About the Exhibition
Exhibition curator, Kristin Waters (Bard College Class of 1973), describes how this project came about:
"In spring 2017 I read in the Bardian about the rare book collection that Woodstock resident and former civil rights attorney Alan Sussman had donated to Bard. When I next visited the college, Stevenson Library archivist Helene Tieger was kind enough to show me around. I was hooked, and since then I’ve been working with Helene and her associate Debra Klein, to create the exhibition, Abolition/Resistance. Many thanks to those who helped with this project, but especially to Helene and Debra who contributed at every stage."
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Dr. Waters studied art and philosophy at Bard and earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, one of few women in the discipline at the time. Her first published book was an edited collection, Women and Men Political Theorists: Enlightened Conversations (2000), scholarship that brought women and African American writers of the 17th – 19th centuries into discourse with the canon. Her second book, co-edited with Carol B. Conaway, Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds (2007), was awarded the Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians. She is currently completing Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Theory to be published in 2021 by the University Press of Mississippi. She credits her studies at Bard as the greatest influence on her intellectual life, even though by far, it was not all work, all the time.
Kristin Waters is professor emerita at Worcester State University and Resident Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis University, both in Massachusetts. You may reach her at [email protected].
About the collection
ALAN SUSSMAN’S collection spans five hundred years of works on resistance to oppression. In addition to his years as a civil rights attorney, his labors collecting these works and his gift of them to Bard College for scholarship and study is an act of resistance all its own.
Download the exhibit catalog here.
About this Omeka exhibit
This Omeka exhibit was designed by Anna Cinquemani of the Visual Resources Center. Debbie Klein was editor. It is an online recreation of the exhibit curated by Kristin Waters and installed in the Stevenson Library Vitrines between February 17- March 31, 2020.
The Stevenson vitrines are designed to showcase the interests of the Bard community. If you are interested in curating an exhibit, have a collection to share, or know an artist whose work you would like to see in the Vitrines, please email Debbie Klein ([email protected]); or Helene Tieger ([email protected]).