to complex and important patterns at the level of the colony. She has also used mathematical models to test ecological hypotheses and to determine the evolutionary cause of decreased parasitism rates by a parasitic wasp. Currently, she is using mathematical methods to understand the necessary relative costs and benefits, network structure, and level of genetic mutation for cooperation to evolve by natural selection. Montovan is also committed to encouraging a diverse next generation of mathematicians and scientists and has developed outreach programs aimed at girls, women, underfunded rural schools, and underrepresented minority students. Montovan has taught Mathematics and Outdoor Education at Cornell University and won a Cornell Teaching award for her mathematics teaching and outreach programs. PhD and MA, Cornell University; BA, University of Minnesota, Morris.
NOËLLE ROUXEL- CUBBERLY
ROBIN KEMKES
ELIZABETH WHITE
KATHRYN MONTOVAN
KERRY RYER- PARKE ’90
KERRY RYER-PARKE ’90 voice Ryer-Parke is known as a performer of many musical styles, from oratorio, opera, early music, and new works to folk, jazz, and rock. She has been the director of the Bennington Children’s Chorus since 1994 and the Bennington
Voice Workshop since 2002. An Artist Associate in Voice at Williams College, she has been on the faculty of the Massachusetts College of the Liberal Arts, the New School of Music, and the Sonatina School of Music, and maintains a private voice studio. A frequent soprano soloist, she has appeared with the Foundation for Baroque Music, Adirondack Baroque Players, Bennington Baroque, Cantata Singers, Williams Chamber Players, Berkshire Symphony, Sage City Symphony, Danbury Symphony, Skidmore College Choirs, Williams College Choirs, Williamstown Early Music, The New Opera, Aoede Consort, Battenkill Chorale, Burnt Hills Oratorio Society, Northern Berkshire Chorale, and the Bennington County Choral Society. She is the lead singer and bass player in Catbird Trio and the rock band The Prescription. BA, Bennington College.
ELIZABETH WHITE
PHOTOGRAPHY White is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently in A Map Is Not the Territory, a two-person show curated by Jessamyn Fiore. Other recent exhibitions include the fourth annual Artisterium International Contemporary Art Exhibition in Tbilisi, No Soul for Sale at the Tate Modern in London, and Surveil, a two-person show with Anne Elizabeth Moore at the Center for Endless Progress in Berlin. White curated Culturehall’s Feature Issue 95, and her work was recently published in The State (UAE). She was the recipient of an Aaron Siskind Fellowship and has been awarded residencies in Leipzig, Tbilisi, Texas, and Governor’s Island, and has received support from CEC ArtsLink and the Hattie Strong Foundation. MFA, School of Visual Arts; BA, Vassar College. B W i n t e r 2013–14 • 37
Celebrating two and a half decades of leadership
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Keeping ideas alive at Bennington
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n June 30, 2013, Elizabeth Coleman retired as Bennington College’s ninth president, having served for 25 years as the College’s internal compass and force for change.
Throughout her tenure, Elizabeth Coleman was fiercely committed to Bennington’s progressive ideals and courageously called for a reinvention of the liberal arts, one that would re-align higher education’s mission with its purposes in a civil society—to advance the public good. In gratitude for her visionary leadership at Bennington and in recognition of her leading voice on the national stage, the trustees announced in June that the Center for the Advancement of Public Action, or CAPA, would be named in her honor: The Elizabeth Coleman Center for the Advancement of Public Action. Together with a group of alumni, parents, and friends, the trustees also led an effort to raise funds to establish The Elizabeth Coleman Venture Fund. Totaling more than $1.2 million for this special initiative, the new fund will support highly leveraged, promising experiments that further Bennington’s mission, reach, and reputation. Administered by Bennington’s sitting president, Mariko Silver, The Elizabeth Coleman Venture Fund will ensure that each future president has in his or her arsenal the timely resources to respond to and pursue ideas for continual innovation. While the Venture Fund is no substitute for a great idea proposed by a talented person—that remains Bennington’s special stockin-trade—it will fuel the great Bennington adventure for years to come. Finally, a new award was established with a special gift from the parents of an alumna from the Class of 2000: the Dr. Elizabeth Coleman Visionary Leadership Award. This annual award will recognize a distinguished Bennington alumna/alumnus, faculty or staff member, or an individual from the larger Bennington community whose innovative and inspirational leadership has supported civic or cultural issues and improved the lives of others. The $5,000 award will be announced each February as an unexpected honor to the recipient at the College’s annual Senior Conference, allowing current stuB dents to connect with exceptional leaders within the Bennington community.
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BRIEE DELLA ROCCA
honoring ELIZABETH COLEMAN
February 10– March 31, 2014
americans in paris
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To be a student at Bennington, again
Alumni Online Course
Experience what it is like to be a student at Bennington again from your home, office, or cafe by participating in a seven-week online course, Americans in Paris, taught by French faculty member Stephen Shapiro. Open to all alumni. About the class: This class will survey the rich history of Americans’ fascination and engagement with the city of Paris. Beginning with Jefferson and Franklin, the class will look at succeeding generations of travelers and expatriates who have made Paris their home; study American travelers of the 19th century who popularized the “Grand Tour” as a way to complete their cultural education; artists who found inspiration in Parisian artistic circles; African-Americans who found freedoms unheard of in segregated American society; and the expatriate writers of the early 20th century. The course will conclude with a look at contemporary visions of Paris on film and television. Weekly online discussion forums and podcast lectures will allow participants to meet and interact with one another virtually, to share ideas, and to deepen their understanding of Paris’ enduring appeal to the collective American imagination. And, for participants who dream of springtime in Paris, Shapiro will lead a cultural tour of the city for course participants (and all alumni, parents, students, and friends in the area). The walking tour is set for Saturday, April 12, 2014 culminating in an alumni gathering at the home of Alexandra Hughes ’73. Travel to Paris and accommodations are not included in the course fee. About Stephen Shapiro: A faculty member at Bennington College since fall 2010, Shapiro is a scholar of 17th-century French literature and culture. His current research projects focus on the use of the footnote as a strategy of dissident political commentary, Racine’s play Esther and early modern carnival culture, and the culinary memoir. Shapiro holds a BA in Classics and Latin from Yale University and an MA and PhD in French from New York University. B
Details and How to Register Course runs from February 10 through March 31, 2014. April 12, 2014 event in Paris. Register by January 31, 2014. Space is limited. Time commitment: This course is self-structured. There will be weekly readings, film and television viewings, and participation in online discussion forums on your own schedule. There will be several real-time live discussions to be arranged at an agreed-upon time with participants once the course begins. Materials: A full list of reading and viewing materials is available at americansinparis.bennington.edu. Some readings will be available for viewing online, others will need to be purchased or borrowed. Technical needs: Access to the Internet, a DVD player, and ability to listen to mp3 files. Cost: $90; Travel and accommodations to Paris for the walking tour and alumni event on April 12, 2014 are not included. To register and for more details on the class, visit americansinparis.bennington.edu or call the Office of Alumni Relations at 802-440-4363.
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Overheard
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Highlights from the All-Class Reunion, by Marie Leahy, photos by Rebecca Rideout ’04
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Alumni Return Three hundred and ten alumni spanning the classes of 1943 to 2013, hailing from as far as Odense, Denmark to as close as North Bennington, Vermont returned to campus for Reunion in late September over a picture-perfect Vermont fall weekend. It was a true celebration of Bennington, with re-telling of legendary stories, moments for quiet reflection, and even a marriage proposal during the spirited weekend of alumni and faculty workshops, performances, art exhibitions, and discussions. Katharine Evarts Merck ’46 received the Hudas Schwartz Liff ’47 Award for Volunteer Service and new president Mariko Silver had the chance to engage with all throughout the weekend. Thank you to all who attended, and especially to the faculty and 36 alumni who shared their experiences and incomparable talents throughout the weekend. Thanks also to the 114 alumni artists who donated artwork to both the Return Volley and 5x7 benefit exhibitions, and to the many who purchased artwork to support Bennington. We look forward to seeing you on the road at events around the country in the spring, and back on campus for the inauguration of President Silver on April 26, 2014 (please see inside back cover for dates and cities—more to come). To see more photos and a video of Reunion highlights, visit bennington. edu/alumni.
“What a glorious weekend at Bennington! The weather enhanced the beauty of the campus, and it was wonderful to see all those alums chattering excitedly as they walked from one marvelous event to another. Those of us who were back for our 50th marveled at the changes: the beautiful new houses, CAPA, Cricket Hill Barn redo, the Student Center— on and on. How I would love to attend Bennington today!” —Jane Vance McCauley ’62
“It’s almost beyond words how great it was to ONCE AGAIN walk the creaky halls, the wellworn paths, the dusty studios, and the houses and feel welcomed by staff, administration, and students.” —Shay Totten ’91 B
W i n t e r 2013–14 • 41
Class Notes
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40s 50s
fortie seventiesei
Holly Appel Silverthorne ’45 celebrated her 90th birthday with Penelope Perkins Wilson ’45.
Bonnie Smith-Leitch, daughter of Betty-Anne Gillett Restrick ’50 writes: “Sadly my mother died in March. Bennington played a critical role in preparing her to be an independent woman in the 1940s and provided her with lifelong friends and memories that she often shared with family.” Mary Vallas Posner ’55 reports that after receiving a fellowship to complete her second book of poems, Mountains That Talk and Know How to Sing, the collection has now been published. “Doug and I remain in our lovely hillside in Carmel Valley,” Sarah Southern Pease ’59 writes. “We go fishing when we can and are enjoying our work. Our oldest grandson graduated from University of the Pacific in Stockton. Our oldest granddaughter attends Mills College. Bennington would have been a wonderful fit for her but it was too far away!”
60s
Frances Finesilver Blumenthal ’60 has new grandchildren: Ahinoam (18 months) and Binyamin (5 months). She spent five weeks in Jerusalem in the fall of 2012. “It was marvelous.” She met cousins, stayed in the historic neighborhood of Nahlaet, and spent a weekend in Ashkelon. Wilma Kantrowich Chandler ’60 started a new theatre company, The Willing Suspension
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Armchair Threat. She has performed at readers’ theatre throughout the Monterey Bay area. Her short play festival “8 Tens @ Eight” is beginning its 20th season in Santa Cruz. After graduating from Bennington, Tabitha Leatherbee ’60 married, had two daughters, and is now grandmother to two grandsons and a soon-to-be granddaughter. She writes: “I am retired from my career as a creative arts therapist and dance therapy editor for The Arts in Psychotherapy. After earning a master’s degree and teaching at Hahnemann Medical University, I served as the president of the American Dance Therapy Association. I had a 20-year retrospective of paintings and ceramics in Philadelphia. I’m currently enjoying yoga, reading, taking classes, and spending more time with old and new friends. My thanks to Bennington for preparing me for both my outward and inward journey.” Judith Schneider Bond ’61 is President of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). FASEB represents 26 biomedical societies and more than 100,000 biomedical scientists and engineers. They advocate for investigatorinitiated research and the training of the next generation of scientists. Ruth Doan MacDougall ’61 continues updating hiking books written by her father, Daniel Doan. The seventh edition of 50 Hikes in the White Mountains has been published by Countryman Press. Dr. Barbara Kent Lawrence’s ’65 first novel, Islands of Time, was published last May.
70s
Last year’s winter issue of Tricycle Magazine features an in-depth story by Andréa R. Vaucher ’70 on Ram Dass, spiritual teacher and author of 12 books. Funded by a grant for environmental journalism, Francesca Lyman ’72 completed two stories, one
on the future of suburbia and a cover story on the impacts of Hurricane Sandy. After moving from Cincinnati to Maine, Carol Rice ’73 visited Steven Cartwright ’73 last August; it was the first time they had seen each other in 40 years. Cartwright recalls, “Carol found me my first newspaper job, which I began the day after I graduated. Now I freelance as a writer/photographer, squeaking by in paradise. Carol remains a professor emerita. She studies dust, but I hope that’s not why she visited my old Maine farmhouse, which I bought just a few years after Bennington.” Betsy Robinson ’73 reports that her book, Conversations with Mom: An Aging Baby Boomer, in Need of an Elder, Writes to Her Dead Mother, received a five-star review by the Review Boards last May. Her new novel, The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg won Black Lawrence Press’ 2013 Big Moose Prize.
Meme, a collection of poems by Susan Wheeler ’77, was selected as a 2012 National Book Award finalist. Wheeler is the author of the poetry collections Bag ‘o’ Diamonds, Smokes, Source Codes, Ledger, and Assorted Poems, and the novel, Record Palace. She is on the creative writing faculties at Princeton University and The New School’s graduate program.
esfiftiessixties ightiesnineties Cici Brown Vesce ’78 helped found the Appalachian Spirit Gallery in Marion, VA, and “it has been going strong for five years.” Brown Vesce had a show at the Harvest Table Restaurant in November/December 2012. She has celebrated 25 years of marriage!
80s
Jenny Swanson ’81 exhibited ceramics at the John Molloy Gallery in New York in September 2013. Robin Goodman Dash ’83 teaches at New England Conservatory and writes that she “was fortunate to hear an incredible talk by [faculty member] Allen Shawn on the life and work of Leonard Bernstein.” She also had a solo exhibition of her work, In Plain Air, in Boston this past summer. Teresa Booth Brown ’85 writes: “My work was a part of a project called CSArt Colorado, a joint project of Denver Botanic Gardens and Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Similar to community-supported agriculture programs, participants purchase a share and then receive three distributions of artwork. I made 59 tiny paintings for one of the distributions, collage and oil on wood, each 3 x 3 inches. My paintings were also in the group show Summer Stock at Quintenz Gallery & David Floria in Aspen, CO.” Booth Brown is a visiting critic and lecturer at Anderson Ranch Arts Center, where her work is also shown. “I would love to be in touch with other Bennington alumni artists. Please contact me: teresaboothbrown.com.” Rhea Nowak ’85 had a large solo exhibition at the Martin-Muller Gallery at SUNY Oneonta last fall. A catalogue of the show will be out this spring, supported by a grant from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation. In the Absence of Angels (Ginkgo Leaf Books), written by Wanda Haynes Fries ’86, is now available in print and for download to Kindle.
Kelsang Chenma ’87 (Linda Uram) is a Buddhist nun and the resident teacher at Kadampa Meditation Center Georgia in Atlanta. Cynthia Katz ’87 currently has works in a Danforth Museum of Art show called Community of Artists. Her son, Dylan, graduated from Union College this year. Chivas Sandage’s ’87 first book, Hidden Drive (Antrim House, 2012), was a finalist for the 2012 ForeWord Book of the Year Awards in Poetry. Entering his fourth year as Director of Arts at The Bryn Mawr School, Michael Robinson ’89 had an expanded summer community theater season directing The Little Women (musical) and The Belle of Amherst. His solo show of fiber and sculpture work is part of the Artscape Satellite Exhibitions, held at Baltimore Headquarters.
90s
Matty (Sterenchock) Wilder ’00 and his husband Andrew Wilder were married last year in Big Bear, CA. In the last issue of Bennington, we incorrectly referred to Matty as female. We regret this error and wish to take this opportunity to properly celebrate the handsome and happy couple. Cheers to Matty and Andrew.
Ourania Panos ’91 is back from Greece after living there for four years. She is still painting.
her by Justice Sotomayor in Washington DC at the Library of Congress.
Rebekah Pym ’99 and Alexander Westphal ’98 had a baby girl, Jessamine, in December 2012. Last June, Pym returned to work as Yale’s Director of International Admissions.
Brandi Wilson ’00 made her off-Broadway debut in New York City and is playing Jim Belushi’s wife in the new Sony Pictures movie North of Hell. She appears in the new movie Bert & Arnie’s Guide to Friendship, released in July 2013, and is currently working on the CBS TV show, Unforgettable. Wilson adds, “I trekked Morocco’s Atlas Mountains in the spring and went to Bhutan with my partner in crime this fall. Right now life is rich, challenging, unexpected, and lit with possibility.”
00s
Jessica Caterina ’00 is on a sabbatical and has embarked on a yearlong judicial clerkship with the Honorable Theodore A. McKee, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In 2011, Caterina won the Burton Award, which was presented to
Timothy Laden Crum ’01 and Nichole Legendre Yamakawa ’00 spent a lovely August vacation in the charming town of Deauville. Plans are being made to return next summer for the rejuvenating Normandie air. Alumni
W i n t e r 2013–14 • 43
coming back
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Alumni at reunion
Briee Della Rocca
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Chris Boscia ’87 and Rachel Schatz ’89 hosted an ’80s, ’90s, and ’00 gathering at Pangaea Lounge where Rosie Schaap ’94 bartended, served a signature drink, The End of the World, and read from her book, Drinking with Men. Nina Pelikan Straus ’64 led a discussion, “Post-Feminist Paradoxes: From the 1960s to Now.”
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Susan P. Huggins
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Alumni architects and designers Viktorija Abolina ’05, Hanny Ahern ’06, Iona Bruckner ’04, Rafe Churchill ’91, Annie Crawford Coggan ’85, Cemre Durusoy ’97, Garrick Jones ’94, Devin O’Neill ’95, and Lawson Reed Wulsin, Jr. ’05 presented their current projects and ideas for the field. The session was moderated by faculty member Donald Sherefkin. It was a standing room only when Tracy Katsky Boomer ’91, Carroll Cartwright ’80, Shawn Paper ’90, and Alethea Root Dufraine ’02 discussed their work in film and television. Using their Bennington education in unexpected ways: Chris Bishop ’72, Nejem Raheem ’94, Rachel Schatz ’89, and Becky Steckhahn - Strohmer ’03 retraced their professional directions and reinforced the entrepreneurial and selfadvocacy through line that began at Bennington.
Carolyn Lewin ’15
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In addition to the 5x7 exhibition, Erin Parish ’88 curated an exhibition of original works by alumni working in the visual arts. Return Volley pieces were auctioned to support VAPA, raising more than $6,000. Screenwriter Carroll Cartwright ’80 engaged students, alumni, and parents in a Q+A session after screening his critically acclaimed film What Maisie Knew, starring Julianne Moore, Alexander Skarsgård, and Steve Coogan.
Briee Della Rocca
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Seventy-six alumni submitted 5x7 works exhibited during an opening Alumni Exhibition Reception. The exhibition raised funds for scholarship support. During the opening reception President Silver presented Kate Evarts Merck ’46 with the esteemed Hudas schwartz Liff ’47 Volunteer Award for her decades-long dedication and service to the College.
Jonathan Mann ’04 gave an open tutorial on the ins and outs of recording, producing, and posting a song and video every day—something he has done since 2009.
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In a session moderated by Jane Vance McCauley ’62, pioneers and members of the 50th reunion classes reflected on their Bennington education 50 years after they graduated and discussed their involvement with the College now. Focusing on inclusion, diversity, and community, Janis Pryor ’71 engaged staff, faculty, students, parents, and alumni in a conversation that reflected on what it is to be a student of color at Bennington.
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Fran Bull ’60, Ray Foote ’82 P’17, and Mathieu Victor ’96 delved deep into the process of making and creating work as an artist-entrepreneur. The discussion was moderated by CAPA Fellow Alison Mock Dennis ’94. Bridgman Packer Dance, led by artistic directors Myrna Packer ’74 and Art Bridgman, captivated audiences during their dance performance of “Under the Skin.”
Carolyn Lewin ’15
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Alethea Root ’02 returned to screen her award-winning film Part Time Fabulous, and Carroll Cartwright ’80 showed What Maisie Knew.
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Returning to their roots, the Spinto Band featuring Thomas Hughes ’06 and Sam Hughes ’10 performed to a packed Student Center. Remembering those friends and faculty who have passed, Chris Boscia ’87 hosted a lantern-lighting ceremony at the End of the World with cello composition by Michael Severens ’89. For a video highlight reel of Reunion, visit: bit.do/2013reunionhighlights.
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thousands tens
in the area are welcome to join us for an impromptu reunion.
After receiving his master’s of science in environmental studies from Antioch University New England in 2012, Michael Metivier ’01 had his first poems published in volumes of Cactus Heart, jubilat, and the African American Review. Metivier is associate managing editor at Whole Terrain, a journal of reflective environmental practice. He and his wife are expecting their first child, a daughter, in July 2014. Rivera Sun Cook ’04 is a nationally touring solo performer of The Freedom Stories of Lala, which have received coast-to-coast standing ovations. She has published a novel, Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars about coal and climate change. Her newest book, The Dandelion Insurrection, was released this past fall. Whit Griffin ’04 published his new book of poetry, A Far-Shining Crystal, this past July (The Cultural Society, 2013).
James Bolenbaugh ’05 recently completed a stint art-directing several episodes of the runaway hit Orange is the New Black. He wrote: “As a feminist, I am very proud to have worked on both seasons of a show that showcases a wide range of multidimensional female characters including transgendered women. No, I will not tell you what happens in Season Two. I will also have several feature film
designs coming out in 2014, so look for my name at a film festival near you.”
Ellen Andrick ’07 left her teaching position to direct the early childhood program at the Lesley Ellis School in Arlington, MA. A poem by Stephen Page ’08 was published on Hobo Camp Review. Page also reviewed Gerald Stern’s Lucky Life on Fox Chase Review. His work is published on his blog stephenmpage.wordpress.com/. Amy Bernstein ’09 graduated from Seton Hall University School of Law in 2012, where she was the recipient of two fellowships that allowed her to pursue public interest summer employment. Bernstein passed both the New Jersey and New York bar exams after what she describes as a “long, grueling summer of studying.” She was sworn in as an attorney in New Jersey in December 2012. Since September 2012, she has clerked for three judges in the Superior Court of New Jersey
Family Division and began her career as a family attorney in September 2013.
10s
Emily Tareila ’10, Zoe Donnellycolt ’12, and Larisa Minerva performed at the SFMOMA last December under the name Soapbox Collective during the Six Lines of Flight exhibition. They have continued their collaboration, performing throughout the Bay Area. This past spring Tareila co-founded and launched an online magazine, All Around Us Always, which profiles visual and performing artists. Tareila was profiled in Composite Arts magazine and her artwork appears in The Greenhorns New Farmer’s Almanac for 2013, which also includes work by fellow alumnae Marisa Prefer ’10 and Emma Harden ’11. India Kieser ’12 was interviewed by the blog The Le Sigh about an art collective she founded in 2012, Pitch + Rail.
keep us posted We love to hear from you. Send us your updates by January 1 to be included in the spring/summer issue and by July 1 for the fall/winter issue. You can submit your Class Note in one of three easy ways: 1. by email to classnotes@bennington.edu 2. online at bennington.edu (click on “For Alumni,” then “Class Notes”) 3. by mail to the Office of External Relations, Bennington College, One College Drive, Bennington, VT 05201-6003 Please note: Due to space constraints, Bennington reserves the right to edit and condense Class Note submissions. B
While every effort has been made to include class notes submitted on time for this issue, we appologize for any omissions. Please inform the Office of External Relations (800-598-2979) if we have omitted your class note in error. Thank you.
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a mystery donor
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The story behind a surprise sixfigure gift given by a mystery donor, by Kate Godin
an unexpected gift On December 12, 2012,
Bennington College received a gift that left the entire External Relations Office stunned: a check for $151,461 from someone they had never heard of and knew nothing about. The handwritten note accompanying the check in an envelope postmarked from Oklahoma City read:
Dear Sir/Madam, Please accept the enclosed gift on behalf of your college. Sincerely, Steve Jenkins
Mystery donor Steve Jenkins with Vice President of External Relations Paige Bartels.
But who was Steve Jenkins? One way to answer that is to say that Steven Brooks Jenkins is a Bennington person who did not attend Bennington. Or, rather, he did for two weeks in the late 1970s, and never forgot it. The idea of Bennington and the way it resonated with him led Steve to make his bold, out-of-the-blue gift to the College more than three decades later. In the interview below, he talks more about why he did it and what it meant. KG: From what I understand, you spent a total of two weeks on the Bennington campus more than 30 years ago. Can you point to the reasons why Bennington College stayed lodged in your mind all those years? SJ: Bennington has remained in my imagination because it’s what all education, especially higher education, should be about—a part of life that is more mysterious than just another product or a brand name as well as a place that offers at least an opportunity to think radically about the world, the village, the city, the campus, and the community. KG: Was your gift officially or unofficially in honor of anyone or anything? SJ: This money was an inheritance from my father, who struggled with mental illness throughout his life. Trained as an
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architect, he had a difficult time finding a stable place in the community, the family, and the workplace. This gift was not necessarily in honor of a single person, but money that was earned with difficulty and hardship—and sometimes great sadness—given to a place that is full of hope and always focused on the future. KG: What were your hopes in giving this money to Bennington? SJ: Are the liberal arts to remain relevant? Bennington, small though it is, can provide a model and even leadership in making sure they are. Perhaps, someday, the “industry” that is a lot of higher education will look to a place like Bennington College and see what the future of higher education might really look like. I never really needed to finish my education, because I know that the values of a place like Bennington College have always been—and will always be—the part of myself I value the most. That’s really why I made my gift to the College. KG: And how did you feel once you had put the check in the mail? SJ: Never underestimate the power of giving, which is completely intangible and more valuable to the donor than to the recipient. B
20122013
“ I know that the values of a place like Bennington College have always been—and will always be—the part of myself that I value the most. That’s really why I made my gift to the College.”
—Steve Jenkins
At this moment of new beginnings,we are as grateful for your philanthropic support as we are for your thoughts about the idea of Bennington—what it can and should mean in the world. FY2013 (July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013) Where the money comes from
room, board & 76% tuition, other fees 21% private support 2% other income endowment earnings 1% allocation
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Where the money goes
31% 24% 18% 13% 10% 4%
scholarships & financial aid faculty, academic support & information technology campus maintenance & capital spending institutional support student & auxiliary services debt service
December 2013 Dear Bennington Supporters: In this past year, we celebrated Liz Coleman’s leadership and the College’s extraordinary progress during her tenure. The entire community was also galvanized by the search for Bennington’s next president, one who would have a vision for the College as bold and brilliant as its past. We found that leader in Dr. Mariko Silver, who we welcomed as Bennington’s 10th president this past summer. President Silver arrived on campus as we closed a strong fiscal year. It is my pleasure to recognize in the following pages all those who helped to make last year a success. As a result of your collective generosity last fiscal year, the College received a total of $7,668,545 in gifts from 2,702 alumni, parents, students, faculty, staff, and friends, as well as 81 foundations and corporations. Your philanthropy supported a robust scholarship program, ongoing curricular innovation and development, the work of our outstanding faculty, and the care and improvement of our beautiful and historic campus. Yours is a commitment of the most concrete and pragmatic kind, and everything Bennington does, and aspires to do, begins with your partnership. We gratefully received another kind of support throughout the year that was equally valuable: your input. One of the most important elements of the search process was hearing from so many of you about what makes Bennington distinctive, and which qualities its next leader should possess. We were struck by the thoughtful, articulate reflections we received from alumni, parents, faculty, students, and staff and have included many of these reflections in this year’s Donor Report. At this moment of new beginnings, we are as grateful for your philanthropic support as we are for your thoughts about the idea of Bennington—what it can and should mean in the world. As President Silver begins to map out the work and priorities of her first 18 months as president, and as she begins to articulate for the rest of the world the characteristics that make Bennington so unique, we invite your continued participation in this vital and ongoing enterprise. It is only through the partnership and support of those who deeply care about Bennington that its very best future can be realized. Thank you for all that you do to make Bennington as robust and remarkable as it is.
With warm regards,
Paige Bartels Vice President for External Relations
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At Bennington, every gift of every size counts, and is gratefully counted. We are able to do extraordinary work because of your support. July 1, 2012–June 30, 2013 (Fiscal Year 2013) Bennington College is deeply grateful to the following individuals and organizations that supported the College in the last fiscal year. This list recognizes all philanthropy to the College, including gifts and new pledges to The Bennington Fund, scholarship funds, endowment funds, capital projects, and special programs.
Bennington College recognizes with gratitude the philanthropy of our loyal leadership donors. The Associates Society includes all donors who make annual contributions of $1,000 or more for any purpose.
PRESIDENT’S CIRCLE ASSOCIATES $1,000,000 to $9,999,999 Laura-Lee Whittier Woods ’48/ LLWW Foundation/ L. K. Whittier Foundation $500,000 to $999,999 Amy Dolgin Jaffe ’67 and David Jaffe/Jaffe Foundation Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation Estate of Carolyn Crossett Rowland ’37/ Carolyn C. and George R. Rowland Charitable Foundation Penelope Perkins Wilson ’45T $250,000 to $499,999 Estate of Suzanne Kennedy Brown ’53 Alan Kornberg ’74T Albert Merck and Katharine Evarts Merck ’46 Kathleen Oliver Parker ’47 $100,000 to $249,999 Anonymous Priscilla Alexander ’58T Estate of Sara Carter Balogh ’41 David Coleman and Patrick Miller 50 • b e n n i n g t o n m a g a z i n e
Barbara Ushkow Deane ’51T and Maurice Deane/ Ushkow Foundation Arthur S. Hoffman P ’87 and Hadassah Houtz Hoffman ’57, P ’87/ Leir Charitable Foundations Steven B. Jenkins JohnT and Charlotte Kenney National Science Foundation Sherman Fairchild Foundation Henry Dale Smith, Jr. and Deborah Klang Smith P ’05 $50,000 to $99,999 Anonymous Susan Paris Borden ’69; G ’01, MAT ’02; G ’12T and Robert Borden G ’01, MAT ’02; G ’12 William Q. DerroughT Estate of Dorothy T. Peck Flynn G ’77 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation MichaelT and Sandy Hecht S. Joyce Berger Mahoney ’51 Joel Wells Schreck ’54 Charlene Solow Schwartz ’54/ Howard & Charlene Schwartz Foundation Estate of J. Humphrey Wilkinson P ’45/ James Daniel Humphrey Foundation
$25,000 to $49,999 Anonymous (2) Evelyn Stein Benjamin ’57/ George D. Benjamin Foundation Estate of Aurelia Brown ’46 Berte Schindelheim Hirschfield ’60/ Norman Hirschfield Foundation Frances Wells Magee ’51 and David Magee Jerome A. and Estelle R. Newman Assistance Fund Nancy E. Newton ’65 Mary Bucksbaum Scanlan ’91/ Mary Bucksbaum Scanlan Family Foundation PATRON ASSOCIATES $10,000 to $24,999 Helen Isaacs Barer ’57 Linda Mazer Berkowitz ’60 and Leonard Berkowitz Rosalind Moger Bernheimer ’62 and Walter Bernheimer II ElizabethS and Aaron Coleman Paula Epstein Eisner ’62 and Mark Eisner Katharine Bunker Getsinger ’48 Judith Backer Grunberg ’55/ T. Backer Fund Nancy Harrow ’52 and Jan Krukowski/Winston Foundation
Estate of Elisabeth Zimmermann James ’38 Margaret H. & James E. Kelley Foundation Estate of Miriam Hermanos Knapp ’55 Mitchell Lichtenstein ’78 Matthew Marks ’85 and Jack Bankowsky ’81 Carole Merritt MFA ’96 and Alvin Chisik Melissa Saltman Meyer ’65 Middlebury College/ Davis United World College Scholarship Program Signa Lynch Read ’79 Ann Meyer Rothschild ’37, P ’71 Daniel B. RowlandT Esme Usdan ’77/ Lemberg Foundation Loet and Edith Velmans Deborah WadsworthT Estate of Elizabeth C. Wagner ’51 Jeffrey Williams and Mayree Clark P ’16/ Silverleaf Foundation SPONSORING ASSOCIATES $5,000 to $9,999 Anonymous Robert Brawer and Catherine Coleman Brawer/ Ida and William Rosenthal Foundation Matthew and Amy Davidson P ’14/ J.M. Kaplan Fund Jane Witty Gould ’63 Suzanne Heller Harris ’41 Adria S. Heyman Hillman ’67 Barbara Ridder Irwin ’44 Beth Kaplan Karmin ’85 and Kenneth Karmin/ Mayer and Morris Kaplan Family Foundation Wendy Kilpatrick Bruce and Suzie Kovner (in kind) Joan Morris Manning ’55 Caroline Rennolds Milbank ’77 Marianne Petrie Miller ’58 Glen and Alison Milliman P ’14/ TEW Foundation Kay Crawford Murray ’56 David and Carol Newell
Robyn A. Newhouse ’69 Linda Schandler Porter ’55 Barbara Goldberg Rohdie ’63 and Robert Rohdie Jeremy Sager ’80 and Paula Clements Sager ’80 James Simon ’97T Sandra Kesselman Slotnik ’61 Pearl Friedman Staller ’43, P ’71 and Erwin P. Staller P ’71 Nicholas A. Stephens ’77 Bronson and Lynne Sweeney P ’00 Mary Eddison Welch ’40, P ’71 Michael Wolkowitz and Hope Holiner P ’09/ Liberal Do-Gooder Foundation FOUNDING ASSOCIATES $2,500 to $4,999 Anonymous Agnes M. Lindsay Trust Jonathan and Jessika Auerbach P ’15 David Beitzel MFA ’83 and Darren Walker Lynn Bodkin P ’11 Judith Schneider Bond ’61 Tracy Katsky Boomer ’91 Brian CampionS and Eric Hatch Lori Cohen ’90 Michael Connolly ’76 Judith Selis Davidson ’63 Alfredo de Palchi and Rita Di Pace P ’10/Sonia Raiziss Giop Charitable Foundation
John and Alice Dean P ’99 Robin Hackley Decker ’84 Antionette Denisof/ Sonia Raiziss Giop Charitable Foundation Peter Reed Donavan and Nancy Scattergood Donavan Albert F. Freihofer MAT ’03 Judith Gerson ’68/ Judith Gerson Charitable Trust Arlene N. Heyman ’63 Takashi Kako P ’76 Jane Neal Keller ’52 Laura KrauseS Margaret Rood Lenzner ’67/ Lenzner Family Foundation Eileen Josten Lowe ’47 Janet MarsdenS Helene Fox Metzenberg ’54 and Robert Metzenberg Susan Plosky Miller ’62 Nuala O’Donnell Pell ’46 Margery H. Perlmutter ’76 Carol H. Rice ’73 Melissa Rosenberg ’86 and Lev L. Spiro Toni Ross P ’15 Andrew Sawyer Emily Flesheim Schaffner ’39 Marianne Byk Schnell ’50 Elizabeth O. Silver ’86 Pril Smiley ’65
“The sailor in me now thinks of Bennington as a sort of lightship of higher education, out there where bigger ships can’t or won’t go, in waters too deep or otherwise unsuitable for lighthouse construction.”
T: FY12 Trustee; F: Current Faculty; S: Current Staff; P: Parent; G: Grandparent; MA: Master of Arts; MAT: Master of Arts in Teaching; MALS: Master of Arts in Liberal Studies; MFA: Master of Fine Arts; PB: Postbaccalaureate; Deceased
—Susan Paris Borden ’69
W i n t e r 2013-14 • 51
FOUNDING ASSOCIATES $2,500 to $4,999 (continued) Shira Ariel Sternberg ’05/ Barr Charitable Trust Tama Alcott Taub ’59, P PB ’96 and Robert J. Taub P PB ’96 Teagle Foundation Sarah G. Tenney ’71 Ralph and Audrey Wagner P ’82 David D. Walter P ’16 Vernon H. C. and Lucy Wright P ’94/ Wright Family Foundation Lynn Sakowitz Wyatt ’57 ASSOCIATE MEMBERS $1,000 to $2,499 Barbara Abercrombie ’71 Kathryn Aichele-Samardick ’88 David Anthony ’96 Katherine Buechner Arthaud ’83 Terri Baffa P ’13 Mary Barringer ’72 C. Minor Barringer P ’72 Paige L. BartelsS Mary Anne Sgarlat Baumgartner ’79 Saida Heyman Baxt ’62 Elizabeth Iarrapino Bellin ’92 Putter Leach Bert ’85 Jill Underwood Bertrand ’65 Joan Oates Bledsoe ’54 Jane Eisner Bram ’58 Deborah Breiter ’72 Jennifer Mertens Brock ’53 Richard and Nicole Bruno P ’14 Barrie Rabinowitz Cassileth ’59 and Richard Cooper Susan Ullman Chapro ’58 Phyllis Meili Chernin ’51 Annie Coggan-Crawford ’85 Jeffrey and Margaret Colman P ’16 Judith Albert Croner ’60 and Mel Croner Arjun Desai ’88 and Katherine Chia Cynthia R. Donoghue ’86 Elaine May Drew ’51 Inge-Lise Eckmann Lane ’71 Steven and Elaine Eisenman P ’00 Bret Easton Ellis ’86 Joan Borkum Epstein ’62 52 • b e n n i n g t o n m a g a z i n e
Alice Wimer Erickson ’73 Deborah Roseman First ’70, P ’92 and Theodore First P ’92 Richard Fishman ’73 Joan FitzGerald ’72 Robin ’84 and Blair Flicker Ray Foote III ’82, P ’17 and Deirdre Corcoran Foote P ’17 Estate of Thomas H. Foster Amanda Spooner Frank ’92 Uliana Fischbein Gabara ’61 Ann Paffrath Gallo ’82 John S. Gates P ’16 Elise Weinrich Geary ’73 Jane A. Gil ’77 Reba Marcus Gillman ’38 Kathryn L. Girard ’69 Arthur Goldwyn Joan GoodrichS and Neil Moss P ’92, ’94 David and Laura Goone P ’16 Frances D. Hallinan ’53 Merrell Hopkins Hambleton ’43; P ’60, ’75 Lynne Tishman Handler ’65 Suzanne Eckfeldt Harding ’47 Helen Burgin Hazen ’55 Johan Hedborg ’91/ Faidon Design AB T. Kent Hikida ’85 and Amy Schweitzer Hikida ’85 Jeffrey and Nancy Hoffman P ’08 Erik B. Holmberg ’86 Miriam Manning Holst-Grubbe ’43 Alexandra O. Hughes ’73 Barbara Elliott Ingraham ’54, P ’82 William Ingraham ’82 Mary Lou Chapman Ingwersen ’47 Neil R. Johnson ’87 Daniel and Lynne Jones P ’16 Ellen Kanner ’83 Margot Starr Kernan ’48 Frederick and Maureen Killion P ’15 Bobbie M. KnableT Todd Knudson ’98 Joan Hutton Landis ’51 Jean M. Lasser ’76 Deborah Culver Lawlor ’61 Michael Lipton P ’14
Jacqueline Little ’86 Judith A. Little P ’86/ William Brian Little and Judith A. Little Charitable Trust Beatrice O’Connell Lushington ’47 Philip and Lois Macht P ’80 Caryn Levy Magid ’65, P PB ’95 and James Magid P PB ’95/Marble Fund David Magier P ’15 Cory and Patricia Mahler P ’16 J. Ann Mallinckrodt ’76/ Grinstead Park Management Liz Mamorsky ’60 Barbara Meili ’80 Jennifer Woodworth Michaels ’70 Marvin and Madelyn Miller P ’86 Andrew C. Miner ’04 Eben N. Moore ’96/ Ziff Brothers Investments Diane Nassif P ’00 Cynthia Leapley Nicely ’66 Elizabeth Ramsay Nigro ’67 Ed OchesterS Ruth Rigler Olincy ’51 Michael and Lisa Overington P ’15 Muriel Cummings Palmer ’43 Barbara Nelson Pavan ’54 Brian W. Peat/C. L. White Carole Woodworth Perry ’85 Diana Elzey Pinover ’69 Eric Ramirez-Ferrero ’85 David G. ReesS Anne Cohen Robinowitz ’52 and Stuart Robinowitz Isabel RocheS Ellen Beskind Safir ’66 Rita Friedman Salzman ’45 Victoria Woolner Samuels ’71 Lincoln Schatz ’86 Rachel Schatz ’89 Sekka B. Scher ’90 Eileen P. ScullyS Anne Michie Sherman ’43 Stella Spanoudaki Sichel ’55/ Franz W. Sichel Foundation John Silvestrini ’82 and Trudi H. Vetterlein ’84 Donna Schacter Sinanian ’58 Laura Kesselman Skoler ’57 Jean Ganz Sloss ’48 and Louis Sloss
Carole Press Stavenhagen ’54 Cynthia Stix ’81 Kevin and Jane Stokes P ’14 Cynthia Sweeney MFA ’13 BenS and Kelly Szalewicz Holland Taylor ’64 Kit Tobin ’61, P ’91 Harvey Trop P ’15 Marian Warner Trotter ’39 Rebecca Lucas Ueland ’42
William W. Wakefield Wendy G. Walter P ’16 Harriet Moger Watson ’68 Drue Romano Weild ’53, P ’81 and David Weild P ’81 Tracy WheelerS and Paul Rauschelbach Jenna Elizabeth White ’00 Vanessa Guerrini-Maraldi Wilcox ’78; P ’08, ’14 and John Wilcox P ’08, ’14
Eugene and Jaqueline Williams P ’12 Katharine Wilson Heather A. Young MFA ’11 Holly Schiffer Zucker ’75 Michele Rogers Zwirn ’56
Elizabeth Coleman Venture Fund This past year to celebrate Elizabeth Coleman’s retirement, the trustees led an effort to establish the Elizabeth Coleman Venture Fund, a dependable, reliable resource for continual transformation at Bennington College. The following donors contributed a total of more than $1.2 million in gifts toward this vital new initiative. Anonymous
Uliana Fischbein Gabara ’61
David G. ReesS
Priscilla Alexander ’58T
Joan GoodrichS and Neil Moss P ’92, ’94
Isabel RocheS
David Anthony ’96
Judith Backer Grunberg ’55/ T. Backer Fund
Daniel B. RowlandT
Paige L. BartelsS Evelyn Stein Benjamin ’57/ George D. Benjamin Foundation Linda Mazer Berkowitz ’60 and Leonard Berkowitz
MichaelT and Sandy Hecht Berte Schindelheim Hirschfield ’60/ Norman Hirschfield Foundation Amy Dolgin Jaffe ’67 and David Jaffe/Jaffe Foundation
Susan Paris Borden ’69; G ’01, MAT ’02; G ’12T and Robert Borden G ’01, MAT ’02; G ’12
JohnT and Charlotte Kenney
John H. Boyd ’03
Bobbie M. Knable
Suzanne C. Brundage ’08FT
Alan Kornberg ’74T
Brian CampionS and Eric Hatch
Frances Wells Magee ’51 and David Magee
T
David Coleman and Patrick Miller Barbara Ushkow Deane ’51T and Maurice Deane
Ellen JanisS
T
Janet MarsdenS
Lincoln Schatz ’86 Peggy Schatz P ’86, ’89, ’89 Rachel Schatz ’89 Elizabeth Schulz ’74 Charlene Solow Schwartz ’54/ Howard & Charlene Schwartz Foundation James Simon ’97T Shira Ariel Sternberg ’05/ Barr Charitable Trust Mary Hammond Storer ’46T Loet and Edith Velmans Lydia R. Viallon ’12S
William Q. DerroughT
Albert Merck and Katharine Evarts Merck ’46
Arjun Desai ’88 and Katherine Chia
Melissa Saltman Meyer ’65
Peter Reed Donavan and Nancy Scattergood Donavan
Holly McCormackS Kay Crawford Murray ’56
Vanessa Guerrini-Maraldi Wilcox ’78; P ’08, ’14 and John Wilcox P ’08, ’14
Amanda Spooner Frank ’92
Muriel Cummings Palmer ’43
Penelope Perkins Wilson ’45T
Albert F. Freihofer MAT ’03
Aarti Rana ’06T
Lynn Sakowitz Wyatt ’57
Deborah WadsworthT Mary Eddison Welch ’40, P ’71
T: FY12 Trustee; F: Current Faculty; S: Current Staff; P: Parent; G: Grandparent; MA: Master of Arts; MAT: Master of Arts in Teaching; MALS: Master of Arts in Liberal Studies; MFA: Master of Fine Arts; PB: Postbaccalaureate; Deceased
W i n t e r 2013–14 • 53
ALUMNI DONORS BY DECADES
1930s
A Key To Our Donor List
l $1,000,000 + l $250,000–$999,999 l $100,000–$249,999 l $50,000–$99,999 l $25,000–$49,999 l $10,000–$24,999 l $5,000–$9,999 l $2,500–$4,999 l $1,000–$2,499 l $500–$999 T: FY13 Trustee F: Current Faculty S: Current Staff P: Parent G: Grandparent MA: Master of Arts MAT: Master of Arts in Teaching MALS: Master of Arts in Liberal Studies MFA: Master of Fine Arts PB: Postbaccalaureate Deceased
54 • b e n n i n g t o n m a g a z i n e
# of Donors: 8 Participation: 13.56%
Betsy Stockstrom Van Dyke ’44 Judith B. Jones ’45, P ’64 Joan Rorimer Lettvin ’45
Amount Contributed: $600,678.09
Olga V.H. Owens ’45
Louise Friedberg Strouse ’36
Rita Friedman Salzman ’45 l
Ann Meyer Rothschild ’37, P ’71 l
Holly Appel Silverthorne ’45
Estate of Carolyn Crossett Rowland ’37/Carolyn C. and George R. Rowland Charitable Foundation l Reba Marcus Gillman ’38 l Elisabeth Zimmermann James ’38 l Anne Bretzfelder Post ’38 Emily Flesheim Schaffner ’39 l Marian Warner Trotter ’39 l
1940s
# of Donors: 102 Participation: 21.21% Amount Contributed: $3,505,581.25 Anonymous (3) Vera Hall Dodd ’40 Isabella Perrotta Erickson ’40 l Barbara Willis Heinrich ’40 Mary Eddison Welch ’40, P ’71 l Sara Carter Balogh ’41 l Ruth Annis de Lascoutx ’41 Fay Mowery Donoghue ’41 Anne Forbes ’41 Suzanne Heller Harris ’41 l Carol Haines McBride ’41 Dorothy Coffin Harvi ’42, P ’71 Deborah Froelicher Howe ’42 Caroline Wanvig Mackey ’42 Rebecca Lucas Ueland ’42 l Merrell Hopkins Hambleton ’43; P ’60, ’75 l Miriam Manning Holst-Grubbe ’43 l Frances Berna Knight ’43 Alicia Ruhl MacArthur ’43 Muriel Cummings Palmer ’43 l Barbara Bacon Rosenberg ’43 Anne Michie Sherman ’43 l Pearl Friedman Staller ’43, P ’71 and Erwin P. Staller P ’71 l Olive Pitkin Tamm ’43 l Vivian Lescher Werner ’43 Beatrice Newman Brenner ’44 l Barbara Ridder Irwin ’44 l Eleanor Trumbull Lowell ’44 Elizabeth Uptegrove Mathews ’44 Allyn Johnson Shepard ’44 l Rebecca Grafton Sparks ’44 l
Jane Crowell Rieffel ’45 l
Penelope Perkins Wilson ’45T l Estate of Aurelia Brown ’46 l Patricia Chapin Condon ’46 Mary Bacon Lyon ’46, P ’74 Judith Lindau McConnell ’46 l Albert Merck and Katharine Evarts Merck ’46 l Nuala O’Donnell Pell ’46 l Nancy Kluge Rumery ’46 Margaret Shackelford Toms ’46 Ann Breese White ’46, P ’82 Joan Brauer Alpert ’47 Sonia Grodka Blumenthal ’47 Helen Hoffmann Ericson ’47 Suzanne Eckfeldt Harding ’47 l Mary Hewitt Harshman ’47 and Richard Harshman Barbara Ferrell Hero ’47 Mary Lou Chapman Ingwersen ’47 l Eileen Josten Lowe ’47 l Beatrice O’Connell Lushington ’47 l Kathleen Oliver Parker ’47 l Sally Winston Robinson ’47, P ’78 Mary Harrigan Sheedy ’47, P ’68 and Stuart Sheedy P ’68 Ella Russell Torrey ’47 Marydes Chapin Britton ’48 Cynthia Whitney Drayton ’48 Marilyn Lord Dux ’48 Joyce Fondren Elbrecht ’48 Baba Foster Freeman ’48 Katharine Bunker Getsinger ’48 l Mine Simons Grassetti ’48 Louise Sinkler Hoffman ’48 Margot Starr Kernan ’48 l Dorothy Morris Mudd ’48 Nancy Smith Pellicia Lovejoy ’48 Lucy Blatchford Pinkerton ’48 Evelyn Price Scott ’48, P ’77 and Sidney Scott P ’77 Nancy Gregg Sippel ’48 Jean Ganz Sloss ’48 and Louis Sloss l Elizabeth Ahn Toupin ’48, P ’75 Laura-Lee Whittier Woods ’48/ LLWW Foundation/ L. K. Whittier Foundation l
Florence Gallup Atkins ’49 Jeannette Winans Bertles ’49; P ’77, ’81 Jean McAllaster Chapman ’49 Jacob and Irene Jaglom ’49 Ellen Denson Jones ’49 Nancy Lindau Lewis ’49 Alison Hennig Moore ’49 Byrd Symington Platt ’49 Felicia Warburg Rogan ’49 Martha Perry Snyder ’49 Susan Pierce Vasiliadis ’49
1950s
# of Donors: 278 Participation: 29.20% Amount Contributed: $1,055,578.24 Anonymous (2) Barbara Bowles Coolidge ’50 Mary Gibson Geer ’50 Jane Roberts Giedraitis ’50 Sondra Parkoff Henry ’50 Corinne Silverman Kyle ’50 Mary Kingsbury Lamont ’50 Martha Klein MacDonald ’50 Linda Borden McKean ’50 l Phyllis Jones Menefee ’50 Cynthia Cooke Nyary ’50 Nina S. Pattison ’50 Kathryn Ballantyne Polansky ’50 Susan Van Clute Quinby ’50 Betty Secunda Rich ’50 and Paul Rich Marianne Byk Schnell ’50 l Marcia Eastman Snider ’50 Joan Borden Stuart ’50 l Nancy Hellweg Warren ’50 Petrie Manning Wilson ’50 Jerene Jones Winocour ’50 Phyllis Meili Chernin ’51 l Fanny Parsons Culleton ’51 Barbara Ushkow DeaneT ’51 and Maurice Deane/ Ushkow Foundation l Mary Allen Carpe DeSantis ’51 Elaine May Drew ’51 l Barbara Paige Fahrnbauer ’51 Carol Diamond Feuer ’51 Olivia Pattison Garfield ’51 Carol Davis Goodman ’51; P ’73, ’77 and Ted Goodman P ’73, ’77 Joan E. Glover Gorman ’51 Joan Dubrow Gross ’51 Janet Roosevelt Katten ’51, P ’78 Joan Hutton Landis ’51 l Frances Wells Magee ’51 and David Magee l S. Joyce Berger Mahoney ’51 l Carol Spence Muntz ’51 Ruth Rigler Olincy ’51 l Renee Bennett O’Sullivan ’51, P ’84 l
Priscilla Taft Palo ’51 Olga Landeck Rothschild ’51 Ann Chatfield Slocum ’51 Allegra Fuller Snyder ’51 Patricia Williams Sunstein ’51 Estate of Elizabeth C. Wagner ’51 l Carolyn Pennybacker Accola ’52 Augusta Welfer Bartlett ’52 Jill Warburg Cartter ’52 Gloria Goldfarb Gil ’52, P ’77 Louise Dickson Hardie ’52 Nancy Harrow ’52 and Jan Krukowski/ Winston Foundation l Cynthia Morton Hollingsworth ’52 Jane Neal Keller ’52 l Priscilla Norton Kennedy ’52 Joan Pauley Lamb ’52 Virginia Wilson LaPlante ’52 Mary Lou Schlichting Levers ’52 Rona Davis Pollack ’52 Anne Cohen Robinowitz ’52 and Stuart Robinowitz l Rhoda Turteltaub Rosenthal ’52 Marilyn Bernstein Seide ’52 Martia Reed Smith ’52 Sydney Brucker Sowles ’52 Mary Dempsey Vos ’52 Sue Rayner Warburg ’52 Elisabeth Newman Ward ’52 Anne Topping Weed ’52 Esther Abraham Abrams ’53 Caroline Wolferth Amidon ’53 Lorraine Lubart Becker ’53 Jennifer Mertens Brock ’53 l Suzanne Kennedy Brown ’53 l Solveig Peterson Cox ’53, P ’77 and Wendell Cox P ’77 Ruth Miller Curwen ’53 Martha Dow Fehsenfeld ’53 Lucretia McPherson Durrett ’53 Frances D. Hallinan ’53 l Carolyn Lissner Heveran ’53, P ’76 Lorraine Nichols Higbie ’53, P ’85 Dona Mary Bowman Kratz ’53 Frederica Leser ’53 Joseph Liebling ’53 Sheila Stires Lloyd ’53, P ’76 Ann Guttmacher Loeb ’53 Pauline Thayer Maguire ’53 Olivia Donovan McCrossin ’53 Joan Stahl Miloradovitch ’53 Aileen Passloff ’53 Barbara Nahin Rubinstein ’53 Esther Meader Scanlan ’53 Louise Ganter Taylor ’53 Barbara Schwanda Weedon ’53, G ’11 Drue Romano Weild ’53, P ’81 and David Weild P ’81 l Anne S. Adams ’54 Joan Oates Bledsoe ’54 l
Susan Schapiro Brody ’54 Beverly Kamenetsky Brosterman ’54 Ruth Liebling Goldstone ’54, MA ’57 Barbara Elliott Ingraham ’54, P ’82 l Ann Frey Kleinhans ’54 Frances Springer-Miller Kraus ’54, P ’84 l Stephanie Taubman Low ’54 Nancy Braverman Mamis-King ’54 Ann Bradley Martin ’54 Helene Fox Metzenberg ’54 and Robert Metzenberg l Abigail Oleson Newburger ’54, P ’81 Sally Holt Parsly ’54 l Barbara Nelson Pavan ’54 l Nancy Lawrence Riegel ’54 Ruth Levitan Salloway ’54 Joel Wells Schreck ’54 l Charlene Solow Schwartz ’54/ Howard & Charlene Schwartz Foundation l Jane Watt Shapard ’54 Anne Johnson Sharpe ’54 Marcia Gross Starr ’54 Carole Press Stavenhagen ’54 l Ellen Firestone Stein ’54 Ann Burley Williamson ’54 Martha Haskell Baird ’55 Gertrude Scheff Brown ’55 l Nancy Silbowitz Garfield-Woodbridge ’55 Judith Backer Grunberg ’55/ T. Backer Fund l Helen Burgin Hazen ’55 l Lenore Janis ’55, P ’82 Estate of Miriam Hermanos Knapp ’55 l Elizabeth Lester ’55 Selina F. Little ’55 Joan Morris Manning ’55 l Aldona Kanauka Naudzius ’55 Helene Rattner Pesin ’55 Sara Gursky Petitt ’55 Linda Schandler Porter ’55 l Mary Posner ’55 Mancia Schwartz Propp ’55 Carol Rubenstein ’55 Faith Bancroft Schrader ’55 Stella Spanoudaki Sichel ’55/ Franz W. Sichel Foundation l Nancy Lee Smith ’55 Janice E. Van Horne ’55 Ellen C. Weber ’55 Barbara Schwartz Weihrauch ’55 Patricia Kelsey Beattie ’56 Joan Simons Constantikes ’56 Alma Sachs Daniel ’56 Sheila Solomon Dobbin ’56 Arline Israel Gardner ’56 Evanne Schreiber Geltzeiler ’56 Joan Levick Gold ’56, P ’80 Ruth Ring Harvie ’56 and James Harvie l
Carrie McLeod Howson ’56 Margery Baer Irish ’56 Joan Heilig Kahn ’56 Carol Friedman Kardon ’56 Kay Crawford Murray ’56 l Audrey Olberg ’56 Riva Magaril Poor ’56, P ’79 Mary Lou Peters Schram ’56 Judith Shaver ’56 Bunny Willa Katz Shulman ’56 Ruth Bleyberg Smith ’56 Dale Lester Sokolow ’56 Josephine Hamlin Stead ’56 Cynthia Sheldon Stibolt ’56 Michele Rogers Zwirn ’56 l Myrna Janoff Baldinger ’57, P ’89 and Daniel Baldinger P ’89 Helen Isaacs Barer ’57 l Evelyn Stein Benjamin ’57/ George D. Benjamin Foundation l Darcy Lay Doyle ’57 Edith Keen Farley ’57 Cristol Schwarz Fleming ’57, G ’10 Adrienne W. Schlang Garnett ’57/ Schlang Foundation Eleanor Kronish Goldstein ’57 and Alvin Goldstein Constance Golub Gorfinkle ’57, P ’85 and Herbert Gorfinkle P ’85 Priscilla Loening Hanford ’57 l Arthur S. Hoffman P ’87 and Hadassah Houtz Hoffman ’57, P ’87/ Leir Charitable Foundations l Deborah Miller Lakoff ’57 Mary Earthrowl Lewis ’57 l Elaine Silverman Lewis ’57 Roberta Selwyn Miller ’57 Elaine Liberstein Pitt ’57 Louisa Perkins Porter ’57 l Marcia Morgan Qasim ’57 Stephanie Brown Reininger ’57 Julia Russell ’57 Carol Bennet Schoenberg ’57 Elly Berman Sidel ’57 Laura Kesselman Skoler ’57 l Judith Hyman Smith ’57, P ’85 and Charles P. Smith P ’85 Suzi Cremer Smith ’57 Madalene Olander Woodbury ’57 Lynn Sakowitz Wyatt ’57 l Priscilla Alexander ’58T l Suzanne Wolf Applefeld ’58 Jane Eisner Bram ’58 l Anne Harriss Bugbee ’58, P ’84 Frieda Rowell Carnell ’58 Darla Stimpson Chafin ’58 Susan Ullman Chapro ’58 l Elinor Stockheim Davidson ’58 Amy Ferrara ’58 Marjorie Rubin Freeman ’58 Wilma L. Greenfield ’58
l $1,000,000 + l $250,000–$999,999 l $100,000–$249,999 l $50,000–$99,999 l $25,000–$49,999 l $10,000–$24,999 l $5,000–$9,999 l $2,500–$4,999 l $1,000–$2,499 l $500–$999 deceased
“It’s now a commonplace wisdom that the best jobs of this century will be jobs that do not exist today. Even more, that many of the best jobs will be invented by the people who will hold them. Benington prepares students for this world.”
—Andrew McIntyre, mathematics faculty member Ruth Berman Greer ’58 Annette Hidary ’58 Judith Outerbridge Hughes ’58 Sheila Hirschfeld Jacobs ’58 l Muriel Altman Ladenburg ’58 Anne Fulton Magai ’58, P ’85 Judith Jacobson Magee ’58 Patricia Sullivan Meyers ’58 Marianne Petrie Miller ’58 l Jill Seward Montgomery ’58 Barbara Israel Nowak ’58, P ’85 Diane Wiener Seessel ’58 Treva Silverman ’58 Donna Schacter Sinanian ’58 l Noel Bausher Szundy ’58 Rhoda Chaprack Treitler ’58, P ’86 and Byron Treitler P ’86 Katharine Kirkham Turner ’58 Terry Connelly Whiting ’58 Harriet Turteltaub Abroms ’59 Jessica Falikman Attiyeh ’59 Rona King Bank ’59 Elisabeth Posselt Barker ’59 Patricia M. Beatty ’59 Paulus Berensohn ’59 Barrie Rabinowitz Cassileth ’59 and Richard Cooper l Helen Coonley Colcord ’59
Ellen Count ’59 Abby DuBow-Casden ’59, P ’88 Vijaya Gulhati Duggal ’59 Elizabeth Partridge Durant ’59 Sally L. Foster ’59 Amy Sweedler Friedlander ’59 Joan Trooboff Geetter ’59 and David Geetter Mary Lynn Hanley ’59 Sandra Siegel Kaplan ’59 Gig Hewitt Kerr ’59 Marianne Dach Maxwell ’59 Sonia Berlin Michelson ’59 Alice Marie Nelson ’59 Jenny Polson Ono Suttaby ’59 Emily Carota Orne ’59 Sarah Southern Pease ’59 Harlean J. Richardson ’59 Anita Andres Rogerson ’59 Ann Little Rubenstein ’59 Magi LaPides Schwartz ’59 Ava Heyman Siegler ’59, P ’84 l Tama Alcott Taub ’59, P PB ’96 and Robert J. Taub P PB ’96 l Verna Davis Thomas ’59 Irene C. Weisberg ’59 Janet Marcus Zuckerman ’59
W i n t e r 2013–14 • 55
1960s
# of Donors: 311 Participation: 26.58% Amount Contributed: $491,625.02 Anonymous (4) Stanley M. Berke ’60 Linda Mazer Berkowitz ’60 and Leonard Berkowitz l Frances Finesilver Blumenthal ’60 Wilma Kantrowich Chandler ’60, P ’89 Judith Albert Croner ’60 and Mel Croner l Mary Humes Crowe ’60 Manuel R. Duque ’60 Barbara Black Frank ’60 Beverley Mountain Galban ’60 l Joy Goldsmith ’60 Lynne Miller Guss ’60 Micky Schwartz Hillman ’60 l Berte Schindelheim Hirschfield ’60/ Norman Hirschfield Foundation l Ann Maslow Kaplan ’60 Julie Lapitino ’60 Amy Miller Levine ’60 Judith Barsky Lieberman ’60 Jane Lipman ’60 Roa Lynn ’60 Liz Mamorsky ’60 l Martha Terrell McCall ’60 l Matilda McEwen Mendez ’60 Stephanie Hartshorn Miller ’60 Ruth Mordecai ’60 Rochelle Ann Sholder Papernik ’60 Phyllis Baron Plattner ’60 Carey Overton Randall ’60 Elizabeth Raspolic ’60 Patsy Rogers ’60, MA ’62 l Virginia Alcott Sadock ’60 Emily Leshan Samton ’60 Iris Basche Seydel ’60 Tryntje Ostrander Shapli ’60, P ’87 and Omar Shapli P ’87 Harriet Fitts Szanto ’60 Beverly May Vail ’60 Elizabeth Lewy Winn ’60 Anna Bartow ’61 Brenda Goldberg Bemporad ’61 Kaye Donoho Benton ’61 Judith Schneider Bond ’61 l Susan Burack ’61 H. Paul and Edna Burak ’61 Shannon Theobald Devoe ’61 Susan Ettinger ’61 Dorothy Tulenko Feher ’61 and Ladislas Feher Uliana Fischbein Gabara ’61 l Julie Eiseman Ginsburg ’61 Sara Snow Glenn ’61 Elan P. Golomb ’61 Meryl E. Whitman Green ’61 Lis Shabecoff Harris ’61
56 • b e n n i n g t o n m a g a z i n e
Carla Ostergren Helfferich ’61 Katharine Margeson Ingram ’61, P ’88 and Lionel R. Ingram P ’88 Julie Cavanagh Kaneta ’61 Barbara R. Kapp ’61 l Nina Koch ’61 Jane Lapiner ’61, P ’93 and David W. Simpson P ’93 Deborah Culver Lawlor ’61 l Cindi Taylor Nash ’61 Pamela Hage Picciotti ’61 Dimitra Sundeen Reber ’61, P ’96 Gail Rodier Schonbeck ’61; P ’95, G ’13 Mary Fleming Sheh ’61 Sandra Kesselman Slotnik ’61 l Lynn Goldberg Small ’61 Monica Wulff Steinert ’61 l Mariel Stephenson ’61 Barbara Bartelmes Surovell ’61 Brenda Schlossberg Tepper ’61 Kit Tobin ’61, P ’91 l Margot Adler Welch ’61 Carolyn Green Wilbur ’61 Carol Kellogg Wyndham ’61 Saida Heyman Baxt ’62 l Rosalind Moger Bernheimer ’62 and Walter Bernheimer II l Lisa Hartmann Blake ’62 Thelma Bullock ’62 Jane Burkhardt ’62 l Jennifer Cushing Curtis ’62 Paula Epstein Eisner ’62 and Mark Eisner l Joan Borkum Epstein ’62 l Margot Graham Fass ’62, P ’91 Andrea Kanner Halbfinger ’62, P ’85 Patricia Johanson ’62, P ’07 Susan Weiss Katz ’62 Barbara Furth Kline ’62 Dorothy Goldman Mann ’62 Jane Vance McCauley ’62 and Richard McCauley Susan Milburn Meffert ’62 Susan Plosky Miller ’62 l Dorothy Willett Oliver ’62, P ’88 Nancy Feinstein Schwartz ’62 Mimi Smith-Rice ’62 Jane Marcus Sobel ’62 Miriamne L. Spector ’62 Carla Stea ’62 Nancy Guy Syme ’62, P ’84 Barbara Buchtel Tacy ’62 Minda Tessler ’62 and Shoko Katayama Nancy Janover Victor ’62 Nancy Comstock Andrews ’63/ Ridgefield School of Dance Janine Beichman ’63 Marion Breeze-Williams ’63 Joann Bromberg ’63 Deborah Comay ’63 Patricia Bergson Commoss ’63 Judith Selis Davidson ’63 l
Marcia Dunbar-Soule Dobson-Riker ’63 Susan Pickering DuMond ’63 l Betsey Dingman Eidinoff ’63 Gail Hirschorn Evans ’63 l Erika Schwenn Fox ’63 Jeane Pavelle Garment ’63 l Jane Witty Gould ’63 l Corinna Harmon ’63 Arlene N. Heyman ’63 l Sybillyn Hoyle Jennings ’63 Sally Wolter Kirouac ’63 Keiko Itokawa LeVasseur ’63 Marianne Stafne Meyer ’63 Josephine Liss Ohayon ’63 Mary F. Poole ’63 Barbara Reinhold Rauch ’63 Barbara Goldberg Rohdie ’63 and Robert Rohdie l Judith Speckman Russell ’63 Brenda Samara ’63 Janet Lynn Taksa ’63 l Priscilla Wiggins ’63 Pat Cronin Adams ’64 Deborah Sprague Arnold-Roht ’64 Sarah Scattergood Ashe ’64 Gale Feuer Barish ’64 Babette Amberger Brackett ’64 Alexandra Broches ’64 Nancy Farnam Charles ’64 Carol Abbt Ciscel ’64 Elena Carter Delbanco ’64 and Nicholas Delbanco Vivian Bachrach Glick ’64 Janet C. Gohres ’64 Marjorie Goldstone Greenberg ’64 Brannon Heath ’64 Jaqueth Hutchinson ’64 Judy Isacoff ’64 Lucy James ’64 Ruth Chute Knapp ’64 Suzi Brandt Lipes ’64 Ann Harvey Mendershausen ’64 Gael Rockwell Minton ’64 Jean Morgan Reed ’64 Donna Romero ’64 Carole Hedlund Seigel ’64 Kaye Grossman Shackford ’64, P ’84 and Joseph Shackford P ’84 Jacqueline Klein Starkey ’64 Holland Taylor ’64 l Barbara Alrich Wichura ’64 Barbara Jacobson Zimmerman ’64 Jill Underwood Bertrand ’65 l Linda Bratton ’65 Mary Okie Brown ’65 June Caudle Davenport ’65 Liuda Dovydenas ’65 Rima Gitlin Faber ’65 Lynne Coleman Gevirtz ’65 Barbara Glasser ’65, P ’07 Sheila Diamond Goodwin ’65 Francine Smerka Hall ’65, MFA ’02
Bay Hallowell ’65 Lynne Tishman Handler ’65 l Lorna Katz-Lawson ’65 Jan Tupper Kearney ’65 Mary Kelley ’65 l Wendy Slote Kleinbaum ’65 Barbara Kent Lawrence ’65 Caryn Levy Magid ’65, P PB ’95 and James Magid P PB ’95/ Marble Fund l Melissa Saltman Meyer ’65 l Roberta Ross Moore ’65 Barbara Nachmias-Kedesdy ’65 Nancy E. Newton ’65 l Julie Snow Osherson ’65 Katrina Edwards Pelkey ’65 Marjorie Perloff ’65 Deborah Rankin ’65 and Lawrence Heald Lucy Kostelanetz Schrader ’65 Pril Smiley ’65 l Susan St. John ’65 Maria Taranto ’65 Simone Juda Yehuda ’65 Sara Spadea Black ’66 Patricia Tate Boutilier ’66 Sally Bowie ’66 Lisa Taylor Clark ’66 Debra Kram Fisher ’66 Danielle Forestier ’66 Barbara Matthews Spar Furstenberg ’66 Katharine Gregg ’66 Sally Brenner Hammerman ’66 Marian Johnson Henderson ’66 Jean McMahon Humez ’66 Nancy Miller Katzoff ’66 Sheridan King ’66 David Krohn ’66 Elin Fleischer Leonard ’66 Abigail Mellen ’66 Cynthia Leapley Nicely ’66 l Roberta Levina Phillips ’66 Judith Dunlop Ransmeier ’66 Glynn Rudich ’66 Ellen Beskind Safir ’66 l Susan Slovak ’66 Allan Stevens ’66 l Susan Stowens ’66 Ellen J. Taussig ’66 and Paul D. Raymond Heidi Jost von Bergen ’66 Jane Wechsler ’66 Linda Gould Abtalion ’67 Anne S. Bell ’67 Leslie Gieseke Bose ’67 Elizabeth W. Bradford ’67 Diane Iandoli Brandon ’67 Sally Levin Brotman ’67 Susan K. Bryant ’67 Leslie Noyes Cole ’67 Barbara D. Davenport ’67 Dori Pavelle Feiszli ’67 Tracy K. Harris ’67 Shelley Herman ’67
Adria S. Heyman Hillman ’67 l Victoria Kirsch Houston ’67 Amy Dolgin Jaffe ’67 and David Jaffe/ Jaffe Foundation l Margaret Rood Lenzner ’67/ Lenzner Family Foundation l Deborah Langman Lesser ’67 Lisa Marshall ’67/ Smart Work Company Sharon Johanson McCullough ’67 Beverly Mikuriya ’67 Clyde Morgan ’67 Elizabeth Ramsay Nigro ’67 l Robin Childs Stafford ’67 Susan Mauss Tunick ’67 Beverly Rantoul Turman ’67 Ellen Torrey Van Allen ’67 Lois Lichtenstein Wilkins ’67 Barbara Lazear Ascher ’68, P ’75 Marjorie E. Baron ’68 Ann Sheedy Bradburd ’68 Deborah Brown ’68 Patricia Woodbridge Dunn ’68 l Re’u Ben-James J.C. Edinger ’68 Karron C. Esmonde ’68 Barbara A. Fisher ’68 Judith Gerson ’68/ Judith Gerson Charitable Trust l Emily Stonington Hibbard ’68 Erica Fratkin Hiersteiner ’68 and Richard Hiersteiner Maria E. Huffman ’68 Leslie Sliker LaRocca ’68 Susanna McAdam ’68 Elenita Muñiz ’68 Phoebe Pettingell ’68 Elizabeth B. Reveley ’68 Roxana Barry Robinson ’68, P ’93 and Hamilton Robinson P ’93 l Fifi Delacorte Spangler ’68 l Gale Thompson Synnott ’68 Marie McKenney Tavernini ’68 Lindley Greenough Thomasset ’68 Janie Tyre ’68 l Harriet Moger Watson ’68 l Frances Wells ’68, P ’04 and Charles G. Burck P ’04 Jane Elkington Wohl ’68 Jean Witkin Zeller ’68/ Natural Pathways Foundation Kristina Brightenback Baer ’69 Elizabeth Bassett ’69 Janis Beaver ’69 Susan Paris Borden ’69; G ’01, MAT ’02; G ’12T and Robert Borden G ’01, MAT ’02; G ’12 l Alice Purnell Cannon ’69 Deborah Choate ’69 and David Urion Virginia Creighton ’69 Kathryn L. Girard ’69 l
Christine Graham ’69 Maren Jenkins Hassinger ’69 Rachel Kahn-Fogel ’69 Brenda Kydd ’69 Gay Johnson McDougall ’69 Robyn A. Newhouse ’69 l Elizabeth Johnson Niederman ’69 Kathleen Norris ’69 Margaret L. Parker ’69 Susan Phillis ’69 Diana Elzey Pinover ’69 l Jane Platt ’69 Sherry Stodola Rapport ’69 Ruth Morris Thomas ’69 Margaret McCain Wille ’69 Eda K. Zahl ’69
1970s
# of Donors: 356 Participation: 16.04% Amount Contributed: $312,340.06 Anonymous (5) Katherine M. Aldrich ’70 Mary Bresnan ’70 Penny Larrison Campbell ’70 Sally Edwards Canzoneri ’70 Victoria English Ellington ’70 Deborah Roseman First ’70, P ’92 and Theodore First P ’92 l Gretchen Sloate Garrett ’70 Stephanie Gelb ’70, P ’13 Jill L. Goodman ’70 l Nancy Hobbs ’70, P ’05 and William Dotson P ’05 Allan Holzman ’70 Elizabeth Sklar Hoyt ’70 Michael F. Kalinowski ’70 Anu-Liisa Lukk ’70 Mady Marantz ’70 Jennifer Woodworth Michaels ’70 l Rebecca Mitchell ’70 l Alison Nowak ’70 Sharon M. Parnes ’70 Louisa B. Putnam ’70 Myretta Robens ’70 Jessica Rostow ’70 Gail S. Rothman ’70 Kathleen Jane Smith ’70 Joanna Clark Swayze ’70 Janet E. Tice ’70 Evelyn Thal Toynton ’70 Elizabeth Vick ’70 Joan Katz von Ohlen ’70 Cristina Guiu Wood ’70/ Wood’s Cider Mill l Felicity Wright ’70 Zae Zatoon ’70 Barbara Abercrombie ’71 l Jani Anderson ’71 Ruth C. Arnold ’71 Irene Borger ’71 Jane Carlstrom ’71 Raina Shearer Chick ’71 Lane M. deMoll ’71; P ’01, ’05
Inge-Lise Eckmann Lane ’71 l Gail Swinnerton Engblom ’71 Constance Frontis ’71 Martha Hoff ’71 Lee Jamison ’71, P ’03 Heidi Jean Koring ’71 Martha Meyer-Von Blon ’71 Susan Miller ’71, P ’07 Jill Nooney ’71 Thomas A. Ollendorff ’71 Stephanie Fleischer Osser ’71 Victoria Woolner Samuels ’71 l Constance Allentuck Seligman ’71 Lynn Colburn Shapiro ’71 Christiane Stahl ’71 and Richard David Sarah G. Tenney ’71 l Thomas Turkington ’71 Clare Weinraub Waite ’71 Nancy Walker ’71 Doris Dronski Zelinsky ’71/ Barak Zelinsky Foundation l David Victor Appel ’72 Elizabeth Ayer ’72 Joan Balter ’72 Mary Barringer ’72 l Anne Bergstrom ’72 Megan Bierman ’72 James Bloom ’72 Starlina Peyson Bradbury ’72 Deborah Breiter ’72 l Ann Welch Campbell ’72 Mary Ann Chiasson ’72 Candace H. Chorjel ’72/ Chorjel and Associates Barbara E. Coon ’72 Joan Emerson DaCosta ’72 Randall Denker ’72 Judith Di Maio ’72 Lynn Emanuel ’72 Jan Pardee Fisher ’72 Joan FitzGerald ’72 l Susan Goldberg ’72 Susanna Bluestone Harris ’72 Elna Barnet Hunter ’72 Carol Jameson ’72 Sara Briggs Johnson ’72 Andrea Hoffman Kachuck ’72 Gloria Bussel Koster ’72 Alexandra Reed LaJoux ’72 Caroline Sheridan Loose ’72 Josephine Kerr Lowe ’72 Francesca Lyman ’72 Tamsen Merrill ’72 Joan D. Merriman ’72 Robin Miller ’72 Sally Reeves Osberg ’72 Sharon Ott ’72 Caren Pert Pearson ’72 Kathleen Pottick ’72 Jeannie Day Roggio ’72 Karen Sorg Schlenker ’72 Martha Siegel ’72 Jullie Ferris Sillin ’72 Sharon Turley Harpin ’72 Andrea Weisbrod Wilder ’72
“Creativity is the engine that has always powered Bennington and has made it distinctive.”
—Uliana Fischbein Gabara ’61
Joan Zucker ’72 Michal Slansky Alkoff ’73 Denise N. Bostrom ’73 Sigrid Burton ’73 Michael Edward Bushnell ’73 Laura B. Cook ’73 Eric Dash ’73 Kay Dickersin ’73 Dlovid J. Dingle ’73 Alice Wimer Erickson ’73 l Richard Fishman ’73 l Joanne B. Gallo ’73 l Elise Weinrich Geary ’73 l Geraldine Vroman Griffin ’73 Jessica B. Hirschhorn ’73 l Douglas R. Holmes ’73 Lynda Heyser Hoover ’73, P ’04 and Harvey Heyser P ’04 Alexandra O. Hughes ’73 l Evelyn E. Kalish ’73 Clayton W. Keller ’73 and Elaine Braun-Keller ’73 Allen Kennedy ’73 Donna Light ’73 Elizabeth Macaulay ’73 Melissa P. Marshall ’73 Anthony Micocci ’73 Diana Murphy ’73 Thomas Patten ’73 Carol H. Rice ’73 l Cynthia Saltzman ’73 Michael Schwarzchild ’73 Henry I. Siegel ’73 Deborah A. Symonds ’73 Doris Ginsberg Traub ’73 Wendy Klinck Walker ’73 Eileen Siobhan Wilentz ’73, PB ’85 Dee E. Andrews ’74 Jonathan Barber ’74, P ’13S and Margaret E. Howes ’73, P ’13 Lori A. Barnet ’74 Peter Bergstrom ’74 and Susan Still ’74 Alison H. Bowen ’74 Alex Brown ’74 and Clarke Jordan ’74 Nina Butts ’74
l $1,000,000 + l $250,000–$999,999 l $100,000–$249,999 l $50,000–$99,999 l $25,000–$49,999 l $10,000–$24,999 l $5,000–$9,999 l $2,500–$4,999 l $1,000–$2,499 l $500–$999 deceased
Susan Birdsall Cantrick ’74 l Elizabeth Caspari ’74 Douglas ’74 and Elizabeth Cumming Deborah L. Gluckman ’74 Susan M. Godfrey ’74 Charlotte Hanna ’74 Roberta O. Hunter ’74 Gay Hubert Kimelman ’74 l Jeremy B. Koch ’74 and Katherine Humpstone ’77 Alan Kornberg ’74T l Jody C. Layton ’74 Laura Rivkin Ledford ’74 Sharon Machida Okada ’74 Myrna Packer ’74 Leslie Parke ’74, MA ’76 Leslie Newell Peacock ’74 Hannah Gregory Pemberton ’74 Sarah Jane Rodman ’74 Polly Runyon-Wittrock ’74 Peggy Schiffer ’74 Elizabeth Schulz ’74 Abby Sheldon-Dean ’74 Virlana Tkacz ’74 Robina Magee Twitchell ’74 Catherine Wheeler ’74 Rona C. Wilensky ’74 Roy H. Wiseman ’74 Ross Zucker ’74 Francie Camper ’75 Crispin H. Colburn ’75 Christina K. Dodds ’75 David L. Garelick ’75 Polita Cohen Glynn ’75 Nancy Hindle-Katel ’75 Roger L. Kay ’75 Kathy Wilkie Kossey ’75 Megan Marshall ’75 Emily Bailen McKeage ’75 and Jonathan McKeage Bernard Perlmutter ’75 Susanna C. Reich ’75 Jill St. Clair Riley ’75 Robert Weeks Sawyer ’75 Steven Alan Smolinsky ’75 Laura Tahir ’75 l Bellanne Meltzer Toren ’75 Pamela Sanborn Tucker ’75
Josef Vascovitz ’75 l Holly Schiffer Zucker ’75 l Alison Booth ’76 Susan Braus ’76, P ’06 and Lindsay Rand P ’06 Robin D. Brickman ’76 Michael Connolly ’76 l James ’76 and Gillian Duda ’76 l Heidi Ehle ’76 Lisa Feldman ’76 Zachary H. Feuer ’76 Ruth L. Griggs ’76 David P. Harris ’76 J. Brant Houston ’76 Kimberly Kako Kanevsky ’76 Michael Koortbojian ’76 Amy Sawelson Landes ’76 Jean M. Lasser ’76 l Daniel Levitan ’76 and Anne M. Schwartz ’76 Daniel Lilienstein ’76 and Cheryl Niederman Lilienstein ’72 Kristen Lippincott ’76 Max MacKenzie ’76 and Rebecca Cross ’78 J. Ann Mallinckrodt ’76/ Grinstead Park Management l Charles R. Morgan ’76 Jill Nathanson ’76 Margery H. Perlmutter ’76 l Michael Pollan ’76 and Judith Belzer ’78 Melissa Rasman ’76 E. Amelia Rogers ’76 Sharon Ostow Rousmaniere ’76 Diane Welebit ’76 Elizabeth Willoughby ’76 Steven Jay Brettler ’77 Jan Cherubin ’77, MFA ’08 Karen L. Cunningham ’77 Peter S. Delano ’77 Michael J. Falk ’77 Virginia Ann Gamage ’77 Jane A. Gil ’77 l Deborah Gladstein ’77 Derrik C. Hoitsma ’77, P ’13 and Marjorie Hoitsma P ’13
W i n t e r 2013–14 • 57
“At its very core, Bennington has been about change and evolution.” —Suzanne Brundage ’08
1970s (continued) David Houle ’77 Cynthia Kallet ’77 and Grey Larsen Phyllis Kaplan ’77 Jacqueline Chandler Kennedy ’77 Emmett Leader ’77 Wendy Liff ’77 l Marion Markham ’77/ Ninigret Foundation Caroline Rennolds Milbank ’77 l Pala Zaitz Mostoller ’77, MAT ’09 Lisa Schilit Pearson ’77 l Susan Hubbard Pollitt ’77 Stephen T. Pratt ’77 l David Thrall Smith ’77 Tiare Stack ’77 Nicholas A. Stephens ’77 l Esme Usdan ’77/ Lemberg Foundation l Sally Sandberg Wood ’77 Deborah A. Barney ’78 Michael Bastek-Garnot ’78 Beate Klein Becker ’78 Sally Alden Bernhardt ’78 Cate Noyes Boddington ’78 and William Boddington Suzanne Robinson Buchsbaum ’78 James E. Donavan ’78/ J & S Donavan Enterprises Catherine Olson Dyer ’78 Fernanda Torras Harrington ’78 Rita Howard ’78 Lydia Leon ’78 Mitchell Lichtenstein ’78 l Alec Marsh ’78 Elizabeth Rosen Mayer ’78 l Michael T. Nathan ’78 Rick Oller ’78 and Sean-Marie Navin Oller ’79 Edward W.S. Ross ’78
58 • b e n n i n g t o n m a g a z i n e
Lisa N. Scheer ’78 Duncan K. Smith ’78 Karen Elisabeth Solstad ’78 Sandra Howe St. George ’78 David Stewart ’78 and Corinna Fodaski Stewart ’79 Heidi Stonier ’78 Patricia Tyson ’78 Cici Brown Vesce ’78 Vanessa Guerrini-Maraldi Wilcox ’78; P ’08, ’14 and John Wilcox P ’08, ’14 l Mary Anne Sgarlat Baumgartner ’79 l Dion Scott Birney III ’79 Lexey Russell Covell ’79 Elizabeth Shacknove de Sosa ’79 Evan DeLucia ’79 Lauren deMoll ’79 Kim Brettler Diebboll ’79 and Robert Diebboll ’80 Beatrice Dohrn ’79 Debra Engler ’79 and Alan F. Lopatin Kate Goldsborough ’79/ Art To Go Jennifer Gray ’79 John Barton Greenbaum ’79 Marian Caroline Johnson ’79 Victoria Russo Lamb ’79 Robert A. Lieberman ’79 Julie Ostwald Lowy ’79 Mark E. Lyon ’79 Eileen McMahon ’79 Cheryl Ann Meyer ’79 Laurie R. Moss ’79 Peter Pastan ’79 and Amy Kessler Pastan ’78 Leslie Johnson Piotrowski ’79 Erin Quinn ’79 and Richard Cudworth Signa Lynch Read ’79 l Susie E. Reiss ’79S and Richard Jurewicz Peter Henry Schuerch ’79 Stephen Shaw ’79
Amy L. Spound ’79 Leigh A. Strimbeck ’79 Abigail E. Tischler ’79
Ann Paffrath Gallo ’82 l
Sabra Van Dolsen ’79
Kevin Hubbard ’82
Prof. Andrew K. Vershon ’79
William Ingraham ’82 l
Julie L. White ’79
Mary Ellen Sage Lane ’82
1980s
# of Donors: 200 Participation: 9.38% Amount Contributed: $76,074.13 Anonymous (5) Catherine Alexander ’80 Nahama Broner ’80 Odin E. Brudie ’80 Susan Scher Chase ’80 Robert Diebboll ’80 and Kim Brettler Diebboll ’79 l Margy Friedl Ehmann ’80 Fiona Cooper Fenwick ’80 l Margot Bibring Hammer ’80 Catherine W. Hays ’80 Wendy Hori ’80 Martha Kent Jacobs ’80 Jamie B. Knapp ’80 Topper Lilien ’80, P ’16 and Sandra Mathers P ’16 Barbara Meili ’80 l Mary A. Patera ’80 l Jeremy Sager ’80 and Paula Clements Sager ’80 l Pamela Dickson Salisbury ’80 Susan Aronson Smith ’80 Susan Kay Stouffer ’80 Nina Winthrop ’80 Susana Clark Abell ’81 and Timmy Abell Donna T. Catanzaro ’81 Mark H. Davis ’81 Kim Bodner Drobny ’81 Donzia Franklin ’81 Joshua Gelman ’81 Ann Howitt ’81 l Jennifer L. Isbill ’81 Suzanne Stapleton Latimer ’81 Maryann Mazzacaro ’81 Michelle P. Murrain ’81 Mindy Tower Nowik ’81 Anne Margaret Schwarz ’81 Cynthia Stix ’81 l Peter Susser ’81 Elizabeth Sutton ’81 Jenny Swanson ’81 Natasha M. Thomsen ’81 Steven W. Albahari ’82 Trevor V. Anonsen ’82 D. A. Austin ’82 l Makiko Buma ’82 Lisa Bush Finn ’82 Ferebe Watson Conchar ’82 Lana Dimidjian ’82 Pamela Docters ’82 Sherri Donovan ’82 John R. Flather III ’82 Ray Foote III ’82, P ’17 and Deirdre Corcoran Foote P ’17 l
Caren Glatt ’82 Kevin M. Haney ’82
Megan M. Makepeace ’82 Frances Stranahan Parry ’82 Fanny Pereire ’82 Joy Reiter-Dailey ’82 Donald Schatz ’82 John Silvestrini ’82 and Trudi H. Vetterlein ’84 l
Beth Kaplan Karmin ’85 and Kenneth Karmin/ Mayer and Morris Kaplan Family Foundation l Justine Disick Leger ’85/ Bridge Creek Catering Matthew Marks ’85 and Jack Bankowsky ’81 l Matthew Monaghan ’85 Rhea M. Nowak ’85 Carole Woodworth Perry ’85 l Jeanne M. Poduska ’85 Eric Ramirez-Ferrero ’85 l Julia McCamy Tell Rivin ’85
Karen Sontag ’82
Paul Sharwell ’85
Sandra L. Tone Price ’82
Sally Olmer Andrade ’86
Lisa M. Wagner ’82
Hilarie L. Blumenthal ’86
James White ’82
Alexandra Bowe DeRosa ’86
Katherine Buechner Arthaud ’83 l
Rochelle Copeland DiRe ’86
Kathryn Gill-Hagopian ’83/ Gill Hagopian, Inc.
Bret Easton Ellis ’86 l
Shahin Heshmat ’83
Leslie Gartrell Moffitt ’86
Seth I. Hurwitz ’83 Ellen Kanner ’83 l Cynthia Bertha Kolaski ’83
Cynthia R. Donoghue ’86 l Danielle Etzler ’86 Erik B. Holmberg ’86 l Hilary C. Ince ’86 Ilka Kellar ’86
Michael E. Rogers ’83
Peter Knapp ’86
Suzanne Schiller ’83
Jacqueline Little ’86 l
Traci A. Sobocinski ’83
Gilbert David Mendoza ’86
Rachel Stapleton Reavis ’83
Nancy Morowitz ’86
Steven M. Westberg ’83
Megan Orr ’86
David D. Zicarelli ’83 l
Fergus Reid ’86
Paul Baumann ’84, P ’16 and Marilyn Gold ’84, P ’16
Melissa Rosenberg ’86 and Lev L. Spiro l
Lee Befeler ’84
Patterson S. Schackne ’86
Cece Blase ’84
Lincoln Schatz ’86 l
Charles Fuller Cowles ’84
Elizabeth O. Silver ’86 l
Robin Hackley Decker ’84 l Whit Dickey ’84 l
Nathan Thompson ’86 and Eva Lewandowski ’85
Joanna Ellis-Monaghan ’84
Melinda Castriota Avellino ’87
Robin ’84 and Blair Flicker l
Linda Uram ’87
Angela L. Gadsby ’84
Denis Desjarlais ’87
Dorothy Held ’84 l
James Harney ’87 l
Mary Kraus ’84
Neil R. Johnson ’87 l
Daniel Long ’84 and Rebecca Clark
Diane Minter Lewis ’87 Janet Schuman Andrew ’87
Cynthia Murphy ’84
Missy Levine Seaward ’87
Andrea Odezynska ’84
Christine St. John ’87
Rebecca O’Sullivan-Hunnewell ’84
William Zobrist ’87
Laura D. Perlman ’84 Jade E. Roth ’84 Daniel W. Sauers ’84 Naheed Shah Sheikh ’84 Ferrilyn Sourdiffe ’84, P ’08S and David Norman P ’08S Kevin Alter ’85 and Rachel Jacobson
Kathryn Aichele-Samardick ’88 l Amy Finn Bernier ’88 and Daniel Bernier ’01 Barbara M. Boucher ’88 Emory M. Creel ’88 Arjun Desai ’88 and Katherine Chia l Jane E. Greenberg ’88
Ayse Ali Atasoylu ’85
Richard Griswold ’88
Putter Leach Bert ’85 l
Donna L. Howard ’88
Annie Coggan-Crawford ’85 l
Lisa M. Jerome ’88
Brian J. Delacey ’85
Maria Y. Klein ’88
Jill Eisenstadt ’85
Haley Alpiar Murphy ’88
Marie Labbe Gertje ’85 Harley G. Higbie ’85 l T. Kent Hikida ’85 and Amy Schweitzer Hikida ’85 l Andrew Eric Hirsch ’85
Eileen Travell ’88 and Andrew Kromelow ’90 Kaija H. Berzins ’89 Sarah Troderman Clarkson ’89 Tobey Diller ’89 l Juan C. Escobar ’89 l
LiLi Liang Evans ’89 Elanor A. Lynn ’89 Michael Robinson ’89 Barnabas Rose ’89 l Rachel Schatz ’89 l Laura L. Watt ’89
1990s
# of Donors: 108 Participation: 6.42% Amount Contributed: $54,447.07 Anonymous Cindy Baxter ’90 Lori Cohen ’90 l Adam Cohen ’90 Bethany Krause Ellis ’90 Caitlin Lally Hotaling ’90 Andrew Kromelow ’90 and Eileen Travell ’88 Patrick F. O’Connor ’90 Catherine M. Petraiuolo ’90 Kerry Ryer-Parke ’90 and Nathaniel Parke MFA ’92F Sekka B. Scher ’90 l Jeff A. Shelp ’90 Jonathan M. Sherman ’90 Amy C. Williams ’90 Annie Moore Young ’90 Tracy Katsky Boomer ’91 l Rafe K. Churchill ’91 Lisa Dunbar ’91 and Raburn Mallory PB ’91 Debra L. Eisenstadt ’91 and Brett Morgen Christopher D. Fox ’91 Patrick Gordon ’91 Johan Hedborg ’91/ Faidon Design AB l Erica S. Herman ’91 Kelly E. Lamb ’91/ KL Studios Angela Lange Meredith-Jones ’91 l Ourania Panos ’91 Elise Fellner Roth ’91 Mary Bucksbaum Scanlan ’91/ Mary Bucksbaum Scanlan Family Foundation l Elizabeth Iarrapino Bellin ’92 l Paul L. Cello ’92 Jennifer Chapin ’92 Madeleine Kromelow Crowther ’92 Amanda Spooner Frank ’92 l Beth Gould ’92 l Christopher Hoxie ’92 and Christa M. Cliver ’95 Jamie Maxfield ’92 Wendy Hobbins McGrath ’92 Joseph E. Mueller ’92 Mark Prince ’92 Daniel Sams ’92, MFA ’94 Leah DeGuzman Sandholm ’92 Susie Felber ’93 Emily Steele Kirven ’93 Melissa Marr ’93 Rachel Elizabeth Smith ’93
Maisie Todd Wallick ’93 Jamie B. Davis ’94 and D. Ava Locks ’92 Alison ’94 and Christopher Dennis Brendan P. Frank ’94 Mara Gibson ’94 Rachel E. Goldberg ’94 Anne Marie Mueller ’94 Nejem Raheem ’94 and Carol Oldham ’93 William F. Scully ’94S Danielle Bregman Wiedemann ’94 Timothy A. Buggs ’95 Heidi Hojnicki ’95 and Sujal Shah Matthew Hutchinson ’95/ Matthew Hutchinson Music M.M.C. Kennedy-Stirling ’95 Joanne Lembo ’95 Manju Shandler ’95 Kate Stern ’95 David Anthony ’96 l Kirin T. Buckley ’96 Robert T. Faucette IV ’96 David P. Henderson ’96/ Azio Media Eben N. Moore ’96/ Ziff Brothers Investments l Noah Musler ’96 l Nathan Parker ’96 Chadwick L. Dayton ’97 and Maggie Halstead Dayton ’99 Michael James ’97 Mike Luong ’97 Ellen Whitman Mallow ’97 and Peter Mallow James Simon ’97T l Alessandra Gregory Barrett ’98 Alicia S. Herrmann ’98 Todd Knudson ’98 l Nathaniel George Reichman ’98 and Allison P. Ryan Reichman ’98 Jason Smith ’98 and Catherine M. Young ’98 Taliesin T. Thomas ’98 Alexander Westphal ’98 and Rebekah Pym ’99 Eme Akpabio ’99 Frank Barnes ’99, MAT ’00 Kathleen M. Conroy ’99 Margaret L. Eisenberg ’99 Erica Beloungie Noyes ’99 Irina Petrova ’99/ Party Judaica LLC Jessica A. Phillips ’99 Jenava Taylor Sexton ’99
2000s
# of Donors: 137 Participation: 7.47% Amount Contributed: $16,232.53 Anonymous (5) Jessica Caterina ’00 Svetlana Malahova Eisenberg ’00 Rachel Emmons-Bradley ’00
Sarah E. Kermensky ’00 Becky A. LoDolce ’00 Matthew ’00 and Shana Onigman ’00 Rachel Street ’00 Jenna Elizabeth White ’00 l Matty Wilder ’00 Nichole Legendre Yamakawa ’00 Lorin Alder ’01 Daniel Bernier ’01 and Amy Finn Bernier ’88 Emily Caruso Parnell ’01 Richard N. Little ’01 Lise Johnson Miller ’01 Jeffrey Petersen ’01 Garth I. Silberstein ’01 Langdon Crawford ’02 Jennifer Hinst-White ’02, MFA ’12 Ryan ’02 and Lindsay Nealon ’02 Kj Swanson ’02 Mary A. Tasillo ’02 John H. Boyd ’03T Megan D. Krigbaum ’03 Mary Catherine La Mar ’03 l Jessica Nadeau ’03 Sophia A. O’Hara ’03 Audra Olazabal ’03 Allison Poirot ’03, MAT ’04 Graham Porell ’03 Becky Steckhahn-Strohmer ’03 Lucas Westcott ’03 Junio Anthes-Moody ’04 and Katherine J. Wilson ’03 Joanna Lautenberger Branch ’04 Elizabeth M. Clayman ’04 Lillian Kortlandt Colasurdo ’04 Lauren Feldstein Dalloro ’04 Nathan Jew ’04 l Joseph P. Mazzarelli ’04 Andrew C. Miner ’04 l Sanford H. Mirling ’04 W. Ryan Nestor ’04 and Rebecca W. Rideout ’04 William J. Ransom ’04 and Oona Gardner ’03 Rachel E. Shirk ’04 Chrissy K. Souder ’04 Clea Ball Taylor ’04 Samantha F. Ambrose ’05 Amelia Powell Baggett ’05 Anna Barss-Bailey ’05 Anna M. Berez ’05 Holly Bratkovich ’05 Kate E. Fox ’05 Jeremy A. Johnson ’05 Brent Kazan ’05 Karina L. Lundahl ’05 Catharine F. Maloney ’05 Chandler Klang Smith ’05 and Eric M. Taxier ’05 Adrian K. St. John ’05 and Amrita D. Lash ’04 Shira Ariel Sternberg ’05/ Barr Charitable Trust l Lawson R. Wulsin, Jr. ’05 and Courtney A. Hill Wulsin ’04 Kynan A. Brown ’06
l $1,000,000 + l $250,000–$999,999 l $100,000–$249,999 l $50,000–$99,999 l $25,000–$49,999 l $10,000–$24,999 l $5,000–$9,999 l $2,500–$4,999 l $1,000–$2,499 l $500–$999 deceased
Lauren E. Eppinger ’06 Ashley E. Hodson Goodwin ’06 Ashley E. Hanna ’06 Ariel A. Herwitz ’06 Ryan S. Johnson ’06 Cail D. Johnstone ’06 Jonathan Leiss ’06, MAT ’07 Zachary R. Lifton ’06 Caitlin V. Loehr ’06 Wythe H. Marschall ’06 Krista Meany ’06 Katherine E. Raeburn ’06 Aarti Rana ’06T Emily Rand ’06 Sofia E. Alvarez ’07 Allison Zoll Combs ’07 Hannah R. Dibner ’07 Andrew K. Kaluzynski ’07 Ayla M. Kapiloff ’07, MAT ’08 Sarah E. McAbee ’07S Nicholas P. Neidorf ’07 Brian J. Pietras ’07 Avi S. Ragaven ’07 Sean Adams ’08 l Aya C. Aiken ’08 Alexander W. Bleeker ’08 Suzanne C. Brundage ’08F T Michael J. Chinworth ’08 Susan E. Holland ’08 Rachel D. Hunter ’08 Alex H. Jones ’08 Noel M. Kanalley ’08 Ethan W. Knechel ’08 Heidi J. Lamar ’08, MAT ’09 Kaley C. McMahon ’08 Julie L. Moore ’08 Elise C. Oleksiak ’08 Sally E. Richardson ’08 Meredith L. Belis ’09 Katherine A. Crowe ’09 Samantha Damon ’09 Christie Goshe ’09 Christopher P. Hammond ’09 Lyzy S. Lusterman ’09 Elizabeth A. Sculley ’09 Amanda A. Sullivan ’09 and Adam C. Freed ’08 Edward H. Ubell ’09 Stacy B. Wolfson ’09 Max H. Wolkowitz ’09
2010s
# of Donors: 48 Participation: 8.8% Amount Contributed: $2,009.51 Anonymous (2) Michael I. Cahoon ’10 Elizabeth A. Curran ’10 Lisa E. Hanson ’10 Tambudzai Kudze ’10 Sara E. Lewis ’10 Brian G. Morrice ’10 Hamilton Poe ’10 Eliza R. Slater ’10 Emily G. Tareila ’10 Crystal T. Barrick ’11
Hannah A. Barry ’11 Jonathan A. Burklund ’11 Jane L. Burns ’11 Emily A. Call ’11 Zachary M. Franklin ’11 Amitai Y. Gross ’11 Emily H. Guez ’11 Alana B. Hassanein ’11 Lea J. Hershkowitz ’11T Tobin D. Jacobrown ’11 Kimberly J. Keller ’11 David H. King ’11 H. Lanier ’11 Henry W. Lyon ’11 Meredith D. Muller ’11 Alana R. Orzol ’11 Anthony Pinto ’11 and Alexandra Polubiec ’11 Cauley F. Powell ’11 Simone I. Adler ’12 Sarah G. Albanese ’12 Julia E. Bonaventure ’12 Juliet R. Brewster ’12 Daniel P. DiDomenico ’12 Zoe N. Donnellycolt ’12 Dmitri E.H. Glickman ’12 Faith F. Griffiths ’12, MAT ’13 Michael S. Lowell ’12 Caitlin M. Ludin ’12 Andrea M. Metivier ’12 Farhad Mirza ’12 Meg A. Osborn ’12 Camille Roccanova ’12 Eissa Saeed ’12S Kerri N. Sakowski ’12 Lydia R. Viallon ’12S Ethan S. Woods ’12
Seniors
# of Donors: 79 Participation: 50.7% Amount Contributed: $1,848.42 Tyler R. Abramson ’13 Taimur Ahmed ’13 Erica Baffa ’13 Claire Barber ’13 Abby Beggs ’13 Chelsea M. Bernard ’13 David Black ’13 Josette Bockelie ’13 Evan Braun ’13 David C. Brinkmann ’13 Benjamin Broderick Phillips ’13 Amanda Buckley ’13 Holly Camisa ’13 Amanda Campbell ’13 Ashley Connell ’13 Christina Cooper ’13 Leah Dagen ’13 Corina Dalzell ’13 J. Bob Danton ’13 Robert J. DeLanghe ’13 Timothy P. Desrosiers ’13 Alexander Diaz ’13 Luke Dowling ’13 Hannah Duffany ’13
W i n t e r 2013–14 • 59
Seniors (continued)
Dominik Eisenschmidt ’13 Esme Franklin ’13 Joseph Gould ’13 Sara Green ’13 Kevin Green ’13 Molly Griffin McKenna ’13 Victoria Harty ’13 Rebecca Hawkins ’13 Floryn Honnet ’13 Courtenay Houk ’13 Rainer Hunt ’13 Laura Jacobson ’13 Nicholas Janikian ’13 Jessieh Johnson-Cunningham ’13 Jeremy Kiracofe ’13 Kimberly Kirchner ’13 Brandon LaDue ’13 Gabrielle Lang ’13 Si Eun Lee ’13 Justine Lenter ’13 Michaela Levin ’13 Rowan Lockery ’13 Ezra Lowrey ’13 Bronwyn Maloney ’13 Devan Marques ’13 Sarah Matusek ’13 Ainsley McClachrie ’13 Shannon T. McMahon ’13 John Meierdierck ’13 Emily Mikucki ’13 Jessica Milestone ’13 Jason L. Moon ’13 Eric Mosher ’13 Julia Mounsey ’13 Margaret R. Murphy ’13
Rebecca Nakaba ’13 Abigail Neale ’13 Terrell Orr ’13 Stephen Piccarella ’13 Kelly Pitman ’13 Anna Rogovoy ’13 Emily J. Rosen ’13 Kian Ross ’13 Celeste Schepp ’13 Emma Schmelzer ’13 Kristen Schrijver ’13 Alexandra Scott ’13 Olympia Shannon ’13 Heather Sherman ’13 Ibha Shrestha ’13 Hannah Simmons ’13 Julia Sippel ’13 Edward M. Sitt ’13 Ranleigh Starling ’13 Abigail Walzer ’13 Jeremy Winograd ’13 Kai-Ting Yang ’13
Catherine P. Lentini ’14 Scott W. Milliman ’14 Finn P. Murphy ’14 Suzanne P. Porath ’14 Caroline S. Richter ’14 Autumn J. Rizzio ’14
Current Students
Julia A. Hankin ’15
# of Donors: 66 Participation: 10.22% Amount Contributed: $418.81 Akhurapa A. Ambak ’14 Jiray G. Avedisian ’14 Liam B. Dailey ’14 Julian Delacruz ’14 Ousseynou Diome ’14 Delaney N. Dittman ’14 Claire A. Elam ’14 Maria F. Jacobson ’14 Caroline G. Kain ’14
Vivian L. Robbins ’14 Hannah E. Rojo ’14 Clara Rotter-Laitman ’14 Carlos Torres ’14 Killian M. Walsh ’14 Julia K. Wilcox ’14 Stephanie A. Zimmerman ’14 Maliha Ali ’15 Sheridan D. Baker ’15 Nicole K. Borgeson ’15 Molly D. Brown ’15 Amanda N. Coviello ’15 Julia C. Cushing ’15 Eleanor M. Dohner ’15 Sarah F. Goldsmith ’15 Elizabeth H. Hall ’15 Gena N. LeBlanc ’15 Carolyn M. Lewon ’15 Sarah R. Madden ’15 Yenny W. Martin ’15 Brianna A. Morel ’15 Natalie M. Osborne ’15 James A. Overton ’15 Genelle N. Rankin ’15 Hala Abu Hassan ’16 Douglas M. Campos ’16 Madeline L. Cole ’16 Julia E. Cooke ’16 Fiona R. Demske ’16 Conor P. Donahue ’16 Nicholas Dregni ’16
Rocco P. Farano ’16 Jeremy D. Geragotelis ’16 Rachel M. Johnson ’16 Mariah R. Katz ’16 Oona S. Kilcommons ’16 Alexander C. Kouré ’16 Sylvia I. Madaras ’16 Kagan E. Marks ’16 Laura E. Miller ’16 Emily R. Sanders ’16 Sophie F. Sauvayre ’16 Benjamin J. Simpson ’16 Jade A. Sorensen ’16 Leeanne F. Tobler ’16 Charlotte Uden ’16
Graduate Alumni
# of Donors: 143 Participation: 9.66% Amount Contributed: $29,131.80 Master of Arts Anonymous Richard R. Cuyler ’56 Ruth Liebling Goldstone ’54, MA ’57 Patsy Rogers ’60, MA ’62 l Derwin H. Stevens ’65 Carol Kinne ’67 Leslie Parke ’74, MA ’76 Margaret R. Swan ’78 Master of Arts in Teaching Frank Barnes ’99, MAT ’00 Leigh ’01 and Robert Waldman Albert F. Freihofer ’03 l
Allison Poirot ’03, MAT ’04 Diego Uribe De Urbina ’06 Jonathan Leiss ’06, MAT ’07 Gregory N. Nanopoulos ’07 Jennifer Welles ’07 Ayla M. Kapiloff ’07, MAT ’08 Heidi J. Lamar ’08, MAT ’09 Pala Zaitz Mostoller ’77, MAT ’09 Faith F. Griffiths ’12, MAT ’13 Master of Fine Arts Peter Sander ’61 l David Beitzel ’83 and Darren Walker l Robin Goodman Dash ’83 Cynthia P. Katz ’87 Nathaniel Parke ’92F and Kerry Ryer-Parke ’90 Elizabeth Miller Servetar ’93 Daniel Sams ’92, MFA ’94 Stanley Stewart Brann ’95 Kevin E. Bubriski ’97 Sara Rudner ’99 Eva Karczag ’04 Sima Wolf ’11 and Bruce WilliamsonF Master of Fine Arts in Writing Anonymous (6) George Carver ’96 Victoria Elaine Clausi ’96S Cristina Del Sesto ’96 Ruth Farmer ’96 Margo Aragon Herrington ’96 Perrin Ireland ’96 Carole Merritt ’96 and Alvin Chisik l Jaime Clarke ’97 Lyn M. Fraser ’97
“ After I first visited Bennington, I had to explain to many people (friends, mentors, my parents, myself) why I was so certain that this was the place I was meant to find. It always came back to the students. Theirs was a model of achievement I’d never thought to dream about. They weren’t highly trained experts, but connoisseurs of learning, interpreting the world in wonderfully novel ways through masterfully crafted lenses. I can’t pinpoint exactly when, where, or how, but I feel that Bennington has transformed me in exactly the same way.” —Emma Schmelzer ’13 Recipient of the Amy Dolgin Jaffe ’67 and David Jaffe Scholarship
60 • b e n n i n g t o n m a g a z i n e
Emilie Harting ’97 Gail Hosking ’97 Sloane Miller ’98 Joan D. Stamm ’98 Paul Beckman ’99 Diane Cameron ’99 Alan Elyshevitz ’99 Carol Skinner Lawson ’99 Don Silver ’99 Margaret Stafford ’99 Mame Willey ’99 Linda Woolford ’99 Marsha Dubrow ’00 Tami Haaland ’00 JoeAnn Hart ’00 Teresa S. Mathes ’00 Robert Shea ’00 Amy E. Weintraub ’00 Eugenia Kim ’01 John May, Jr. ’01 Ricco Siasoco ’01 Donald Berk ’02 Francine Smerka Hall ’65, MFA ’02 Nathalie Handal ’02 Thomas Schabarum ’02 Helen Wickes ’02 and Donald Stang Mary Donnelly ’03 Anne Germanacos ’03 Douglas J. Green ’03 l William Pierce ’03 Susan J. Rodgers ’03 Christine Anderes ’04 Kurt Caswell ’04 Gail Siegel ’04 Elizabeth L. Singh ’04 Royal Alvis ’05 John R. Coats ’06 Amy L. Jenkins ’06 Aimee E. Liu ’06 Tony Mack ’06 Michael O’Keefe ’06 Sandra E. Worsham ’06 Wendy Call ’07 Elizabeth Farren ’07 Richard Gotti ’07 Anne D. Kaiser ’07 Jan Cherubin ’77, MFA ’08 Allison Devers ’08 Anna ’08 and Wayne Evans Ellen Fentress ’08 James McKenna ’08 Stephen Page ’08 Katharine Rauk ’08 Kimberly Young ’08 Ellen P. Campbell ’09 Nancy E. Doherty ’09 Winona W. Wendth ’09 Charles L. Gadol ’10 Jennifer L. Knox ’10 Erin E. Trahan ’10 Karen F. Uhlmann ’10 Bruce A. Willard ’10 Marilyn R. Zion ’10 Judith A. Edelman ’11 V. Hansmann ’11 l
Julia M. Lichtblau ’11 l Fedwa Malti-Douglas ’11 Deborah L. Michel ’11 Steven A. Rosenberg ’11 Heather A. Young ’11 l Julia Kagan Baumann ’12 Kenneth R. Harvey ’12 l Jennifer Hinst-White ’02, MFA ’12 Miranda Kennedy ’12 J. Mae Barizo ’13 Robynn Gerstberger Colwell ’13 Lorraine Comanor ’13 Sarah R. Fuss ’13 Erin Glass ’13 Val Haynes ’13 Erica Hunt ’13 Melissa Mills-Dick ’13 Michelle Oppenheimer ’13 Jennie Rathbun ’13 Rebecca A. Salem ’13 Kathryn Savage ’13 Elizabeth Schwyzer ’13 Cynthia Sweeney ’13 l Nicola Barilla Waldron ’13 Lily White ’13 Postbaccalaureate Eileen Siobhan Wilentz ’73, PB ’85 Raburn Mallory PB ’91 and Lisa Dunbar ’91 Bo San Tsao ’95 Brian D. Rothstein ’05 l Alexandra H. Cornwall ’08 Catherine M. LaPenta ’12
Parents & Grandparents of Current Students # of Donors: 272 Participation: 25.68% Amount Contributed: $108,473.74 2013 Anonymous Richard Abramson Syed Ahmed George Andrew Howard and Karen Arian Terri Baffa l Timothy Baffa Rory Banyard and Jennifer Tufenkian Jonathan BarberS ’74 and Margaret E. Howes ’73 David and Martha Black Michael and Nanci Bockelie Daniel and Beth Braun Joy Brown Vance and Ruth Camisa Gail Campbell Sydney and Julie Cash Sharon Conway-Stiles Esteban and Marie Creste Bruce and Gayetta Dalzell
Jorge Díaz-Herrera Joseph and Toby Dolph Paul and Marian Fey Stephanie Gelb ’70 William and Stephanie Gould Brian Green Howard and Lisa Green l Millard and Marsha Green Stephen Haggerty and Ann Kerwin Michael Hill and Susan Murcko Charles Honnet and Ellen Porter Bradford and Daryl Houk P ’15 Donald Hulnick Richard and Claudia Hunt Lisa Jaeger Joseph and Kathleen Janikian Brian Kiracofe John and Tina Kirchner Paran and Elisabeth Kiritharan Dennis and Cheryl Kucharzak Dexter Lazenby and Victoria Erickson Karen Lipsky Katherine and Paul Lovegren Norman Lowrey Peter Maloney and Kristin Griffith P ’08 Albert Markhart and Elizabeth Nixon Thomas and Therese McClachrie Joseph McKenna Liza McSwain Vicki Mercier Mark and Deborah Mikucki Barton and Theresa Milestone Alan Moody Richard and Diana Mosher Roger Myers and Ann Simmons-Myers William and Martha Neale Norman and Janice Pastorek l Leigh Pate Ellen Petrick Mark and Shirley Pitman David Roberts Susan Robinson Seth Rogovoy Lawrin Rosen Terrence Ross Lee and Kerry Schmelzer Gail Rodier Schonbeck ’61, P ’95, G ’13 Hulbert and Christine Scott Jenna Sexton Thomas and Linda Shelley Jeffrey Simmons and Jayne Raphael Gary Sippel and Anne Peterson Morris and Terri Sitt Steve and Skye Skinner Mari Slater Stephen and Sharron Starling Lynn Terleski-Katz
l $1,000,000 + l $250,000–$999,999 l $100,000–$249,999 l $50,000–$99,999 l $25,000–$49,999 l $10,000–$24,999 l $5,000–$9,999 l $2,500–$4,999 l $1,000–$2,499 l $500–$999 deceased
“What stands out to us, as parents, is how Bennington offers support to our son in a very individualized way. He is not a nameless face in a crowd but is a student whose work and ideas are embraced by the Bennington community.” —Fred and Maureen Killion P ’15
Hertha Trenkle Garrick and Nicola Villaume Jonathan and Kelley Walzer Karin Watkins Jerry Wechsler and Seok-Soon Kim Stephen Weinstock and Sarah St. Onge Steven Weissman and Wendy Saiff 2014 Gregory and Linda Avedisian Jeffrey and Elisabeth Berman Marcus and Marianna Boas Richard and Nicole Bruno l Mark Brzezinski and Margaret O’Brien Marie-Andrine Constant Walt Coram and Joan Erickson l Marina Daniels Matthew and Amy Davidson/ J.M. Kaplan Fund l Robert Davis and Marianne Coughlin Kim Dickson William and Eileen Dittman Norman Donoghue II and Margaret O’Donnell Thomas and Diane Driscoll Juliette Evans-Case Daniel Greenwood
Edward D. Halper Peter and Martha Hanson Thomas and Jill Hinckley Derrik C. Hoitsma ’77 and Marjorie Hoitsma Charles Jacobson and Mary Lou Vainisi Robert Johanson and Janice Goranson Douglas and Susan Johnson Urs and Priscilla Joho l Barrett and Cheryl Kain Charles and Mary Ann Kassier Carola Kieve Michael Lipton l Elizabeth Massey l Eric and Isabelle Mayer Glen and Alison Milliman/ TEW Foundation l Philip Murphy Valerie Olguin Howard Pease and Molly Nelson Edward and Claudia Plimpton l Shaul and Mary Porath Robert and Virginia Richter Nicholas and Dianne Sadnytzky William and Dawn Shiang Kevin and Jane Stokes l Fernando Villavecc and Eileen Liebman
W i n t e r 2013–14 • 61
“Bennington took me seriously, and it helped me take myself seriously.” —Arlene Heyman ’63
William L. Costello and Johari Banker
Leo C. LeGros and Karen F. Heegaard Topper Lilien ’80 and Sandra Mathers Laszlo and Enid Madaras Cory and Patricia Mahler l Ross and Debra Marks Paul and Juley Moberg Michael K. Moore and Gail O. Crosman Moore Richard and Christina Parker Steven and Yoshiko Parr Kimberly M. Phillips Maria A. Rocca Robert C. Rose and Judith A. Penski Pascal Sauvayre and Sarah Chubb Sauvayre Dana Schreiber Dave L. Schwarz Donald SherefkinF and Mary Coogan P ’12 Morten Sorensen Jami A. Star Elaine and Geoffrey Swaebe Stephen and Sally Uden l Mauricio Valdivieso and Irina Reyes Peter W. Walbridge and Lael W. Robertson David D. Walter l Wendy G. Walter l Peter and Tracy Warzer Ellen J. Watson Jeffrey Williams and Mayree Clark/ The Silverleaf Foundation l Claudia L. Zuniga
Michael T. Crehan and Suzanne M. Tetreault
2017
Bruce Schmit and Marianne Mitchell Richard and Freilin Stevens Seymour and Maria Sub William Thomas and Dorothy Stubbe l James and Bernadette Thomson Harvey Trop l Sharon and Christopher Vandenberg Roberta Villa Randal and Christine Wait David Wakeley and Debora Petschek Carolyn Wilson Pamela Winsor Philip and Christina Wohlstetter Eric Wolfe and Ellen Schmidt 2016 Jorge Iván Andrade Narváez and Brunilde Turner Rodriguez l Steven and Laura Baker
2014 (continued) Vanessa Guerrini-Maraldi Wilcox ’78, P ’08 and John Wilcox P ’08 Frances Wolanczyk Howard and Janet Zimmerman 2015 Lawrence Abbott and Donna Lum Robert and Beth Albert Beatriz Alvarez J. Timothy and Mary Ammons Stephen Appleton l Jonathan and Jessika Auerbach l Gregory and Jean Ayers Clive and Lise Banfield Joanne Bartosik Joseph and Jaqueline Baumann Maureen Blake Cory and Diane Borgeson Hubert Brown and Mary Donovan Craig and Jennifer Cooper Brandon Cushing Mary Cushing Robert and Debbie DiLeonardi Darcy Dodd Keith and Melanie Donohue Cathleen Edwards David Edwards Eric Einem Joel and Joyce Fagerberg Danny and Susan Farnham David Formanek and Susan Medyn Jing Gao and Li Liu Michael GiannittiF and Wendy HirschS Leonard and Denise Goldsmith
62 • b e n n i n g t o n m a g a z i n e
Carl Gombert and Anita Blatnik John Grady Marilyn Grady Fred and Valerie Grayson Laurie Stone Haskell Brian and Louise Henderson Mark and Lisa Hesselgrave Christopher and Eileen Hickey Robert and Carolyn Hoagland Natalie Hoeffel Matthew Hopkinson and Nancy Hubbard Bradford and Daryl Houk P ’13 Ira and Nancy Johnson Frederick and Maureen Killion l Jonathan Kligler and Ellen Jahoda George T. Kochi Judith Labins Thomas and Patricia Lewon Robert and Christine Margetic l Kim Maxwell James and Susan McCabe l Broderick and Gwen Miller l Benjamin Neuhart Kevin O’Callaghan and Prudence Morrison Nathan and Wendy Olin Ionel and Silvia Opris Theodore and Karen Osborne Michael and Lisa Overington l Steven and Antoinette Pacitto Richard Paul and Debra Albeyta Carlos and Anne Perez Marta Phillips Andrew and Amy Popkin Gavin and Susan Preis Toni Ross l Gail Rossbauer-Sutton Terry Rumsey and Robin Lasersohn
Marguerite C. Bartolo Paul Baumann ’84 and Marilyn Gold ’84 Anne E. Boyce Monteil Browning David G. Buchanan and Mary B. Horst l Victor Bullen and Brooke Farquhar Joseph and Patricia Chandler Jeffrey and Margaret Colman l
George A. Curth and Dorothy B. BrownbackCurth Steven R. Davis and Suzanne M. Astolfi Michael Dregni and Sigrid Arnott Paul and Julia Edelman Stuart and Deborah Eisenberg l Howard M. Epstein and Sandra B. Hartog John S. Gates l Nicholas and Mary Geragotelis David and Laura Goone l Mike and Claire Hartunian Stephen E. Haweeli Eric and Karen Haynes Patrick Irwin and Teresa Gloyd Douglas and Kathleen Johnson Daniel and Lynne Jones l Shawn M. Kilcommons Gary Knell and Kim Larson Lynne F. Kostman William M. Kostman Christopher and Cynthia Kouré Franklin and Susan Lawson
John and Patricia Gillis Ray Goote III ’82, P ’17 and Dierdre Corcoran Foote P ’17 RotimiF and Grace Suberu P ’17
Parents & Grandparents of Alumni
Pearl Friedman Staller ’43, P ’71 and Erwin P. Staller P ’71 l Mary Eddison Welch ’40, P ’71 l C. Minor Barringer P ’72 l Livia DiMaio P ’72 Carol Davis Goodman ’51; P ’73, ’77 Mary Bacon Lyon ’46; P ’74, ’79 Walter and Ruth Schloss P ’74 Barbara Lazear Ascher ’68, P ’75 and Robert C. Ascher P ’75 Elizabeth Ahn Toupin ’48, P ’75 Carolyn Lissner Heveran ’53, P ’76 Joseph and Elizabeth Houston P ’76 Takashi Kako P ’76 l Sheila Stires Lloyd ’53, P ’76 Jeannette Winans Bertles ’49; P ’77, ’81 Solveig Peterson Cox ’53, P ’77 and Wendell Cox P ’77 Estate of Dorothy T. Peck Flynn G ’77 l Gloria Goldfarb Gil ’52, P ’77 Evelyn Price Scott ’48, P ’77 and Sidney Scott P ’77 Frances J. Diebboll P ’78, ’80, ’89 Janet Roosevelt Katten ’51, P ’78 Michael and Peggy Porder P ’78 Sally Winston Robinson ’47, P ’78 Myrna Janoff Baldinger and Daniel Baldinger ’57; P ’79, ’89 Richard and Mary Gray P ’79 Riva Magaril Poor ’56, P ’79 Robert and Christine Steiner P ’79 Joan Levick Gold ’56, P ’80 Philip and Lois Macht P ’80 l Robert and Fanny Clark P ’81
# of Donors: 307 Participation: 8.27% Amount Contributed: $291,132.75
Abigail Oleson Newburger ’54, P ’81
Estate of J. Humphrey Wilkinson P ’45/ James Daniel Humphrey Foundation l Miriam Kellogg Fredenthal P ’60 Merrell Hopkins Hambleton ’43; P ’60, ’75 l Judith B. Jones ’45, P ’64 Phoebe Pettingell ’68; P ’64, ’67, ’70 Mary Harrigan Sheedy ’47, P ’68 and Stuart Sheedy P ’68 Dorothy Coffin Harvi ’42, P ’71 Ann Meyer Rothschild ’37, P ’71 l
Bruce and Linda Courtemanche P ’82
Drue Romano Weild ’53, P ’81 and David Weild P ’81 l Marilyn Bedwell P ’82
Barbara Elliott Ingraham ’54, P ’82 l Lenore Janis ’55, P ’82 Jerry and Jean Martin P ’82 Ralph and Audrey Wagner P ’82 l Ann Breese White ’46, P ’82 Anne Harriss Bugbee ’58, P ’84 Frances Springer-Miller Kraus ’54, P ’84 l Joseph and Dolores McKenna P ’84, G ’11 Renee Bennett O’Sullivan ’51, P ’84 l
Kaye Grossman Shackford ’64, P ’84 and Joseph Shackford P ’84 Ava Heyman Siegler ’59, P ’84 l Nancy Guy Syme ’62, P ’84 Dan and Edith Tucker P ’84, ’89 John Bunnell P ’85 Constance Golub Gorfinkle ’57, P ’85 and Herbert Gorfinkle P ’85 Andrea Kanner Halbfinger ’62, P ’85 Lorraine Nichols Higbie ’53, P ’85 J. Donald Hill P ’85, ’86 Carol B. Johnson P ’85 Anne Fulton Magai ’58; P ’85, ’91 and Donald E. Magai P ’85, ’91 Barbara Israel Nowak ’58, P ’85 Jerome and Marlene Schweitzer P ’85 Judith Hyman Smith ’57, P ’85 and Charles P. Smith P ’85 Jerome Axelrod P ’86 Mary Fanelli P ’86 Takeo and Masako Kaneko P ’86 Judith A. Little P ’86/ William Brian Little and Judith A. Little Charitable Trust l Marvin and Madelyn Miller P ’86 l Carole Pelton P ’86 Barbara Ro P ’86 Peggy Schatz P ’86, ’89, ’89 l Rhoda Chaprack Treitler ’58, P ’86 and Byron Treitler P ’86 Arthur S. Hoffman P ’87 and Hadassah Houtz Hoffman ’57, P ’87 Stanley and Frances Levine P ’87, ’88 Tryntje Ostrander Shapli ’60, P ’87 and Omar Shapli P ’87 Abby DuBow-Casden ’59, P ’88 Haim and Rina Elisha P ’88, ’94 Barbara Eshoo P ’88 Robert M. Howard P ’88 Katharine Margeson Ingram ’61, P ’88 and Lionel R. Ingram P ’88 Robert and Helen Morgan P ’88 Dorothy Willett Oliver ’62, P ’88 Wilma Kantrowich Chandler ’60, P ’89 Manny Solon P ’89 Marcia Goren Weser P ’89 Charles and Kathleen Buffon P ’90 Conrad and Alison Heins P ’90 Marc and Rita Kromelow P ’90, ’92 Carol Miller P ’90 Joan O’Connor P ’90
Margot Graham Fass ’62, P ’91 Alan and Susan Guma P ’91 Barbara Hills P ’91 Robert and Carlotta Kennedy P ’91 Kit Tobin ’61, P ’91 l Diosdado and Rosario DeGuzman P ’92 Deborah Roseman First ’70, P ’92 and Theodore First P ’92 l Joan GoodrichS and Neil Moss P ’92, ’94 l Richard Mead P ’92 Jane Goldthwait P ’93 Jane Lapiner ’61, P ’93 and David W. Simpson P ’93 Terrance and Ann Marr P ’93 Roxana Barry Robinson ’68, P ’93 and Hamilton Robinson P ’93 l Charles and Marcia Zappa P ’93 Averill B. Huff P ’94 Mary Huff P ’94 Elizabeth Lamb P ’94 l Donna Melanson P ’94 Vernon H. C. and Lucy Wright P ’94/ Wright Family Foundation l John and Lou Blackwell P ’95 John and Susan Brennan P ’95 Caryn Levy Magid ’65, P PB ’95 and James Magid P PB ’95/ Marble Fund l Gail Rodier Schonbeck ’61; P ’95, G ’13 Theodore Talma P ’95 Betty R. Vohr P ’95 Dianne Gray-Spangenberg P ’96 Ann Minahan P ’96 Dimitra Sundeen Reber ’61, P ’96 Joseph P. Rogers, Jr. P ’96 Tama Alcott Taub ’59, P PB ’96 and Robert J. Taub P PB ’96 l Wayne and Florence Harris P ’97 Robert and Mary Ann Herrmann P ’98 Gregory and Kathryn Knudson P ’98 William and Prema Popkin P MFA ’98 John and Alice Dean P ’99 l Gerald and Karen Levitis P ’99 Charles and Ellen Newton P ’99 Peter and Loraine Seronick P ’99 Charles and Joanne Zafonte P ’99 Steven and Elaine Eisenman P ’00 l Diane Nassif P ’00 l Ralph Pillischer P ’00 Bronson and Lynne Sweeney P ’00 l William Whitworth P ’00
Susan Paris Borden ’69; G ’01, MAT ’02; G ’12 and Robert Borden G ’01, MAT ’02; G ’12 l Lane M. deMoll ’71; P ’01, ’05 Stephen Silberstein P ’01 John Smyth and Jo Ann Gavin P ’01 William MacHose P ’02 l Shalom Zilber P ’02 Thomas and Catherine Hughes P ’03 Lee Jamison ’71, P ’03 Doris La Mar P ’03 l Ken and Coralee Ohara P ’03 David and Darlene Pope P ’03 Frank and Marjorie Porell P ’03 Stephen and Gloria Westcott P ’03 David W. Day P ’04 Lynda Heyser Hoover ’73, P ’04 and Harvey Heyser P ’04 William Lautenberger and Anita Speigel P ’04 Steven and Judy Metzger P ’04 Nancy M. Rideout P ’04 Sharon Rudnick P ’04 Frances Wells ’68, P ’04 and Charles G. Burck P ’04 Richard and Dana Wiehl P ’04 Raul and Sulema Arredondo P ’05, MAT ’06 Larry and Julia Griffith P MAT ’05 Nancy Hobbs ’70 P ’05 and William Dotson P ’05 James and Doreen Hogle P ’05 Mark and Paula Lowery P ’05 Joseph and Kathleen Powers P ’05 Henry Dale Smith, Jr. and Deborah Klang Smith P ’05 l Gary and Patricia Vella P ’05 Chapman Bailey P ’06 Robert and Marcia Bischoff P ’06 Susan Braus ’76, P ’06 and Lindsay Rand P ’06 Eileen Corrigan P ’06 Steven Eppinger and Julie Laukkanen P ’06 Michael D. Hanna, Jr. P ’06 Mariann B. Hanson P ’06 Thomas Hughes P ’06, ’10 Robert Masland III and Anne Masland P ’06 Scott and Terre Young P ’06 Joseph and Colette Zito P ’06 Barbara Glasser ’65, P ’07 James and Jane Harrison P ’07 l Patricia Johanson ’62, P ’07 Marcus Levitt and Alice Taylor P ’07 John and Cynthia Lhost P ’07 Peter R. Masterton and Kelly Burgess P ’07
l $1,000,000 + l $250,000–$999,999 l $100,000–$249,999 l $50,000–$99,999 l $25,000–$49,999 l $10,000–$24,999 l $5,000–$9,999 l $2,500–$4,999 l $1,000–$2,499 l $500–$999 deceased
“When I tell people I went to Bennington, they look at me differently— and I want them to.” —Alethea Root Dufraine ’02
Susan Miller ’71, P ’07 Robert and Ruthe Vincent P ’07 Lynn A. Zoll P ’07 Randall Best and Sarah Howe P ’08, ’11 Robin Bleeker P ’08 James Dewart Brassard P ’08 Jeffrey and Nancy Hoffman P ’08 l William and Carol Kanalley P ’08 Karen Kinsel P ’08, MAT ’09 Nicholas Tiffany Love P ’08 Peter Maloney and Kristin Griffith P ’08, ’13 Linda Susan Marshall P ’08 Patrick McMahon and Sherry Coben P ’08, ’11 Philip Meyer P ’08 Robin Mix P ’08 l Ferrilyn SourdiffeS ’84, P ’08 and David NormanS P ’08 Mark Tarlov and Judith Roberts P ’08 James Webber and Jean Bartlett P ’08 Margaret Wentz P ’08 Henry and Barbara Whicker P ’08 Vanessa Guerrini-Maraldi Wilcox ’78; P ’08, ’14 and John Wilcox P ’08, ’14 l Barry and Nancy Allen P ’09 Thomas and Judith Bielecki P ’09 Robert and Mary Clements P ’09 Julie Galassini P ’09 James and Cynthia Geoghegan P ’09
Eugene and Sharon Goshe P ’09 Deborah B. Green P ’09 Marilyn Heinrich P ’09 Cynthia Hogan P ’09 David Lusterman and Kathryn Norris P ’09 Cindy K. Miller P ’09 Joseph and Kirsten Mudd P ’09 Michael Ribic P ’09 Patricia Rickart and George Kominos P ’09 Thomas Rickart P ’09 Eugene Sauser-Monnig P ’09 John and Debra Sculley P ’09 David Sobel P ’09 Michael Wolkowitz and Hope Holiner P ’09 l Gary and Cynthia Cahoon P ’10 Kathleen Collura G ’10, MAT ’12 Alfredo de Palchi and Rita Di Pace P ’10/ Sonia Raiziss Giop Charitable Foundation l Cristol Schwarz Fleming ’57, G ’10 and Jonathan W. Fleming G ’10 Roderick Henry P ’10 Tim Hogue P ’10 Linda Holtzman and Elisabeth Conston P ’10 William and Barbara Jolly P ’10 Kerry Kahler P ’10 John T. Kretchmer P ’10 Vaclav and Jennifer Miglus P ’10 Donald and Susan Moss P ’10, ’11
W i n t e r 2013–14 • 63
Parents & Grandparents of Alumni (continued)
James and Mary-Lou Moulton P ’10 Mary Page P ’10 Charles and Patricia Poe P ’10 Stephanie Segal P ’10 James and Regina St. Lifer P ’10 David and Dana Taft P ’10 Peter Bearman P ’11 l Andy and Kathy Beddingfield P ’11 Lynn Bodkin P ’11 l Jonathan and Barbara Burklund P ’11 Bradie and Vickie Connor P ’11 Mary Conway P ’11 Joanne Dahill P ’11 John and Nan Darham P ’11, ’12, ’12 Julian and Lisa Franklin P ’11 Christy Giebler P ’11 Charles Graham and Debra Wallace P ’11 Rabbis Nadya and Victor Gross P ’11 Ken and Nellie Keller P ’11 Sari Klinghoffer P ’11 Brian and Ljuba Marsh P ’11 Patricia Martin P ’11 Robert and Marie Moran G ’11 Stephen Nelmes and Ellen Meier P ’11 William Nelson and Susan Olson P ’11
Stephen and Debra Nunes P ’11 Patrick Penney P ’11 Richard Pierce and Ellen Mahoney P ’11 Leslie Restifo P ’11 David Schunter P ’11 l Steven Skulnik P ’11 l Paul and Patricia Thomas P ’11 Alden Thomas-Poehner P ’11 William and Marie Tredway P ’11 Wayne and Nancy Turner P ’11 Steven Veit and Joan Harris P ’11 Barbara Schwanda Weedon ’53, G ’11 Marc and Marlene Adler P ’12 Lucia P. Ballantine P ’12 Jon Bogen and Cheryl Shrader-Bogen P ’12 Robert and Kathryn Brady P ’12 Susan Brown P ’12 Joseph P. Callahan P ’12 David Colbert and Ellen Moon P ’12 Lisa Conover P ’12 Kevin and Linda Conroy P ’12 Rachael Dorr P ’12 Terence Elton and Elizabeth L. McMahon P ’12 Michael and Kathryn Feliciano P ’12 Brian and Elizabeth Hamilton P ’12 Ik-kyun and Shin-Hwa Hyun P ’12 Lieutenant Colonel Aaron and Mrs. Donna Kalloch P ’12
John and Margo Kieser P ’12 Stephen Landsman P ’12 Judith Lisante P ’12 Bret Lowell P ’12 Peter and Valerie Nucci P ’12 David Platoff and Debra Corea P ’12
64 • b e n n i n g t o n m a g a z i n e
# of Donors: 37 Participation: 26.43% Amount Contributed: $6,886.14
Max and Marilyn Nicolai P ’15
Anonymous (2) Brooke Allen Thomas Bogdan Kitty Brazelton Suzanne C. BrundageT ’08 Andrew Cencini Michael CohenF and Alison R. Hill Liz Deschenes Mansour Farhang Marguerite FeitlowitzF and David Anderson Michael GiannittiF and Wendy HirschS P ’15 Rebecca T. GodwinF and Deane Bogardus Frederic Hand WayneF and Susan Hoffmann-Ogier Jon IsherwoodF and Karen GoverF Kirk Jackson Dina JanisF and Peter MacFarlane Julie Last Mary Lum Amie Jo McClellan Danny Michaelson Ed Ochester l Nathaniel Parke MFA ’92 Ann PibalF and Colin BrantF Miroslava PrazakF and Robert Pini
Hakim Nuraldin P ’16
Robert Ransick
Patrick Reale and Amy Turner P ’12 Ian Reid and Wendy Wheeler P ’12 John and Jean Roccanova P ’12 Robert Rubin and Diane Macken P ’12 Nancy Rudman P ’12 l Steven and Jan Sandman-Pitonyak P ’12 Donald SherefkinF and Mary Coogan P ’12, ’16 Paul Squire and Marta Schley P ’12 Jan and Barbara van der Swaagh P ’12 Christian and Diane Walker P ’12 Steven and Barbara Washer P ’12 Charles Watts and Helen Haynes P ’12 l Eugene and Jaqueline Williams P ’12 l Bruce Woods and Mary Sonnichsen P ’12 David Zox P ’12 Norman Campbell and Joan Rafferty P ’15 Brian and Susan Dugan P ’15 David Magier P ’15 l
“Among the faculty at Bennington there is a camaraderie that is unusually warm and inspiring. In this supportive atmosphere, risks are taken, ideas are put forth, potential collaborations are formed, and teaching is enhanced.” —Mary Lum, visual arts faculty member
Faculty
Isabel Roche l Rachel Rosales Charles Schoonmaker Eileen P. Scully l Stephen Shapiro Allen Shawn Donald SherefkinF and Mary Coogan P ’12, ’16 Elizabeth Sherman AndrewF and Sique Spence RotimiF and Grace Suberu P ’17 l Bruce WilliamsonF and Sima Wolf MFA ’11
Staff
# of Donors: 81 Participation: 29.14% Amount Contributed: $34,725.45 Anonymous (3) Christina Andrews Timothy J. Anglum Jonathan BarberS ’74, P ’13 and Margaret E. Howes ’73, P ’13 Paige L. Bartels l Brian CampionS and Eric Hatch l Suzanne Caraman
Kate Child James Clark Victoria Elaine Clausi MFA ’96 Heather Clifford Michael CohenS and Alison R. Hill ElizabethS and Aaron Coleman l Jeanne Coleman SusanS and Tom Corcoran Joy Cox Dawn and Peter King JaredS and Brianne Della RoccaS l Kendra Ericson Julia Evanczuk HeatherS and Robert Faley Heather H. Forman Katharine Godin Joan GoodrichS and Neil Moss P ’92, ’94 l DeniseS and Carl Goodwin Catherine Gee Graney Lisa Harrington Vanessa Haverkoch Wendy HirschS P ’15 and Michael GiannittiF P ’15 Sue Huggins Ellen Janis Suzanne Jones Veronica Jorgensen l Ann Keller Martha Kimbrough Laurie Kobik Laura Krause l Amy F. Kuzmicki RyanS and Alexis Lane Marie LeahyS and John Broderick Arthur Lemieux NicholeS and Walter Lother CindyS and Ed Luce Lauren Rinaldi Magrath Janet Marsden l Ted Martin Sarah E. McAbee ’07 Holly McCormack l SeanS and Kristine McGrath Erin McKenny Diane Mercier Sage Ober Lynn Parmenter Sharon Pinsker Christopher Powers Tracy Provensal Thomas Quinn Michael Rancourt David G. Rees l Susie E. ReissS ’79 and Richard Jurewicz Isabel Roche l Eissa SaeedS ’12 William F. Scully ’94 Teresa Sholes DanS and Diane Snyder Ferrilyn SourdiffeS ’84, P ’08 and David NormanS P ’08 BenS and Kelly Szalewicz
Samantha Tymchyn Lydia R. ViallonS ’12 JoAnn Watson Tracy Wheeler l Sara and Gabriel White S
RichardS and Rebecca Wilhelm Kathleen M. Williams Oceana Wilson Amy Wood Mary Woodward Andrew Wu Edith J. Wurtzel l Joshua Wysocki Michael Zhuraw
Friends
# of Donors: 71 Amount Contributed: $356,890.90 Pamela Addison Joy Ann Ammerman Jacob Appel Frank Azzopardi Gregory Blake Kiel Bonhomme Bill Botzow II and Ruth Botzow Robert Brawer and Catherine Coleman Brawer/ Ida and William Rosenthal Foundation l Kenji Bunch Anthony Caro Schuyler J. Chapman Brandon Chung David Coleman and Patrick Miller l Edward and Susan Cronin Carl Darrow Antionette Denisof/ Sonia Raiziss Giop Charitable Foundation l William Q. DerroughT l Davis Dimock and Victoria Weber Peter Reed Donavan and Nancy Scattergood Donavan l Eric Dufour l Estate of Thomas H. Foster l Ann W. Grasing and Albert P. Naclerio Margaret Griswold Silas Hagerty MichaelT and Sandy Hecht l Charles Henderson Anne Nichols Hill Pamela Hoiles David L. Holden Robert and Cora Howe Ronald Hoy Catherine Hurst and Philip Meyer Frederick Iseman Steven B. Jenkins l Joel D. Katz JohnT and Charlotte Kenney l
Wendy Kilpatrick l Bobbie M. KnableT l Bruce and Suzie Kovner l The Lander Family l Linda Matalon Charlotte J. McMullen Elizabeth McPherson Nancy and David Modlin Katz William Morgan David and Carol Newell l Paul Olchváry Jennifer Palo Thomas Parker Brian W. Peat/C. L. White l Milton and Marion Prigoff William L. Rawn III Estate of Helen Rehr Paul and Anne Marie Renzi Clifford Ross Daniel B. RowlandT l Lawrence and June Sachs Todd and Lara Saunders Andrew Sawyer l Ashley and Ryan Shadrin Kenneth Snelson Horace and Joan Stacy Robert Stewart Jeff Terry David Thurston Loet and Edith Velmans l Deborah WadsworthT l William W. Wakefield l Bryan Warren Shelley Wheeler Karen Wilkin Katharine Wilson l
Foundations & Corporations # of Donors: 41 Amount Contributed: $902,812.66
Foundations Anonymous Agnes M. Lindsay Trust l Andrew W. Mellon Foundation l Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation l Helen Frankenthaler Foundation l James Daniel Humphrey Foundation l The Leir Charitable Foundations l Margaret H. & James E. Kelley Foundation l National Science Foundation l Jerome A. and Estelle R. Newman Assistance Fund l Sherman Fairchild Foundation l Teagle Foundation l TEW Foundation l Corporations Albany Japanese Language School
“Benington students know how to function in the world. They know how to solve problems. They know how to work—and work hard. They know how to communicate and be part of a community. They are amazing individuals who want to contribute to society, not just take from it.” —Mary Surdam Assistant to the Director of Admissions
Blue Benn Diner Centerline Architects and Planners PC l Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute C. L. White l Clifford’s Pizza Enterprises Colco, Inc. Cormier, Cormier & Munson PC Daniel O’Connells Sons l East Coast Refinishing & Surface Stripping E-Z Way Rental Center GSK Climate Control l Hannaford The Henry House Inn Jay’s Cards and Gifts Kevin’s Sports Pub & Restaurant Kitchen Gardners International Lee Audio ’N Security Mailrite Middlebury College/ Davis United World College Scholarship Program l Miguel Abreu Gallery Office World People’s United Bank l Quality Printing Compnay r.k. Miles Taraden Enterprises Trojan Energy Systems West Oil Company l
l $1,000,000 + l $250,000–$999,999 l $100,000–$249,999 l $50,000–$99,999 l $25,000–$49,999 l $10,000–$24,999 l $5,000–$9,999 l $2,500–$4,999 l $1,000–$2,499 l $500–$999 deceased
Matching Gift Corporations & Foundations # of Donors: 40 Amount Contributed: $57,396.43 Aetna Foundation Apple AT&T Bank of America Boeing Company Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation Casey Matching Gifts Program CBS Foundation Computer Associates Matching Gifts Program Delta Dental Plan ExxonMobil Foundation l Ford Foundation Matching Gift Program l GCI Health General Electric Foundation Gensler Architecture, Design & Planning
Macy’s Foundation Medimmune MetLife Foundation Microsoft Corporation l Northwestern Mutual Life Foundation Old Mutual Asset Management Charitable Foundation Pearson Education Pfizer Foundation Matching Gifts Program l PPL Corporation SAP Matching Gift Program l Sony Corporation of America Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation The JM Foundation l The Pew Charitable Trusts The Washington Post Company United Technologies Verizon Foundation Walt Disney Company Foundation Wells Fargo Employee Matching Gift Program
Hamilton Beach Brands Harris Bank Foundation HSBC IBM Corporation l John A. Hartford Foundation l Johnson & Johnson l
W i n t e r 2013–14 • 65
Your participation in The Bennington Fund is a powerful demonstration of your belief in the College—to the students, staff, and faculty, to your fellow alumni, to the world.
fy12 3.8%
fy13 2.8% 4.8% 5.7% 8.2%
21.2%
35.3%
Thank you to: 1,688 alumni 579 parents 189 staff, faculty, and other friends
38.5%
78.6%
165 students
the bennington fund: your gift designations
81 foundations and corporations
n College’s Highest Priorities n Campus Renewal n Student Scholarships n Faculty and Curricular Support n Other
19.2% 22.4% 26.6% 23.3% 23.3% 18.9% 21.4% 25.2% 26.5% 23.8%
alumni Participation rate, U.S. NEWS & world report FY2004–2013
FY04 FY05 FY06 FY07 FY08 FY09 FY10 FY11 FY12 FY13 66 • b e n n i n g t o n m a g a z i n e
We are honored to recognize these steadfast supporters who loyally contribute to Bennington year after year, signaling their firm belief in the mission and the leadership of this institution.
5 to 9 Years Undergraduate Alumni Anonymous (3) Frances Berna Knight ’43 Beatrice Newman Brenner ’44 Barbara Ridder Irwin ’44 Betsy Stockstrom Van Dyke ’44 Olga V.H. Owens ’45 Albert Merck and Katharine Evarts Merck ’46 Nuala O’Donnell Pell ’46 Mary Harrigan Sheedy ’47, P ’68 and Stuart Sheedy P ’68 Sally Winston Robinson ’47, P ’78 Beatrice O’Connell Lushington ’47 Elizabeth Ahn Toupin ’48, P ’75 Baba Foster Freeman ’48 Lucy Blatchford Pinkerton ’48 Dorothy Morris Mudd ’48 Nancy Lindau Lewis ’49 Petrie Manning Wilson ’50 Jane Roberts Giedraitis ’50 Corinne Silverman Kyle ’50 Susan Van Clute Quinby ’50 Marcia Eastman Snider ’50 Nina S. Pattison ’50 Renee Bennett O’Sullivan ’51, P ’84 Carol Davis Goodman ’51; P ’73, ’77 Carol Spence Muntz ’51 Elaine May Drew ’51 Ann Chatfield Slocum ’51 Fanny Parsons Culleton ’51 Mary Allen Carpe DeSantis ’51 Joan E. Glover Gorman ’51 Gloria Goldfarb Gil ’52, P ’77 Louise Dickson Hardie ’52 Sheila Stires Lloyd ’53, P ’76 Barbara Nahin Rubinstein ’53 Olivia Donovan McCrossin ’53 Frances Springer-Miller Kraus ’54, P ’84 Anne S. Adams ’54 Ellen C. Weber ’55 Stella Spanoudaki Sichel ’55 Nancy Silbowitz Garfield-Woodbridge ’55 Selina F. Little ’55 Arline Israel Gardner ’56 Joan Heilig Kahn ’56 Joan Simons Constantikes ’56 Evanne Schreiber Geltzeiler ’56
Mary Earthrowl Lewis ’57 Marcia Morgan Qasim ’57 Carol Bennet Schoenberg ’57 Suzi Cremer Smith ’57 Roberta Selwyn Miller ’57 Deborah Miller Lakoff ’57 Anne Harriss Bugbee ’58, P ’84 Patricia Sullivan Meyers ’58 Tama Alcott Taub ’59, P PB ’96 and Robert J. Taub P PB ’96 Marianne Dach Maxwell ’59 Helen Coonley Colcord ’59 Sonia Berlin Michelson ’59 Vijaya Gulhati Duggal ’59 Wilma Kantrowich Chandler ’60, P ’89 Iris Basche Seydel ’60 Amy Miller Levine ’60 Frances Finesilver Blumenthal ’60 Micky Schwartz Hillman ’60 Jane Lapiner ’61, P ’93 and David W. Simpson P ’93 Shannon Theobald Devoe ’61 Meryl E. Whitman Green ’61 Nina Koch ’61 Margot Graham Fass ’62, P ’91 Andrea Kanner Halbfinger ’62, P ’85 Nancy Guy Syme ’62, P ’84 Saida Heyman Baxt ’62 Susan Plosky Miller ’62 Susan Milburn Meffert ’62 Barbara Goldberg Rohdie ’63 and Robert Rohdie Mary F. Poole ’63 Pat Cronin Adams ’64 Sarah Scattergood Ashe ’64 Pril Smiley ’65 Katrina Edwards Pelkey ’65 Francine Smerka Hall ’65, MFA ’02 Ellen Beskind Safir ’66 Nancy Miller Katzoff ’66 Sara Spadea Black ’66 Marian Johnson Henderson ’66 Sally Bowie ’66 Patricia Tate Boutilier ’66 Anne S. Bell ’67 Linda Gould Abtalion ’67 Roxana Barry Robinson ’68, P ’93 and Hamilton Robinson P ’93 Barbara A. Fisher ’68 Lindley Greenough Thomasset ’68 Re’u Ben-James J.C. Edinger ’68
Elenita Muñiz ’68 Karron C. Esmonde ’68 Susanna McAdam ’68 Elizabeth Johnson Niederman ’69 Kathleen Jane Smith ’70 Joanna Clark Swayze ’70 Zae Zatoon ’70 Victoria English Ellington ’70 Sally Edwards Canzoneri ’70 Katherine M. Aldrich ’70 Gretchen Sloate Garrett ’70 Christiane Stahl ’71 and Richard David Lane M. deMoll ’71; P ’01, ’05 Barbara Abercrombie ’71 Constance Allentuck Seligman ’71 Judith Di Maio ’72 Caroline Sheridan Loose ’72 Elna Barnet Hunter ’72 Gloria Bussel Koster ’72 Candace H. Chorjel, Ph.D. ’72 Susanna Bluestone Harris ’72 Ann Welch Campbell ’72 Andrea Hoffman Kachuck ’72 Barbara E. Coon ’72 Elise Weinrich Geary ’73 Alexandra O. Hughes ’73 Elizabeth Macaulay ’73 Dlovid J. Dingle ’73 Alex Brown ’74 and Clarke Jordan ’74 Jonathan Barber ’74, P ’13S and Margaret E. Howes ’73, P ’13 Ross Zucker ’74 Leslie Newell Peacock ’74 Myrna Packer ’74 Robina Magee Twitchell ’74 Charlotte Hanna ’74 Virlana Tkacz ’74 Nancy Hindle-Katel ’75 Robert Weeks Sawyer ’75 Polita Cohen Glynn ’75 Megan Marshall ’75 Michael Pollan ’76 and Judith Belzer ’78 Jean M. Lasser ’76 Jill Nathanson ’76 Heidi Ehle ’76 Melissa Rasman ’76 Michael J. Falk ’77 Deborah Gladstein ’77 Lisa Schilit Pearson ’77 Susan Hubbard Pollitt ’77 Jan Cherubin ’77, MFA ’08
l $1,000,000 + l $250,000–$999,999 l $100,000–$249,999 l $50,000–$99,999 l $25,000–$49,999 l $10,000–$24,999 l $5,000–$9,999 l $2,500–$4,999 l $1,000–$2,499 l $500–$999 deceased
Mitchell Lichtenstein ’78 Duncan K. Smith ’78 Michael Bastek-Garnot ’78 Erin Quinn ’79 and Richard Cudworth John Barton Greenbaum ’79 Peter Henry Schuerch ’79 Stephen Shaw ’79 Amy L. Spound ’79 Odin E. Brudie ’80 Donzia Franklin ’81 Suzanne Stapleton Latimer ’81 Ann Howitt ’81 Anne Margaret Schwarz ’81 Mark H. Davis ’81 Ann Paffrath Gallo ’82 Lisa M. Wagner ’82 Lisa Bush Finn ’82 Kevin M. Haney ’82 Ellen Kanner ’83 Katherine Buechner Arthaud ’83 Shahin Heshmat ’83 Beth Kaplan Karmin ’85 and Kenneth Karmin T. Kent Hikida ’85 and Amy Schweitzer Hikida ’85 Matthew Monaghan ’85 Annie Coggan-Crawford ’85 Carole Woodworth Perry ’85 Justine Disick Leger ’85
Eric Ramirez-Ferrero ’85 Marie Labbe Gertje ’85 Ayse Ali Atasoylu ’85 Brian J. Delacey ’85 Melissa Rosenberg ’86 and Lev L. Spiro Hilary C. Ince ’86 Elizabeth O. Silver ’86 Lincoln Schatz ’86 Sally Olmer Andrade ’86 Melinda Castriota Avellino ’87 James Harney ’87 William Zobrist ’87 Lisa M. Jerome ’88 Rachel Schatz ’89 Amy C. Williams ’90 Sekka B. Scher ’90 Caitlin Lally Hotaling ’90 Tracy Katsky Boomer ’91 Christopher Hoxie ’92 and Christa M. Cliver ’95 Amanda Spooner Frank ’92 Jennifer Chapin ’92 Mark Prince ’92 Melissa Marr ’93 Brendan P. Frank ’94 Alison ’94 and Christopher Dennis Heidi Hojnicki ’95 and Sujal Shah David Anthony ’96
“Thoughtful discussion was the most significant condition in my life at Bennington.” —Deborah Roseman First ’70, P ’92
W Wiinntteerr 22001133–- 1 4 • 6 7
5 to 9 Years (continued)
David P. Henderson ’96 Alicia S. Herrmann ’98 Jessica A. Phillips ’99 Maggie Halstead Dayton ’99 Irina Petrova ’99 Rachel Emmons-Bradley ’00 Jenna Elizabeth White ’00 Ryan ’02 and Lindsay Nealon ’02 Langdon Crawford ’02 Becky Strohmer ’03 Lucas Westcott ’03 Sophia A. O’Hara ’03 Rachel E. Shirk ’04 Andrew C. Miner ’04 Chrissy K. Souder ’04 Joseph P. Mazzarelli ’04 Lawson R. Wulsin, Jr. ’05 and Courtney A. Hill Wulsin ’04 Holly Bratkovich ’05 Katherine E. Raeburn ’06 Ashley E. Hanna ’06 Jonathan Leiss ’06, MAT ’07 Emily Rand ’06 Aarti Rana ’06T Sean Adams ’08 Julie L. Moore ’08 Amanda A. Sullivan ’09 and Adam C. Freed ’08
Graduate Alumni Derwin H. Stevens MA ’65 Ruth Farmer MFA ’96 Alan Elyshevitz MFA ’99 John May, Jr. MFA ’01 Francine Smerka Hall ’65, MFA ’02 Douglas J. Green MAT ’03 Mary Donnelly MFA ’03 Eva Karczag MFA ’04 Brian D. Rothstein PB ’05 Diego Uribe De Urbina MAT ’06 John R. Coats MFA ’06 Jonathan Leiss ’06, MAT ’07 Gregory N. Nanopoulos MAT ’07 Anne D. Kaiser MFA ’07 Richard Gotti MFA ’07 Jan Cherubin ’77, MFA ’08
Parents Anonymous (3) Frances J. Diebboll P ’78, ’89, ’80 Philip and Lois Macht P ’80 Ralph and Audrey Wagner P ’82 Jerome and Marlene Schweitzer P ’85 Mary Fanelli P ’86 Judith A. Little P ’86 Peggy Schatz P ’86, ’89, ’89 Robert and Helen Morgan P ’88
68 • b e n n i n g t o n m a g a z i n e
Charles and Kathleen Buffon P ’90 Conrad and Alison Heins P ’90 Jane Goldthwait P ’93 Charles and Marcia Zappa P ’93 Donna Melanson P ’94 John and Lou Blackwell P ’95 Joseph P. Rogers, Jr. P ’96 Wayne and Florence Harris P ’97 William and Prema Popkin P MFA ’98 Peter and Loraine Seronick P ’99 Bronson and Lynne Sweeney P ’00 John Smyth and Jo Ann Gavin P ’01 Nancy M. Rideout P ’04 Joseph and Kathleen Powers P ’05 Michael D. Hanna, Jr. P ’06 John and Cynthia Lhost P ’07 Randall Best and Sarah Howe P ’08, ’11 James Dewart Brassard P ’08 Nicholas Tiffany Love P ’08 Patrick McMahon and Sherry Coben P ’08, ’11 Mark Tarlov and Judith Roberts P ’08 Marilyn Heinrich P ’09 Thomas Rickart P ’09 Patricia Rickart and George Kominos P ’09 John and Debra Sculley P ’09 David Sobel P ’09 Michael Wolkowitz and Hope Holiner P ’09 Gary and Cynthia Cahoon P ’10 Roderick Henry P ’10 Linda Holtzman and Elisabeth Conston P ’10 William and Barbara Jolly P ’10 Kerry Kahler P ’10 Vaclav and Jennifer Miglus P ’10 Donald and Susan Moss P ’10, ’11 James and Mary-Lou Moulton P ’10 Mary Page P ’10 Charles and Patricia Poe P ’10 Stephanie Segal P ’10 James and Regina St. Lifer P ’10 Peter Bearman P ’11 Andy and Kathy Beddingfield P ’11 Bradie and Vickie Connor P ’11 Mary Conway P ’11 John and Nan Darham P ’11, ’12, ’12 Julian and Lisa Franklin P ’11 Charles Graham and Debra Wallace P ’11 Brian and Ljuba Marsh P ’11 Stephen Nelmes and Ellen Meier P ’11 Stephen and Debra Nunes P ’11
David Schunter P ’11 Steven Veit and Joan Harris P ’11 Susan Brown P ’12 Joseph P. Callahan P ’12 David Colbert and Ellen Moon P ’12 Rachael Dorr P ’12 Michael and Kathryn Feliciano P ’12 Brian and Elizabeth Hamilton P ’12 Ik-kyun and Shin-Hwa Hyun P ’12 Lieutenant Colonel Aaron and Mrs. Donna Kalloch P ’12 John and Margo Kieser P ’12 Judith Lisante P ’12 Bret Lowell P ’12 Patrick Reale and Amy Turner P ’12 Steven and Jan Sandman-Pitonyak P ’12 Steven and Barbara Washer P ’12 Charles Watts and Helen Haynes P ’12 Eugene and Jaqueline Williams P ’12 Elizabeth Massey P ’14 Frances Wolanczyk P ’14 Wendy HirschS and Michael GiannittiF P ’15
Staff and Faculty Brian CampionS and Eric Hatch Suzanne CaramanS Heather CliffordS HeatherS and Robert Faley Mansour FarhangF Rebecca T. GodwinF and Deane Bogardus DeniseS and Carl Goodwin Catherine Gee GraneyS Jon IsherwoodF and Dr. Karen Gover Kirk JacksonF Laurie KobikS Marie LeahyS and John Broderick Arthur LemieuxS CindyS and Ed Luce Mary LumF David G. ReesS Teresa SholesS AndrewF and Sique Spence Rotimi SuberuF SaraS and Gabriel White Amy WoodS Edith J. WurtzelS
Friends Anonymous Blue Benn Diner Bill Botzow II and Ruth Botzow E-Z Way Rental Center Arthur Goldwyn Ann W. Grasing and Albert P. Naclerio Prof. Ronald Hoy Joel D. Katz
David and Carol Newell Brian W. Peat r. k. Miles Paul and Anne Marie Renzi Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute David Thurston William W. Wakefield
10 to 24 Years Undergraduate Alumni Anonymous (3) Vera Hall Dodd ’40 Barbara Willis Heinrich ’40 Sara Carter Balogh ’41 Merrell Hopkins Hambleton ’43; P ’60, ’75 Alicia Ruhl MacArthur ’43 Muriel Cummings Palmer ’43 Pearl Friedman Staller ’43, P ’71 and Erwin P. Staller P ’71 Elizabeth Uptegrove Mathews ’44 Rita Friedman Salzman ’45 Joan Brauer Alpert ’47 Mary Hewitt Harshman ’47 and Richard Harshman Kathleen Oliver Parker ’47 Marydes Chapin Britton ’48 Dr. Joyce Fondren Elbrecht ’48 Nancy Smith Pellicia Lovejoy ’48 Laura-Lee Whittier Woods ’48 Martha Klein MacDonald ’50 Marianne Byk Schnell ’50 Barbara Paige Fahrnbauer ’51 Olivia Pattison Garfield ’51 Joan Hutton Landis ’51 Estate of Elizabeth C. Wagner ’51 Nancy Harrow ’52 and Jan Krukowski Jennifer Mertens Brock ’53 Ruth Miller Curwen ’53 Martha Dow Fehsenfeld ’53 Lucretia McPherson Durrett ’53 Carolyn Lissner Heveran ’53, P ’76 Lorraine Nichols Higbie ’53, P ’85 Pauline Thayer Maguire ’53 Aileen Passloff ’53 Susan Schapiro Brody ’54 Helene Fox Metzenberg ’54 and Robert Metzenberg Abigail Oleson Newburger ’54, P ’81 Nancy Lawrence Riegel ’54 Ruth Levitan Salloway ’54 Charlene Solow Schwartz ’54 Anne Johnson Sharpe ’54 Carole Press Stavenhagen ’54 Ann Burley Williamson ’54 Martha Haskell Baird ’55 Judith Backer Grunberg ’55 Linda Schandler Porter ’55 Carol Rubenstein ’55 Ruth Ring Harvie ’56 and James Harvie
Margery Baer Irish ’56 Carol Friedman Kardon ’56 Mary Lou Peters Schram ’56 Bunny Willa Katz Shulman ’56 Cynthia Sheldon Stibolt ’56 Darcy Lay Doyle ’57 Adrienne W. Schlang Garnett ’57 Priscilla Loening Hanford ’57 Arthur S. Hoffman P ’87 and Hadassah Houtz Hoffman ’57, P ’87 Elaine Liberstein Pitt ’57 Priscilla Alexander ’58T Suzanne Wolf Applefeld ’58 Jane Eisner Bram ’58 Muriel Altman Ladenburg ’58 Marianne Petrie Miller ’58 Diane Wiener Seessel ’58 Treva Silverman ’58 Donna Schacter Sinanian ’58 Rhoda Chaprack Treitler ’58, P ’86 and Byron Treitler P ’86 Harriet Turteltaub Abroms ’59 Elisabeth Posselt Barker ’59 Barrie Rabinowitz Cassileth ’59 and Richard Cooper Sally L. Foster ’59 Amy Sweedler Friedlander ’59 Joan Trooboff Geetter ’59 and David Geetter Ann Little Rubenstein ’59 Mary Humes Crowe ’60 Manuel R. Duque ’60 Barbara Black Frank ’60 Joy Goldsmith ’60 Matilda McEwen Mendez ’60 Elizabeth Raspolic ’60 Harriet Fitts Szanto ’60 Beverly May Vail ’60 Anna Bartow ’61 H. Paul and Edna Burak ’61 Dorothy Tulenko Feher ’61 and Ladislas Feher Julie Eiseman Ginsburg ’61 Sara Snow Glenn ’61 Elan P. Golomb ’61 Lis Shabecoff Harris ’61 Carla Ostergren Helfferich ’61 Gail Rodier Schonbeck ’61, P ’95, G ’13 Sandra Kesselman Slotnik ’61 Mariel Stephenson ’61 Barbara Bartelmes Surovell ’61 Margot Adler Welch ’61 Carolyn Green Wilbur ’61 Rosalind Moger Bernheimer ’62 and Walter Bernheimer II Jennifer Cushing Curtis ’62 Joan Borkum Epstein ’62 Susan Weiss Katz ’62 Jane Vance McCauley ’62 and Richard McCauley Dorothy Willett Oliver ’62, P ’88 Joann Bromberg ’63 Judith Selis Davidson ’63 Susan Pickering DuMond ’63 Sybillyn Hoyle Jennings ’63
Marianne Stafne Meyer ’63 Barbara Reinhold Rauch ’63 Janet Lynn Taksa ’63 Babette Amberger Brackett ’64 Janet C. Gohres ’64 Mary Okie Brown ’65 Liuda Dovydenas ’65 Lynne Coleman Gevirtz ’65 Barbara Glasser ’65, P ’07 Bay Hallowell ’65 Lynne Tishman Handler ’65 Mary Kelley ’65 Roberta Ross Moore ’65 Deborah Rankin ’65 and Lawrence Heald Maria Taranto ’65 Katharine Gregg ’66 Sheridan King ’66 Elin Fleischer Leonard ’66 Cynthia Leapley Nicely ’66 Judith Dunlop Ransmeier ’66 Leslie Gieseke Bose ’67 Sally Levin Brotman ’67 Leslie Noyes Cole ’67 Shelley Herman ’67 Adria S. Heyman Hillman ’67 Lisa Marshall ’67 Beverly Mikuriya ’67 Robin Childs Stafford ’67 Beverly Rantoul Turman ’67 Ann Sheedy Bradburd ’68 Patricia Woodbridge Dunn ’68 Judith Gerson ’68 Leslie Sliker LaRocca ’68 Fifi Delacorte Spangler ’68 Gale Thompson Synnott ’68 Marie McKenney Tavernini ’68 Harriet Moger Watson ’68 Jane Elkington Wohl ’68 Alice Purnell Cannon ’69 Kathryn L. Girard ’69 Brenda Kydd ’69 Robyn A. Newhouse ’69 Kathleen Norris ’69 Diana Elzey Pinover ’69 Deborah Roseman First ’70, P ’92 and Theodore First P ’92 Jill L. Goodman ’70 Nancy Hobbs ’70, P ’05 and William Dotson P ’05 Michael F. Kalinowski ’70 Jennifer Woodworth Michaels ’70 Sharon M. Parnes ’70 Joan Katz von Ohlen ’70 Inge-Lise Eckmann Lane ’71 Thomas A. Ollendorff ’71 Victoria Woolner Samuels ’71 Doris Dronski Zelinsky ’71 Elizabeth Ayer ’72 Joan Balter ’72 Mary Barringer ’72 James Bloom ’72 Starlina Peyson Bradbury ’72 Deborah Breiter ’72 Susan Goldberg ’72 Tamsen Merrill ’72 Joan D. Merriman ’72
Sally Reeves Osberg ’72 Michal Slansky Alkoff ’73 Kay Dickersin ’73 Richard Fishman ’73 Joanne B. Gallo ’73 Jessica B. Hirschhorn ’73 Evelyn E. Kalish ’73 Melissa P. Marshall ’73 Carol H. Rice ’73 Peter Bergstrom ’74 and Susan Still ’74 Susan Birdsall Cantrick ’74 Douglas ’74 and Elizabeth Cumming
Catherine M. Petraiuolo ’90 Erica S. Herman ’91 Mary Bucksbaum Scanlan ’91 Elizabeth Iarrapino Bellin ’92 Madeleine Kromelow Crowther ’92 Jamie Maxfield ’92 Leah DeGuzman Sandholm ’92 M.M.C. Kennedy-Stirling ’95 James Simon ’97T Taliesin T. Thomas ’98 John H. Boyd ’03T
Gay Hubert Kimelman ’74
Graduate Alumni
Jeremy B. Koch ’74 and Katherine Humpstone ’77
Margaret R. Swan MA ’78 Cynthia P. Katz MFA ’87
Alan Kornberg ’74
Carole Merritt MFA ’96 and Alvin Chisik
T
Francie Camper ’75 Kathy Wilkie Kossey ’75 Emily Bailen McKeage ’75 and Jonathan McKeage Laura Tahir ’75 Susan Braus ’76, P ’06 and Lindsay Rand P ’06 Lisa Feldman ’76 Ruth L. Griggs ’76 J. Brant Houston ’76 Kimberly Kako Kanevsky ’76 Amy Sawelson Landes ’76 Jane A. Gil ’77 Caroline Rennolds Milbank ’77
Mame Willey MFA ’99
Generosity that inspires and transforms We extend our deepest gratitude to the following extraordinary donors who have—over the course of their lifetime—given $1 million or more to the College. Anonymous John and Penny Barr P ’01 Susan Paris Borden ’69; G ’01, MAT ’02; G ’12T and Robert Borden G ’01, MAT ’02; G ’12 Karen Johnson Boyd ’46T and William Boyd
Amy E. Weintraub MFA ’00
Suzanne Kennedy Brown ’53
Leigh MAT ’01 and Robert Waldman
Elizabeth Brown ’37
Albert F. Freihofer MAT ’03
Barbara Ushkow Deane ’51T and Maurice Deane
Parents Estate of J. Humphrey Wilkinson P ’45 Miriam Kellogg Fredenthal P ’60 Joseph and Elizabeth Houston P ’76
Davis Educational Foundation
Fairleigh Dickinson Elizabeth Harrington Dickinson ’43 Alice Pulsifer Doyle ’39 Ruth Dewing Ewing ’37, P ’74 Thomas H. Foster Helen Frankenthaler ’49 and Stephen M. Dubrul
David Thrall Smith ’77
Estate of Dorothy T. Peck Flynn G ’77
Sally Sandberg Wood ’77
Richard and Mary Gray P ’79
Nancy Harrow ’52 and Jan Krukowski
Deborah A. Barney ’78
Robert and Christine Steiner P ’79
Janet Frey Harte ’44 and Edward Harte Judith Rosenberg Hoffberger ’54
Robert and Fanny Clark P ’81
Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation
Patricia Tyson ’78
Jerry and Jean Martin P ’82
Frances Wells Magee ’51
Cici Brown Vesce ’78
Carol B. Johnson P ’85 Barbara Ro P ’86
Hall Park McCullough
Lauren deMoll ’79 Debra Engler ’79 and Alan F. Lopatin
Stanley and Frances Levine P ’87, ’88
Jennifer Gray ’79
Robert M. Howard P ’88
Katharine Evarts Merck ’46 and Albert Merck
Julie Ostwald Lowy ’79
Manny Solon P ’89
Melissa Saltman Meyer ’65
Peter Pastan ’79 and Amy Kessler Pastan ’78
Marcia Goren Weser P ’89
Kathleen Harriman Mortimer ’40
Marc and Rita Kromelow P ’90, ’92
Kathleen Oliver Parker ’47
Susie E. Reiss ’79S and Richard Jurewicz
Carol Miller P ’90
Starr Foundation
Julie L. White ’79
Alan and Susan Guma P ’91
Catherine Alexander ’80 Fiona Cooper Fenwick ’80
Robert and Carlotta Kennedy P ’91
Joshua Gelman ’81
Richard Mead P ’92
J. Humphrey Wilkinson P ’45
Maryann Mazzacaro ’81
Terrance and Ann Marr P ’93
Penelope Perkins Wilson ’45T
John Silvestrini ’82 and Trudi H. Vetterlein ’84
Joan Goodrich and Neil Moss P ’92, ’94
Winston Foundation
Cynthia Bertha Kolaski ’83
Averill B. Huff P ’94
Robin Hackley Decker ’84
Vernon H. C. and Lucy Wright P ’94
Suzanne Robinson Buchsbaum ’78
Leslie Johnson Piotrowski ’79
Joanna Ellis-Monaghan ’84 Cynthia Murphy ’84 Kevin Alter ’85 and Rachel Jacobson Jeanne M. Poduska ’85 Alexandra Bowe DeRosa ’86 Jacqueline Little ’86 Denis Desjarlais ’87 Donna L. Howard ’88 Andrew Kromelow ’90 and Eileen Travell ’88
Joan O’Connor P ’90
S
John and Susan Brennan P ’95 Betty R. Vohr P ’95 Dianne Gray-Spangenberg P ’96 Robert and Mary Ann Herrmann P ’98 Gregory and Kathryn Knudson P ’98 Gerald and Karen Levitis P ’99
Alfred Harcourt Foundation
Carola Manning McEachren ’40 and John McEachren Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Carolyn Crossett Rowland ’37 Rebecca B. Stickney ’43 Mary Hammond Storer ’46T Dotha Seaverns Welbourn ’41
Laura-Lee Whittier Woods ’48
Charles and Ellen Newton P ’99 Charles and Joanne Zafonte P ’99 Steven and Elaine Eisenman P ’00 Stephen Silberstein P ’01 Stephen and Gloria Westcott P ’03 James and Doreen Hogle P ’05
Eileen Corrigan P ’06 Robert Masland III and Anne Masland P ’06 Vanessa Guerrini-Maraldi Wilcox ’78; P ’08, ’14 and John Wilcox P ’08, 14
Staff and Faculty Thomas BogdanF Marguerite FeitlowitzF and David Anderson
W i n t e r 2013–14 • 69
“Bennington is so much about this: dare to discover who you are, discover all that you are, then put your life together in an original and inspiring way.” —Fran Bull ’60
Staff and Faculty (continued)
25+ Years
Jacob and Irene Jaglom ’49
Paige L. BartelsS
Undergraduate Alumni
Byrd Symington Platt ’49
SusanS and Tom Corcoran Vanessa HaverkochS Martha KimbroughS Janet MarsdenS SeanS and Kristine McGrath Oceana WilsonS
Friends Colco, Inc. Eric Dufour Estate of Thomas H. Foster Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Margaret H. & James E. Kelley Foundation, Inc. JohnT and Charlotte Kenney Bobbie M. KnableT The Lander Family The Leir Charitable Foundations William Morgan Jerome A. and Estelle R. Newman Assistance Fund Horace and Joan Stacy Elissa Tenny and Peter Haratonik Deborah WadsworthT Bryan Warren
70 • b e n n i n g t o n m a g a z i n e
Alison Hennig Moore ’49
Anonymous (2)
Susan Pierce Vasiliadis ’49
Louise Friedberg Strouse ’36
Barbara Bowles Coolidge ’50
Ann Meyer Rothschild ’37, P ’71
Mary Gibson Geer ’50
Estate of Carolyn Crossett Rowland ’37
Phyllis Meili Chernin ’51
Reba Marcus Gillman ’38 Anne Bretzfelder Post ’38 Isabella Perrotta Erickson ’40
Phyllis Jones Menefee ’50 Barbara Ushkow Deane ’51T and Maurice Deane Carol Diamond Feuer ’51
Mary Eddison Welch ’40
Janet Roosevelt Katten ’51, P ’78
Suzanne Heller Harris ’41
Frances Wells Magee ’51
Carol Haines McBride ’41
Ruth Rigler Olincy ’51
Dorothy Coffin Harvi ’42, P ’71 Deborah Froelicher Howe ’42 Miriam Manning Holst-Grubbe ’43 Olive Pitkin Tamm ’43 Allyn Johnson Shepard ’44 Suzanne Eckfeldt Harding ’47 Mary Lou Chapman Ingwersen ’47 Eileen Josten Lowe ’47 Marilyn Lord Dux ’48 Jean Ganz Sloss ’48 and Louis Sloss Jeannette Winans Bertles ’49; P ’77, ’81 Jean McAllaster Chapman ’49
Olga Landeck Rothschild ’51 Carolyn Pennybacker Accola ’52 Jill Warburg Cartter ’52 Jane Neal Keller ’52 Priscilla Norton Kennedy ’52 Joan Pauley Lamb ’52 Mary Lou Schlichting Levers ’52 Rona Davis Pollack ’52 Marilyn Bernstein Seide ’52 Martia Reed Smith ’52 Sydney Brucker Sowles ’52 Solveig Peterson Cox ’53, P ’77 and Wendell Cox P ’77 Frances D. Hallinan ’53
Barbara Schwanda Weedon ’53, G ’11 Drue Romano Weild ’53, P ’81 and David Weild P ’81 Ruth Liebling Goldstone ’54, MA ’57 Ann Frey Kleinhans ’54 Sally Holt Parsly ’54 Barbara Nelson Pavan ’54 Joel Wells Schreck ’54, G ’06 Helen Burgin Hazen ’55 Elizabeth Lester ’55 Joan Morris Manning ’55 Aldona Kanauka Naudzius ’55 Kay Crawford Murray ’56 Dale Lester Sokolow ’56 Michele Rogers Zwirn ’56 Helen Isaacs Barer ’57 Evelyn Stein Benjamin ’57 Edith Keen Farley ’57 Elaine Silverman Lewis ’57 Louisa Perkins Porter ’57 Stephanie Brown Reininger ’57 Frieda Rowell Carnell ’58 Darla Stimpson Chafin ’58 Susan Ullman Chapro ’58 Ruth Berman Greer ’58 Judith Outerbridge Hughes ’58 Sheila Hirschfeld Jacobs ’58 Jill Seward Montgomery ’58 Katharine Kirkham Turner ’58 Jessica Falikman Attiyeh ’59 Rona King Bank ’59 Mary Lynn Hanley ’59 Emily Carota Orne ’59 Anita Andres Rogerson ’59 Linda Mazer Berkowitz ’60 Judith Albert Croner ’60 and Mel Croner Liz Mamorsky ’60 Martha Terrell McCall ’60 Rochelle Ann Sholder Papernik ’60 Carey Overton Randall ’60 Cindi Taylor Nash ’61 Patsy Rogers ’60, MA ’62 Virginia Alcott Sadock ’60 Judith Schneider Bond ’61 Julie Cavanagh Kaneta ’61 Cindi Taylor Nash ’61 Lynn Goldberg Small ’61 Margot Adler Welch ’61 Jeane Pavelle Garment ’63 Jane Witty Gould ’63 Alexandra Broches ’64 Nancy Farnam Charles ’64 Carol Abbt Ciscel ’64 Brannon Heath ’64 Ann Harvey Mendershausen ’64 Gael Rockwell Minton ’64 Jean Morgan Reed ’64 June Caudle Davenport ’65 Caryn Levy Magid ’65, P PB ’95 and James Magid P PB ’95 Nancy E. Newton ’65
Marjorie Perloff ’65 Lucy Kostelanetz Schrader ’65 Susan St. John ’65 Abigail Mellen ’66 Glynn Rudich ’66 Heidi Jost von Bergen ’66 Dori Pavelle Feiszli ’67 Tracy K. Harris ’67 Margaret Rood Lenzner ’67 Elizabeth Ramsay Nigro ’67 Susan Mauss Tunick ’67 Deborah Brown ’68 Janis Beaver ’69 Susan Paris Borden ’69; G ’01, MAT ’02; G ’12T and Robert Borden G ’01, MAT ’02; G ’12 Rachel Kahn-Fogel ’69 Jane Platt ’69 Mary Bresnan ’70 Rebecca Mitchell ’70 Ruth C. Arnold ’71 Jeannie Day Roggio ’72 Elizabeth Schulz ’74 Michael Connolly ’76 Stephen T. Pratt ’77 Nicholas A. Stephens ’77 Esme Usdan ’77 Robert A. Lieberman ’79 Robert Diebboll ’80 and Kim Brettler Diebboll ’79
Graduate Alumni Ruth Liebling Goldstone ’54, MA ’57 Patsy Rogers ’60, MA ’62 Carol Kinne MA ’67
Parents Takashi Kako P ’76 Marilyn Bedwell P ’82 John Bunnell P ’85 Takeo and Masako Kaneko P ’86 Marvin and Madelyn Miller P ’86
Staff and Faculty ElizabethS and Aaron Coleman
Friends Agnes M. Lindsay Trust MichaelT and Sandy Hecht Lawrence and June Sachs
Scholarship support helps to ensure that a new generation of creative thinkers can experience a Bennington education regardless of their financial circumstances. During 2012–2013, Bennington awarded more than $15.7 million in institutional aid to 621 undergraduates, with an average institutional aid package of $25,791. Generous private philanthropy is critical to maintaining our community of exceptionally talented students, and we thank those who have chosen to support Bennington in this vital way.
ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIPS & ASSISTANTSHIPS 1970s Alumni Scholarship Anna Eckert-Kramer ’15 George I. Alden Scholarship Maliha Ali ’15 Don Belton ’81 Scholarship Walker Mimms ’14 Lois Schulman Chazen Arts & Literature Scholarship Amanda Plunkett ’13 Rosalie Gittings Drexel ’47 Scholarship Laura Creste ’13 George Adams Ellis Scholarship Amanda Coviello ’15 Courtenay Houk ’13 Margaret Sweeney ’14 Catharine Osgood Foster Scholarship Killian Walsh ’14 Wallace Fowlie Scholarship Amanda Campbell ’13 Leo and Tekla Gottlieb Scholarship Logan Bingham ’14 Leonora Harris Dance Scholarship Emma Villavecchia ’14 John Hendrick ’86 Memorial Fund Commission Atticus Lazenby ’13 Molly Griffin McKenna ’13 Riley Skinner ’13 Hoffberger-Rosenberg Scholarship Alexandria Hovet ’14 Rainer Hunt ’13 Island Fund Scholarship Hye-Young Choi ’13 Elizabeth Reed Keller ’38 Scholarship Michaela Levin ’13 Elinor Gottlieb Mannucci ’48 Scholarship Megan Preis ’15 Beryl Martin ’85 Memorial Scholarship Laura Jacobson ’13 Hall Park McCullough & Edith van Benthuysen Scholarship Meg Rumsey-Lasersohn ’15 Robert Gary Miller ’86 Field Work Term Scholarship Roma Aryal ’14 Paul “Pete” Fey ’13 Cody Walker ’16
Miriam Lampke Petrie Scholarship Olympia Shannon ’13 Melissa Rosenberg Performing Arts Scholarship Ana-Miren San Millan ’13 Judith Schneider ’61 Scholarship Jiaying Liu ’13 James Gordon Schnell Memorial Scholarship Erick Daniszewski ’14 Kamal Shaikh ’02 Memorial Scholarship Carlos A. Mendez ’15 Anisha Sharma ’13 Edith Stevens Sheldon ’43 Assistantship in the Sciences Ellen Hanson ’14 Jiaying Liu ’13 Isabel Marlens ’12 Scott Milliman ’14 Sandra Kesselman Slotnik ’61 Scholarship Samantha Leigh ’14 Suzanne Snowden ’53 Scholarship Brittany Kleinschnitz ’13 Solon E. Summerfield Foundation Scholarship Eric Marlin ’13 Peter Thompson Scholarship Nicholas Janikian ’13 Gregory Tucker Scholarship Riley Skinner ’13 E. Ginoris Vizcarra ’54 Scholarship Friederike Windel ’15 Joan Maggin Weiner ’52 Scholarship Heather Sherman ’13 Libby Zion ’87 Memorial Scholarship Sarah Matusek ’13
ONE-YEAR SCHOLARSHIPS Agnes M. Lindsay Trust Scholarship Eva Bond ’14 Seamus Carey ’15 Atticus Lazenby ’13 Krista Thorp ’15 Rosalind Moger Bernheimer ’62 Scholarship Ashley Connell ’13
Barbara Ushkow Deane ’51 Scholarship Esme Franklin ’13 Simon Halper ’14 Jessicalynn Johnson-Cunningham ’13 Madeleine Phillips ’15 Judith Rosenberg Hoffberger ’54 Scholarship Paul Fey ’13 Ellen Hanson ’14 Amy Dolgin Jaffe ’67 and David Jaffe Scholarship Ryo Brown-McClain ’13 Brittany Curtis ’13 Jason Moon ’13 Rebecca Nakaba ’13 Sean-Patrick O’Brien ’14 Emma Schmelzer ’13 Emily Kassier ’14 FWT Scholarship Sharon Batamuriza ’16 Michelle Nguyen ’15 John Kenney Scholarship Abby Beggs ’13 Alan Kornberg ’74 Scholarship Forest Abbott-Lum ’15 Amanda Buckley ’13 Joel Vall Thomas ’13 Rebecca Zarski ’14
Cynthia Kelley O’Neill ’51 Scholarship Kathryn Henderson ’15 Thayer A. Peck Memorial Scholarship Ben Ferguson MAT ’13 Elizabeth Marr ’12, MAT ’13 Gale Stafford ’12, MAT ’13 Kellie Stiewert ’14 Ida and William Rosenthal Scholarship Forest Purnell ’14 TELOS Public Action Field Work Term Scholarship Maliha Ali ’15 Ariel Andrew ’13 Molly Brown ’15 Hannah Davidson ’15 Caitlyn Davis ’14 Nicholas Dregni ’16 Hannah Duffany ’13 Sarah Fetterman ’14 Alaina Gercak ’15 Chernoh Jalloh ’15 Nora LaCasse ’13 Ezra Lowrey ’13 Jason Moon ’13 Grace Pease ’14 Selina Petschek ’15 Hannah Rojo ’14 Emilie Slater ’13 Ray Stevens ’15
Frances Wells Magee ’51 Scholarship Chernoh S. Jalloh ’15
FOUR-YEAR SCHOLARSHIPS
Jerome A. and Estelle R. Newman Assistance Fund Scholarship Corina Dalzell ’13 Kevin Green ’13
Frankenthaler-Stickney Scholarship Vera Andrade-Turner ’16 Leah Dagen ’13 Erick Daniszewski ’14
Alisa Reith ’13 Samuel Swann ’16 Joseph S. Iseman Scholarship Liam Dailey 14 Grace Pease ’14 Katharine Evarts Merck ’46 Scholarship Ousseynou Diome ’14 Jules Olitski Scholarship Mariam Shah ’14 Dale and Deborah Smith P ’05 Scholarship Elsa Costa ’14 Anushka Giri ’14
MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN WRITING SCHOLARSHIPS Barry Hannah Scholarship Bibi Deitz ’06, MFA ’14 Keith Lesmeister MFA ’14 Jane Kenyon Scholarship Patrick Boyle MFA ’14 Lauren Mitchell MFA ’14 Liam Rector Scholarship Jasmin Darznik MFA ’14 Jennifer Leija MFA ’14 Jennifer Miller MFA ’14 Emily Mohn MFA ’14 Jessica Weisberg MFA ’15 Jason Shinder Scholarship Maria Gren MFA ’15 Jayne Guertin MFA ’15
“To me, your scholarship support stands as an example of the importance of maintaining and expanding intergenerational relationships between Bennington students and alumni. Thank you.” —Esme Franklin ’13 recipient of the Barbara Ushkow Deane ’51 Scholarship W i n t e r 2013–14 • 71
Named for the former silo in the Pioneers’ Quadrangle outside the Barn, The Silo Society recognizes the generosity and thoughtfulness of foward-thinking individuals below who have included Bennington in their will and estate plans.
NEW MEMBERS Beverly Rantoul Turman ’67 Re’u Ben-James J.C. Edinger ’68 Elise Weinrich Geary ’73 Thomas Schabarum MFA ’02 Ginny Olmer P ’98
LIVING MEMBERS 1930s Ruth Dewing Ewing ’37, P ’74 Emma Swan Hall ’37 Ann Meyer Rothschild ’37, P ’71 Marcia Ward Behr ’38, P ’73
1940s Anonymous Mary Eddison Welch ’40, P ’71 Carol Channing ’42 Tina Safranski Fredericks ’43, P ’73 Merrell Hopkins Hambleton ’43; P ’60, ’75 Pearl Friedman Staller ’43, P ’71 Barbara Ridder Irwin ’44 Anne Lyon Klopman ’44, P ’80 Karen Johnson Boyd ’46T Katharine Evarts Merck ’46
Louise Wachman Spiegel ’46 Mary Hammond Storer ’46T Hudas Schwartz Liff ’47, P ’77 Eileen Josten Lowe ’47 Beatrice O’Connell Lushington ’47 Sonia Grodka Blumenthal ’47 Ella Russell Torrey ’47 Mary Rickard Paul ’49 Felicia Warburg Rogan ’49
1950s Anonymous Wilhelmina Eaton ’50 Solange Batsell Herter ’50 Suzanne Lochhead Mink ’50 Barbara Ushkow Deane ’51T Frances Wells Magee ’51 Renee Bennett O’Sullivan ’51, P ’84 Louise Truesdale Loening ’52 Martia Reed Smith ’52 Lucretia McPherson Durrett ’53 Sally Holt Parsly ’54 Charlene Solow Schwartz ’54 Carole Press Stavenhagen ’54 Judith Backer Grunberg ’55 Margot Hartman-Tenney ’55, P ’81 Mancia Schwartz Propp ’55 Alma Sachs Daniel ’56
Ruth Ring Harvie ’56 Carrie McLeod Howson ’56 Kay Crawford Murray ’56 Michele Rogers Zwirn ’56 Helen Isaacs Barer ’57 Evelyn Stein Benjamin ’57 Darcy Lay Doyle ’57 Hadassah Houtz Hoffman ’57, P ’87 Judith Levine ’57 Sheila Hirschfeld Jacobs ’58 Ellen Count ’59 Joan Trooboff Geetter ’59 Jane Leoncavallo Hough ’59 Sidra Levine Rausch ’59
1960s Anonymous Joy Goldsmith ’60 Micky Schwartz Hillman ’60 Roa Lynn ’60 Patsy Rogers ’60, MA ’62 Deborah Culver Lawlor ’61 Kit Tobin ’61, P ’91 Rosalind Moger Bernheimer ’62 and Walter Bernheimer II Patricia Johanson ’62, P ’07 Jane Vance McCauley ’62 Susan Pickering DuMond ’63 Marianne Stafne Meyer ’63 Barbara Goldberg Rohdie ’63
Over the past 16 years, the College has received an average of $1.2 million dollars each year in planned gifts, which accounts for more than 16 percent of our annual fundraising totals. Individual bequests ranged from $1,000 to $2.7 million in recent years. 72 • b e n n i n g t o n m a g a z i n e
Holland Taylor ’64 Jill Underwood Bertrand ’65 Nancy Marshall ’65 Nancy E. Newton ’65 Danielle Forestier ’66 Susan C. Frary ’66 Heidi Jost von Bergen ’66 Carolyn Heimburger Gannon ’67 Lonny Joseph Gordon ’67 Elizabeth Ramsay Nigro ’67 Beverly Rantoul Turman ’67 Patricia Woodbridge Dunn ’68 Re’u Ben-James J.C. Edinger ’68 Judith Gerson ’68 Marie McKenney Tavernini ’68 Lindley Greenough Thomasset ’68 Susan Paris Borden ’69; G ’01, MAT ’02; G ’12T Evelyn Schroeder ’69 Kathleen Norris ’69
1970s Mary Bresnan ’70 Rebecca Mitchell ’70 Andréa Katz Vaucher ’70 Joan Katz von Ohlen ’70 Martha Meyer-Von Blon ’71 Anne Bergstrom ’72 Deborah Breiter ’72 Mary Ann Chiasson ’72 Jeannie H. Cross ’72 Randall Denker ’72 Rashid Dilworth Silvera ’72 Andrea Weisbrod Wilder ’72 Sigrid Burton ’73 Alice Wimer Erickson ’73 Richard Fishman ’73 Elise Weinrich Geary ’73 Alex Brown ’74 Polly Runyon-Wittrock ’74 Elizabeth Schulz ’74 Judith Wilson-Pates ’74 Laura Tahir ’75 Kristin Martinez ’76 Stephen M. Smith ’76 Jane A. Gil ’77 Mary Anne Sgarlat Baumgartner ’79 Signa Lynch Read ’79 Susie E. Reiss ’79S Carol Shea ’79
1980s Torrey Bettis ’80 Kimberly Kafka ’80 Cynthia Stix ’81 Peter N. Zinam ’81
Sherri Renee Rosenberg ’82 Joanne M. Weiss ’82 Ellen Kanner ’83 Susan Dimm Williams ’84 Marie Labbe Gertje ’85 Eric Ramirez-Ferrero ’85 Marri Davis ’86 Danielle Etzler ’86 David Michael Anthony Burgess ’87 Haley Alpiar Murphy ’88
1990s Peter Davis ’90 James A. Habacker ’94 Carole Merritt MFA ’96 Sheila T. Wall MFA ’96 James Simon ’97T Todd Knudson ’98
2000s Marsha Dubrow MFA ’00 Jenna Elizabeth White ’00 Thomas Schabarum MFA ’02 Clara L. Fajardo ’04 Courtney A. Hill Wulsin ’04 Lawson R. Wulsin, Jr. ’05
Parents and Friends Bernard and Salli Harris P ’85 Bertha Martin P ’85 Jerome Axelrod P ’86 Mary Fanelli P ’86 Gregory and Kathryn Knudson P ’98 Ginny Olmer P ’98 Joan GoodrichS Norman and Lyn Lear Loet and Edith Velmans
DECEASED MEMBERS Anonymous (3) Mary Rice Boyer ’36, P ’66 Asho Ingersoll Craine ’36 Rosamond Taylor Edmondson ’36 Yvette Hardman Edmondson ’36 Mary (Fletcher) Wardwell Gaylord ’36, P ’59 Lydia Lund Kennard ’36 Grace Sullivan McDermott ’36 Jane Woodhouse McLaughlin ’36 Edith Noyes Muma ’36, P ’70 Frances Trott Robinson ’36 Margaret Suter Rood ’36, P ’67 Margaret Tuttle Spencer ’36 Emalea Warner Trentman ’36 Bessie Schonberg Varley ’36 Helen Watkins ’36 Alene Potter Widmayer ’36 Nancy Reynolds Booth ’37
Elizabeth Brown ’37
Carolyn Gerber Diffenbaugh ’40
Anne Michie Sherman ’43
Jane Hutchins ’37
Phyllis R. Epstein ’40
Rebecca B. Stickney ’43
Joan May ’37
Marne Lloyd-Smith Hornblower ’40
Rosamund Reed Bodman ’44
Carola Manning McEachren ’40
Charlotte Eckhardt Kitchell ’44
Elizabeth Evans Munger ’37, P ’73 Carolyn Crossett Rowland ’37
Kathleen Harriman Mortimer ’40
Helen Webster Feeley Wheelwright ’37
MaryAverett Seelye ’40
June Parker Wilson ’37
Sara Carter Balogh ’41
Ruth Carter ’38
Jane Acheson Brown ’41
Elisabeth Zimmermann James ’38
Helen Keeler Burke ’41
Nancy Elliott Kelly ’38
Elaine Pear Cohen ’41
Emily Jamieson Knapp ’38, P ’80
Laura Rice ’41
Suzanne Stockard Underwood ’38, P ’65, G ’02
Margaret Dudley Thurber ’41
Jane Holmes Wood ’40
Rowena Wyant ’38 Dorothy McWilliams Cousins ’39
Mary Berna Till ’41, P ’71 Dotha Seaverns Welbourn ’41 Ann Whiteley Childs ’42
Janet Frey Harte ’44 A. Margaret Larson ’44 Phyllis Preston Lee ’44 Patricia Newman Nanon ’44 Betty Horner Walberg ’44 Julia Barnwell Houskeeper ’45 Aurelia Dixon McIntyre Klayf ’45 Edith Dinlocker Kuhn ’45 Barbara Burton Boyle ’46 Elizabeth Brierley ’46 Aurelia Brown ’46 Patricia George Peterson ’46
Susan Hedge Hossfeld ’42
Marianna van Rossen-Hoogendyk ’46
Margaret Twichell Jones ’42
Eleanor White Wright ’46
Margaret Brush Vandermade ’42
Diane Milam Dennis ’47
Elizabeth Hubbard Banker ’43
Kathleen Oliver Parker ’47
Caroline Welch Huntington ’39, P ’77
Jane Meyerhoff de Rochemont ’43
Constance Payson Pike ’47
Elizabeth Harrington Dickinson ’43
Rosalyn Long Udow ’47
Natalie Kimball McMillan ’39
Joan Hyatt ’43
Katharine Bunker Getsinger ’48
Emily Flesheim Schaffner ’39
Edith Stevens Sheldon ’43
Elinor Gottlieb Mannucci ’48
Charlotte Goodwin Craig ’39 William and Harriet Brigham Dickson ’39 Nancy Forgan Farnam ’39, P ’63, ’64
Grace Russell Wheeler ’48 Cynthia Moller ’49 Penelope Hartshorne Batcheler ’50 Judith Van Orden Peacock ’50 Judith Seaver Shea ’50 Joanne Brandenburger Surasky ’50 Nancy Ray Smith ’51 Elizabeth C. Wagner ’51 Elizabeth Ivory Greene ’52 Peggy Lampl ’52 Suzanne Kennedy Brown ’53 Elaine Allen Flug ’53 Susannah Means ’53 Suzanne Snowden ’53 Judith Rosenberg Hoffberger ’54 Miriam Hermanos Knapp ’55 Janet Burke Mann ’55 Lois Schulman Chazen ’56 Anna Carbone Lautore ’56 Valerie Reichman Aspinwall ’59 Barbara Ireland Fajardo ’64, P ’04 Cynthia Chevins ’76 Valerie C. Vaz ’78 Don Cornelius Belton ’81 Janice R. O’Connor ’86
Leo Gottlieb P ’48 Harry Burley P ’54 E.C. Bancroft P ’55 Sylvia Rappaport P ’59 Talbot Rantoul P ’67 James Reveley P ’68 Mary Penman Kydd P ’69 Dorothy T. Peck Flynn G ’77 Fred B. Grill P ’84 Charlotte Bowman Robert Davis Terry Ehrich Catharine Osgood Foster Thomas H. Foster Andrew Heiskell Irene M. Hunter Joseph S. Iseman Oscar and Zelia Ruebhausen Ethel McCullough Scott Marion C. Smith Estelle Smucker
“As I got older, I realized it was at Bennington where it all started. Living an authentic life is a common theme for most of my life. The college made an impression on me; it asked me to say what I wanted. Bennington makes you participate in the world; it forces you to participate in life, in problems that you alone can improve.” —Joy Goldsmith ’60
W i n t e r 2013–14 • 73
“Bennington constantly challenged me to question, to think and rethink why I was doing what I was doing, and so, instead of sticking to an originally fixed plan, I was left no choice but to reshape it as my learning process revealed new paths I needed to follow. Not many places would have been as hospitable to the kind of change of academic focus I undertook, but everything about Bennington supported me in my journey and the strange turns it has taken— the very structure of the place, my teachers, and my friends and fellow students.” —Joel Vall Thomas ’13 recipient of the 2012–2013 Alan Kornberg ’74 Scholarship
SENIOR CLASS GIFT PROGRAM $13,772
2013 marked the highest-ever participation by a senior class.
50.7% $12,407
$12,414 46.5%
43.0%
$7,810
$5,784
23.4%
8.5%
FY09 n n Total $ raised 74 • b e n n i n g t o n m a g a z i n e
FY10 n Class participation
FY11
FY12
FY13
The Next Pioneers are alumni from the classes of the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. They have claimed a stake in the College’s future by making Bennington a priority in their charitable giving. We are grateful to the following alumni who either made a leadership gift last fiscal year or have joined The Silo Society.
2012–2013 Steering Committee Amanda Spooner Frank ’92, Chair Marri Davis ’86, Founding Chair Annie Coggan-Crawford ’85 Lincoln Schatz ’86 Arjun Desai ’88 Tracy Katsky Boomer ’91 Brendan P. Frank ’94 David Anthony ’96 Eben N. Moore ’96 Jenna Elizabeth White ’00 Daniel B. Grossman, Jr. ’04 Shira Ariel Sternberg ’05 Henry W. Lyon ’11 Dmitri Glickman ’12 Lydia R. Viallon ’12S
President’s Circle Associates ($25,000 and above) Mary Bucksbaum Scanlan ’91
Patron Associates ($10,000 to $24,999) Matthew Marks ’85 and Jack Bankowsky ’81
Sponsoring Associates ($5,000 to $9,999) Jeremy Sager ’80 and Paula Clements Sager ’80 Beth Kaplan Karmin ’85 James Simon ’97T
Founding Associates ($2,500 to $4,999) Anonymous Robin Hackley Decker ’84 Melissa Rosenberg ’86 Elizabeth O. Silver ’86 Lori Cohen ’90 Tracy Katsky Boomer ’91 Albert F. Freihofer MAT ’03 Shira Ariel Sternberg ’05
Associates ($1,000 to $2,499) Barbara Meili ’80 Cynthia Stix ’81 Ray Foote III ’82, P ’17 Ann Paffrath Gallo ’82 William Ingraham ’82 John Silvestrini ’82 and Trudi H. Vetterlein ’84 Katherine Buechner Arthaud ’83 Ellen Kanner ’83 Robin ’84 and Blair Flicker Annie Coggan-Crawford ’85 T. Kent Hikida ’85 and Amy Schweitzer Hikida ’85 Carole Woodworth Perry ’85 Eric Ramirez-Ferrero ’85 Cynthia R. Donoghue ’86 Bret Easton Ellis ’86 Erik B. Holmberg ’86 Lincoln Schatz ’86 Neil R. Johnson ’87
Fiscal Year 2013 Next Pioneers Annual Leadership Giving Levels $1,000 or more for graduates from 1980–2002 $600 or more for graduates from 2003–05 $300 or more for graduates from 2006–08
Kathryn Aichele-Samardick ’88 Arjun Desai ’88 and Katherine Chia Rachel Schatz ’89 Sekka B. Scher ’90 Johan Hedborg ’91 Elizabeth Iarrapino Bellin ’92 Amanda Spooner Frank ’92 Eben N. Moore ’96 Todd Knudson ’98 Jenna Elizabeth White ’00 Andrew C. Miner ’04 Heather A. Young MFA ’11
Young Alumni Next Pioneers ($60 to $999) Thomas Schabarum MFA ’02 Nathan Jew ’04 Aarti Rana ’06T Sean Adams ’08 Julie L. Moore ’08 Samantha Damon ’09 Edward H. Ubell ’09 Tambudzai Kudze ’10 Karen F. Uhlmann MFA ’10 Hannah A. Barry ’11 V. Hansmann MFA ’11 Julia M. Lichtblau MFA ’11 Henry W. Lyon ’11 Cauley F. Powell ’11 Sima Wolf MFA ’11 Julia Kagan Baumann MFA ’12 Zoe N. Donnellycolt ’12 Dmitri Glickman ’12 Kenneth R. Harvey MFA ’12 Michael S. Lowell ’12 Eissa Saeed ’12S Lydia R. Viallon ’12S Claire Barber ’13 Josette Bockelie ’13 Evan Braun ’13 Robynn Gerstberger Colwell MFA ’13 Christina Cooper ’13 Robert J. DeLanghe ’13 Timothy P. Desrosiers ’13 Alexander Diaz ’13 Hannah Duffany ’13 Sarah R. Fuss MFA ’13 Sara Green ’13
Victoria Harty ’13 Val Haynes MFA ’13 Erica Hunt MFA ’13 Rainer Hunt ’13 Laura Jacobson ’13 Brandon LaDue ’13 Michaela Levin ’13 Ezra Lowrey ’13 Sarah Matusek ’13 Jason L. Moon ’13T Eric Mosher ’13 Jennie Rathbun MFA ’13 Anna Rogovoy ’13 Angelyn Scarvaci MFA ’13 Olympia Shannon ’13 Ranleigh Starling ’13 Lily White MFA ’13 Scott W. Milliman ’14 Grace C. Thomas ’15
Silo Society Members Torrey Bettis ’80 Kimberly Kafka ’80 Cynthia Stix ’81 Peter N. Zinam ’81 Sherri Renee Rosenberg ’82 Joanne M. Weiss ’82 Ellen Kanner ’83 Susan Dimm Williams ’84 Marie Labbe Gertje ’85 Eric Ramirez-Ferrero ’85 Marri Davis ’86 Danielle Etzler ’86 David Michael Anthony Burgess ’87 Haley Alpiar Murphy ’88 Peter Davis ’90 James A. Habacker MFA ’94 Carole Merritt MFA ’96 Sheila T. Wall MFA ’96 James Simon ’97T Todd Knudson ’98 Marsha Dubrow MFA ’00 Jenna Elizabeth White ’00 Thomas Schabrum MFA ’02 Clara L. Fajardo ’04 Lawson R. Wulsin, Jr. ’05 and Courtney A. Hill Wulsin ’04
$120 or more for graduates from 2009–11 $60 or more for current students and the Class of 2012 W i n t e r 2013–14 • 75
We gratefully acknowledge the following volunteers who worked to advance Bennington this past fiscal year through their dedication and commitment in so many ways.
2012–2013 Board of Trustees Priscilla Alexander ’58 Susan Paris Borden ’69 Karen Johnson Boyd ’46 John H. Boyd ’03 Suzanne C. Brundage ’08 Barbara Ushkow Deane ’51 William Q. Derrough Michael Hecht Lea Hershkowitz ’11 John J. Kenney Bobbie M. Knable Alan Kornberg ’74, Chair Insiyah Mohammad ’12 Aarti Rana ’06 Daniel B. Rowland James Simon ’97 Sara Steines Mary Hammond Storer ’46 Deborah Wadsworth Penelope Perkins Wilson ’45
Philanthropy Task Force Barbara Ushkow Deane ’51T, Chair Priscilla Alexander ’58T Rosalind Moger Bernheimer ’62 Susan Paris Borden ’69T Amanda Spooner Frank ’92 Carolyn Heimburger Gannon ’67 Judith Backer Grunberg ’55 Michael HechtT Alan Kornberg ’74T Victoria Woolner Samuels ’71 Deborah WadsworthT Penelope Perkins Wilson ’45T
Next Pioneers Steering Committee Amanda Spooner Frank ’92, Chair Marri Davis ’86, Founding Chair David Anthony ’96 Tracy Katsky Boomer ’91 Annie Coggan-Crawford ’85 Arjun Desai ’88 Brendan P. Frank ’94 Dmitri E.H. Glickman ’12 Daniel B. Grossman, Jr. ’04 Henry W. Lyon ’11 Eben N. Moore ’96 Lincoln Schatz ’86 Shira Ariel Sternberg ’05 Lydia R. Viallon ’12S Jenna Elizabeth White ’00
76 • b e n n i n g t o n m a g a z i n e
Alumni Cooperative Aryn M. Chapman ’95 Mary J. Early ’97 Danielle Forestier ’66 Kate E. Fox ’05 Kathryn L. Girard ’69 Jennifer Gray ’79 Ruth Ring Harvie ’56 Margot Hoerrner ’91 Heidi Hojnicki ’95 Miriam Gaber Kantor ’92 Joanne Lembo ’95 Janna Levenstein ’93 Lindsay Nealon ’02 Jacob S. Perkins ’07 Carole Woodworth Perry ’85 Jessica A. Phillips ’99 Barbara Goldberg Rohdie ’63 Rachel E. Shirk ’04 James Simon ’97T Chrissy K. Souder ’04 Taliesin T. Thomas ’98 Harriet Moger Watson ’68 Valerie S. Wetlaufer ’05, MAT ’06 Jenna Elizabeth White ’00 Brandi Wilson ’00 Richard D. Zigun ’75
Bennington Fund Alumni Volunteers Caitlin R. Bryan ’11 Ruth L. Griggs ’76 Heidi Hojnicki ’95 Tambudzai Kudze ’10 Joanne Lembo ’95 Melissa Marr ’93 Julie L. Moore ’08 Aarti Rana ’06T Chrissy K. Souder ’04 Taliesin T. Thomas ’98 Lucas Westcott ’03
2013 Senior Class Gift Steering Committee Josette Bockelie ’13 Sara Green ’13 Victoria Harty ’13 Rainer Hunt ’13 Brandon LaDue ’13 Terry Orr ’13 Kelly Pitman ’13 Ranleigh Starling ’13
Presidential Search Focus Group Hosts Bruce Berman ’74T Amanda Spooner Frank ’92 Alan Kornberg ’74T Rachel Schatz ’89
Presidential Focus Group Participants
2013 Winter Warm Up Committee
Sofia Alvarez ’07 Andrew Austin ’82 Andrew Bartle ’72 David Beitzel ’83 Lynn Bodkin P ’11 Barrie Cassileth ’59 Elizabeth Chaisson ’86 Aryn Chapman ’95 Mayree Clark P ’16 Michael Connolly ’76 Rebecca MacKenzie Cross ’78 Marri Davis ’86 John Eagle ’09 Mary Early ’97 Rachel Emmons Bradley ’00 Sherman Foote ’85 Ray Foote III ’82 Catherine Golden ’55 Joy Goldsmith ’60 Amy Hikida ’85 Kent Hikida ’85 Margot Starr Kernan ’48 Janna Levenstein ’93 Hudas Lift ’47 Wendy Liff ’77 Jennifer Lucienne ’84, P ’15 Henry Lyon ’11 Rebecca Cross Mackenzie ’78 Adrienne Marcus ’91 Kee Murary ’56 Jacob Perkins ’07 Barbara Rohdie ’63 Sherri Rosenburg ’83 Ann Meyer Rothschild ’37 Diane Sadnytzky P ’14 Nicholas Sadnytzky P ’14 Victoria Woolner Samuels ’71 Sekka Scher ’90 David Schunter P ’11 Marianne Schnell ’50 Charlene Schwartz ’54 Lizbet Simmons’93 Steven Skulnik P ’11 Chandler Smith ’05 Nick Stephens ’77 Lynne and Bronson Sweeney P ’00 Taliesin Thomas ’98 Karen Uhlmann MFA ’10 Emse Usdan ’77 Andrea Vaucher ’70, Jenna White ’00 John Wilcox P ’08 & P ’14 Jeffrey Williams P ’16 Laura-Lee Whittier Woods ’48 Michelle Zwirn ’56
Sofia Alvarez ’07 David Anthony ’96 Cinnamon Booth ’93 Annie Coggan-Crawford ’85 Catherine Croner ’85 Samantha Damon ’09 Marri Davis ’86 Susie Felber ’93 Amanda Spooner Frank ’92 Dmitri Glickman ’12 Daniel B. Grossman, Jr. ’04 Matthew Hutchinson ’95 Nathan Jew ’04 Jen Laskey ’96 Henry Lyon ’11 Eben Moore ’96 Matthew Moss ’94 Chandler Klang Smith ’05
2013 Senior Conference Adrian Agredo ’06, MAT ’07 and Liana Lewis Agredo ’07 David Anthony ’96 Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke ’07 Jason Irla ’08 Alec Julien ’88 Elizabeth Rosen Mayer ’78 Amanda A. Sullivan ’09 and Adam C. Freed ’08 Lawson R. Wulsin, Jr. ’05 and Courtney A. Hill Wulsin ’04
Regional Event Volunteers Rosalind Moger Bernheimer ’62 Tracy Katsky Boomer ’91 Chris Boscia ’87 Dina Emerson ’88 Danielle Forestier ’66 Janet Roosevelt Katten ’51 Sarah Kermensky ’00 Liz Mamorsky ’60 Sara Scripps ’01, MAT ’02 Emily Tareila ’10 Taliesin Thomas ’98
2013 All-Class Reunion Committee Priscilla Alexander ’58T Nancy Comstock Andrews ’63 David Anthony ’96 Elizabeth Iarrapino Bellin ’92 Rosalind Moger Bernheimer ’62 Judith Schneider Bond ’61 Tracy Katsky Boomer ’91 Cinnamon Booth ’93
Susan Paris Borden ’69; G ’01, MAT ’02; G ’12T Chris Boscia ’87 John Boyd ’03 Suzanne Brundage ’08T Aryn Chapman ’95 Annie Coggan-Crawford ’85 Samantha Damon ’09 Judith Selis Davidson ’63 Marri Davis ’86 Barbara Ushkow Deane ’51T Arjun Desai ’88 Bret Easton Ellis ’86 Susie Felber ’93 Amanda Spooner Frank ’92 Brendan Frank ’94 Uliana Fischbein Gabara ’61 Dmitri Glickman ’12 Daniel B. Grossman, Jr. ’04 Ruth Ring Harvie ’56 Leah Hershkowitz ’11T Ariel Herwitz ’06 Arlene Heyman ’63 Alan Kornberg ’74T Tambudzai Kudze ’10 Joanne Lembo ’95 Henry Lyon ’11 Catharine Maloney ’05 Jonathan Mann ’04 Sarah McAbee ’07 Jane Vance McCauley ’62 Insiyah Mohammad ’12T Eben Moore ’96 Julie Moore ’08 Kay Crawford Murray ’56 Myrna Packer ’74 Erin Parish ’88 David Anthony Perez ’06 Jessica Phillips ’99 Brian Pietras ’07 Janis Pryor ’71 Lincoln Schatz ’86 Rachel Schatz ’89 Rachel Shirk ’04 James Simon ’97T Chrissy Souder ’04 Shira Sternberg ’05 Nina Pelikan Straus ’64 Aaron Sylvan ’93 Taliesin Thomas ’98 Lydia R. Viallon ’12S Maisie Todd Wallick ’93 Vivian Lescher Werner ’43 Jenna Elizabeth White ’00 Terry Connelly Whiting ’58 Vanessa Guerrini-Maraldi Wilcox ’78; P ’08, ’14 Matty Wilder ’00 Penelope Perkins Wilson ’45T
Jenny Chapin Woods ’92 Courtney Hill Wulsin ’04 Lawson R. Wulsin, Jr. ’05
Field Work Term Volunteers
Amar Sahay ’97 Nedjelko Spaich ’08 Becky Steckhahn-Strohmer ’03 Dylan Thuras ’04 Sarah Whicker ’08
Jake Adams ’01 Crystal Barrick ’11
Additional Volunteers
Andrew Bartle ’76, P ’15
David Beitzel MFA ’83 Sigrid Burton ’73 Danielle Etzler ’86 Joy Goldsmith ’60 Tambu Kudze ’10 Kristen Martinez ’76 Rebecca Mitchell ’70 Ramaa Mosley ’95 Joe Mundt ’05 Clifford Ross Toni Ross P ’15 David Zicarelli ’83
Martha Bernabe ’03 Sam Clement ’08 Thomas Dunn ’96 Raania Durrani ’03 Sherman Foote ’85 Andrew Fridae ’12 Ashley Goodwin ’06 Jonathan Grusauskas ’09 Ben Hall ’04 Lindsay Howard ’08 Holly KhielS ’06 Andy Kolovos ’93 Rachael Kosch ’83 Lyzy Lusterman ’09 Jonathan Mann ’04 Ron Mann ’80 Emilia McCool ’03 Alice McGillicuddy ’11 Stephen Reinstein ’08 Aubrey Restifo ’11 Sarah Robotham ’12
Master of Fine Arts in Writing Outreach Volunteers Lisa Alexander MFA ’11 Jesper O. Andreasson MFA ’12 J. Mae Barizo MFA ’13 Rachel Blumenfeld MFA ’11 Carl E. Bogner MFA ’11 Gina M. Boubion-Ryan MFA ’11
Sabine Brigette MFA ’13
Rebecca J. Lachman MFA ’11
Elijah J. Burrell MFA ’12
Steven D. LaFond MFA ’11
Leslie Campbell MFA ’13
Cassandra L. Lapp MFA ’12
Reyna B. Clancy MFA ’11
Julia M. Lichtblau MFA ’11
Jennifer D. Cochran MFA ’12
Megan A. Malone MFA ’10
Ellen H. Collett MFA ’11
Fedwa Malti-Douglas MFA ’11
Robynn Gerstberger Colwell MFA ’13
Pamela J. Matz MFA ’10
Lorraine Comanor MFA ’13
Megan Mayhew-Bergman MFA ’10
Ruth W. Crocker MFA ’11
Tara M. McDaniel MFA ’12
James L. Dickson MFA ’11
Michael M. Meguid MFA ’12
Sarah C. Dornin MFA ’10
Danielle Newton MFA ’12
Catherine Faurot MFA ’12
Jeremy Oldfield MFA ’12
Lisa Fetchko MFA ’11
Susan Repko MFA ’12
Jody A. Forrester MFA ’10
Margaret Rich MFA ’12
Kathleen A. Gibbons MFA ’12
Kathryn Robinson MFA ’12
Muriel Gibson MFA ’13
Andrew Rosenzweig MFA ’12
Aaron H. Gilbreath MFA ’11
Elizabeth Schwyzer MFA ’13
Erin Glass MFA ’13
Rebecca C. Spence MFA ’10
V. Hansmann MFA ’11
Kathleen A. Stevenson MFA ’11
Kenneth R. Harvey MFA ’12
Cynthia Sweeney MFA ’13
Sharon Hazzard MFA ’11
Erin E. Trahan MFA ’10
Anjali Jha MFA ’12 Jamie-Lee Josselyn MFA ’11
Nicola Barilla Waldron MFA ’13
Erin Kasdin MFA ’13
Lily White MFA ’13
Miranda Kennedy MFA ’12
Bruce A. Willard MFA ’10
Sharon M. Knapp MFA ’11
Elizabeth R. Witte MFA ’11
Suzanne Koven MFA ’12
Martha A. Wolfe MFA ’12
Rachel L. Kurtz MFA ’12
Heather A. Young MFA ’11
Master of Fine Arts in Writing Residency Volunteers Reyna B. Clancy MFA ’11 Allison Devers MFA ’08 Anne Doolittle MFA ’99 Nicole Dunas MFA ’08 Judith Hertog MFA ’10 Steven D. LaFond MFA ’11 Carole M. Merritt MFA ’96 Catherine Parnell MFA ’00 John Gregory Phelan MFA ’12 Erica Plouffe Lazure MFA ’08 Lily White MFA ’13
MFA in Writing Class Agents Jimmie A. Cumbie MFA ’12 Susan Repko MFA ’12 Elizabeth Schwyzer MFA ’13 Anthony N.G. Tallon MFA ’13 *Every effort has been made to capture all volunteers. Please be sure to let us know if we have omitted your name in error.
“Bennington taught me that education wasn’t simply something that happened to me, but something that I participated in, something that I helped shape. Those sorts of lessons aren’t only about education, but about citizenship.” —Cynthia Hornbeck ’05
W i n t e r 2013–14 • 77
in memoriam
B Melissa Saltman Meyer ’65 Melissa Saltman Meyer ’65, devoted alumna and former trustee died on September 26, 2013, at her home in Lincoln, MA, at the age of 70. Mrs. Meyer graduated from Bennington with a concentration in literature. She also studied dance and maintained her interest in classical music and dance throughout her life, serving on the board of the American Ballet Theatre in New York. Mrs. Meyer was a generous supporter of Bennington and served as a trustee from 1993 to 2003, during which she championed the Meyer Recreation Barn and need-based scholarship support, which has been awarded to at least 18 Bennington students who are New York City residents. She chaired the board of the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park for 12 years, was a co-advisor with her husband for a family foundation in the New York Community Trust, and was chairman of the board of Family Service of Greater Boston for 12 years. She is survived by her husband Eugene Bradley Meyer; her son Nicholas Meyer and his wife Michelle; her son Jacob Meyer and his wife Rosamond; her son Nathaniel Meyer and his wife Erin; her sister Susanna Brooks; her brother David Saltman and his wife Pemmy; three grandchildren; and her sisterin-law Elizabeth E. Meyer ’75.
Sir Anthony Caro
Marian Warner Trotter ’39
Internationally renowned sculptor and former Bennington faculty member Sir Anthony Caro died on October 23, at the age of 89. Widely regarded as the greatest British sculptor of his generation, Caro worked as an assistant to Henry Moore in the 1950s. He first came to public attention with a groundbreaking show at Whitechapel Gallery in 1963 where he exhibited large abstract sculptures, such as Early One Morning (1962). Caro’s work was a radical departure from the way sculpture had been seen in the past and paved the way for future developments in threedimensional art. Caro joined the Bennington faculty in 1963 and taught until 1965 at which time he established close working relationships with artists Paul Feeley, Jules Olitski, and Kenneth Noland. Dubbed the “Green Mountain Boys” by Vogue in 1966, the four pioneering abstract artists helped put Bennington on the map as a visual arts mecca by attracting other distinguished artists and critics to the College. Caro also taught at St. Martin’s School of Art in London from 1953 to 1981 where he inspired a younger generation of British sculptors, including Phillip King, Tony Cragg, Barry Flanagan, Richard Long, and Gilbert & George. He was knighted in 1987 and received the Order of Merit in 2000. He is survived by his wife Sheila Girling and their two sons, Timothy and Paul, and three grandchildren.
Marian Warner Trotter died on May 29, 2013, at the age of 95. Mrs. Trotter graduated in 1939 with a degree in music. A talented and joyful musician her entire life, Mrs. Trotter played the piano, the harpsichord, sang in choirs, produced many Christmas pageants, and even taught her self-described tone-deaf husband, Jesse, how to play the recorder. A deeply spiritual woman, she shared her husband’s commitment to his ministry in the Episcopal church, including the Virginia Theological Seminary where they resided from 1946 until 1977. Mrs. Trotter’s deep love for her four children and her tireless devotion to making a good and stable home for her family were expressions of how valuable motherhood was to her, and of the joy it brought. She had a deep concern for the welfare of others, especially the mentally ill, for whom she served as advocate for many years. She served as senior warden on her parish vestry and participated in a continuing prayer group for 20 years. She was ahead of her time with her interests in environmental preservation, solar energy, and simple living. She is survived by a daughter, Marian Warner Trotter; two sons, William and Thomas; and a grandson, Alexander. She was preceded in death by her husband Jesse Trotter; her son John; and her four siblings, including Emalea Warner Trentman ’36.
7 8 • b e n n i n g t o n ma g az i n e
in Memoriam
B Carolyn Robinson Cassady ’44 Carolyn Robinson Cassady died on September 20, 2013 near her home in Bracknell, England; she was 90. Ms. Cassady graduated in 1944 with a degree in drama, which she studied under Francis Fergusson and once stated, “his teachings have been the inspiration and the ‘spine’ of my life and career ever since.” She went on to study painting and theater design at the University of Denver where she met her future husband, Neal Cassady. Once called “the grande dame of the Beat Generation,” she was a central figure in the real-life circle of friends whose cross-country travels were immortalized in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Ms. Cassady served as the inspiration for the character Camille, second wife of Dean Moriarity, which was based on her husband. Later Ms. Cassady penned her own chronicles of their adventures in the form of Heart Beat: My Life With Jack and Neal (1976) and Off the Road: My Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg (1990). Her books served as a sobering corrective to what she considered misconceptions about the lives of these heralded men. In 1972, she told novelist Gina Berriault, “I kept thinking that the imitators never knew and don’t know how miserable these men were. They think they were having marvelous times—joy, joy, joy—and they weren’t at all.” In recent years Ms. Cassady lived outside London, gardening and painting, often courted by celebrities or fans of the Beat Generation. She is survived by her daughters Cathy Sylvia and Jami; her son John; three grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
Norman Howard Greenberg, friend Norman Howard Greenberg passed away at his home in Bennington on September 19, 2013, a few days shy of his 96th birthday. Mr. Greenberg was a lifelong resident of Bennington and a loyal friend of the College. In 1949, he and his father left the cattle business and opened a hardware store on Main Street in Bennington. H. Greenberg & Son became one of the first home centers in the state providing hardware, paint, lumber, plumbing and heating, appliances, and housewares under one roof. The business eventually expanded to North Adams, MA, and Albany, NY. Mr. Greenberg was very involved in ensuring the economic health and vibrancy of his community. He was a founding member of the Greater Bennington Industrial Corporation, served as a board member of County National Bank in Bennington, sat on Governor Deane Davis’ economic council, and on the boards of the Bennington Museum, Bennington College, and Southern Vermont College. In 1979, he was invited by former college President Joe Murphy to join Bennington’s Community Advisory Council and served as one of the College’s most prominent friends in the local community. Mr. Greenberg was predeceased by his wife Selma. He is survived by his sons Edward, David, and Steven; five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
The Bennington community extends its deepest sympathy to the families and friends of the following alumni, parents, and friends of the College who passed away as of October 31, 2013.
Jean Beggs Colfelt ’37 Dorothea Smith Coryell ’39 Patricia Farley Hawkins ’39 Katrina Voorhees Berman ’41; P ’75 ’79 Jeanne Michaels Radow ’42, P ’74 Phyllis Shields Hansen ’44 Margot Loebl Gumport ’45 Clementine Lazaron Kaufman ’46 Barbara Heller ’47 Sarama Strobel Minoli ’47 Marilyn Lord Dux ’48 Ann Wilson Schecter ’49 Betty-Anne Gillett Restrick ’50 Jane Lees Lynch ’52
Barbara Pavell Loden ’53 Barbara Henkin Rothenberg ’54 Leonardo Cimino ’57 Linda Monheit Denholtz ’59 Carol Stout Howard ’60 Franka Culberg Jones ’60 Babette Amberger Brackett ’64 Danielle De Mers ’67 Jane Kitchell Angermeyer ’69 Patricia Man-Sullivan Williams ’73 Lilo Kantorowicz-Glick ’84, P ’76, former faculty Charles Harbin ’92 Alice Price-Paterson ’93
Jennifer Singer ’96 Jennie C. Welch ’10 Claire Clube MFA ’08 Robert Tishman P ’65 Irving H. Mauss P ’67 Novella H. Hegeman P ’69 Delbert Tenney P ’81 Bernard Harris P ’85 Dorothy Lagapa P ’91 Rolf Sternberg P ’05 Richard G. Darman, former trustee Tony Goldman, friend John Nissen, former staff
B W i n t e r 2013–14 • 79
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MARIKO SILVER Bennington’s 10th President INA U G U RAL Y EAR
“Everyone’s Bennington story is unique, yet we share a deep commitment to this place, this community, and the work it helps bring forth—our work, your work. We are here to push boundaries, to break down walls, to make, create, and explore. This is a place like no other. It’s time to share that with the world.” —Dr. Mariko Silver
R E G I O N A L C O N V E R SAT I O N S Take your seat at the table and join a community-wide exchange about the individual and collective experience of teaching and learning, making and doing.
N ew Yor k C ity • We d n e s d a y, Ja n u a r y 2 2 Was h ington , D C • We d n e s d a y, Fe b r u a r y 5 C h icago • Th u r s d ay, Fe b r u a r y 2 7 B oston • Th u r s d ay, M a rc h 2 0 Los A ngeles • S u n d ay, M a rc h 3 0 P ortland, O R • M o n d ay, A p r i l 7 San F rancisco • d a t e to b e a n n o u n c e d S eattle • d a t e to b e a n n o u n c e d
I N AU G U R AT I O N A day to teach, learn, create, and celebrate.
B ennington • SAT U R DAY, A P R I L 2 6
“ We are all in this quandary; one moment we’re inside our world of shapes and objects; and next we are wondering if that’s enough. Yet maybe that’s where the truth is hidden.” —Sir Anthony Caro
Sir Anthony Caro (1924–2013), Slow Movement, 1965, Arts Council Collection, London
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B ENNINGTON INA U G U RATES ITS TENTH P RESIDENT
MARIKO SILVER
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2014
A daylong celebration, honoring, in true Bennington style, what Bennington does best: teaching and learning.