Bard College Reveals 2024-25 Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism

The Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) and Bard College’s Human Rights Project announce architect and architectural historian Valentina Rozas-Krause as the 2024-25 recipient of the Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism. The appointment marks a decade since the fellowship was established in 2014 as an annual award bringing prominent scholars, activists, and artists to teach and conduct research on Bard’s campus. To date, the position has supported a diverse roster of artists, poets, theorists, journalists, and practitioners advancing sociopolitical engagement in their respective fields.

Rozas-Krause’s research interests lie at the intersection of the built environment and global cultural practices across the Americas and Europe. An assistant professor in design and architecture at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago, Chile, Rozas-Krause has written on strategies of oppression; resistance and memory within varying urban contexts; the absence of women in the global memorial landscape; colonialism’s sustained presence in the built environment; and the social, historic, and political dynamics of place more broadly.

As the 2024-25 Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism at Bard College, Rozas-Krause will work on her book Memorials and the Cult of Apology, which examines the role that memorials play in processes of symbolic and material reparation after political conflicts. Following a series of case studies in Berlin and Buenos Aires, the book builds an empirical and theoretical understanding of multiple aspects of apology and memorialization, their material forms, the actors involved, and the diverse effects that built apologies can produce.

“Valentina’s research unearthing the layers and complex symbols embedded in the built environment enables a deeper reading of the world around us,” said Tom Eccles, executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. “We look forward to having her on campus, where she will engage students in this critical study of the urban landscape, complementing and building on the rigorous examination of art objects and curatorial practices within CCS Bard’s program.”

“To interpret memorials in all their political complexity requires a combination of aesthetic and historical knowledge that few scholars possess,” said Thomas Keenan, director of Bard’s Human Rights Project. “Valentina is a remarkable exception to that rule. Her work offers genuinely new insights into a carefully-chosen range of material objects and into the larger question of what can happen at the intersection between human rights and the arts.”

The 10th anniversary of the Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism follows CCS Bard’s announcement this year of a new 12,000-square-foot addition to its library and archives named in recognition of a lead, $3M gift from the Keith Haring Foundation. The new Keith Haring Wing, expected to be completed in late 2025, builds on a longstanding partnership with CCS Bard and the Keith Haring Foundation, including the permanent endowment of the Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism in 2022. More information on previous appointees can be found at ccs.bard.edu.