Gonzales-Day will teach at Bard during during the summer MFA program.
Program Summer 2022
Bard MFA takes place over two years and two months, with students in residence on campus during three consecutive summers, and two winter sessions of independent study completed off campus. Each summer session runs for eight intensive weeks; the 2022 summer session dates are Monday, June 6 through Friday, July 29, 2022. We do not offer an MFA program that runs on a traditional academic year schedule.
The day-to-day focus is on the individual process and work in progress, as each student confronts the conceptual and practical questions that are at the core of all artistic production. Work toward the M.F.A. degree continues during independent study sessions in the two intervening winters. The schedule of summers in residence and winter independent work can make earning the M.F.A. degree possible without sacrificing employment or other commitments. The result of this program design is a diverse group of students, including active mid-career artists, teachers, and professionals in other fields, as well as recent college graduates.
When applying, each candidate chooses a primary field— music/sound, photography, film/video, painting, sculpture, or writing. Regular meetings with faculty in the student’s chosen field and meetings with faculty from other disciplines are an intrinsic and necessary aspect of the program. Students are their own taskmasters in achieving credits for individual work and participation in community activities.
To learn more about the program
Ken Gonzales-Day’s interdisciplinary and conceptually grounded projects consider the history of photography, the construction of race, and the limits of representational systems ranging from the lynching photograph to museum display. Gonzales-Day was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography in 2017. His work has been exhibited at: The J. Paul Getty Museum; LACMA; The New Museum; REDCAT, Los Angeles; LAXART; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Generali Foundation, Vienna; the Minnesota Museum of Art, Saint Paul; the National Portrait Gallery and the American Art Museum of the Smithsonian Institutions, among others. His books include Lynching in the West: 1850-1935 (Duke) and Profiled (LACMA).