Bard Graduate is excited to partner with the podcast Person Place Thing to host three live recordings. Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen, is an interview show based on this idea: people are particularly engaging when they speak not directly about themselves but about something theycare about. Guests talk about one person, one place, and one thing that are important to them. The result? Surprising stories from great talkers.
All recordings take place at 38 West 86th Street and include live musical accompaniment.
Adults $8 / Students and Seniors $5
Wednesday, March 7
6:30–7:45 pm: Person, Place, Thing
With guests Deborah Willis (artist, photographer, historian) and Hank Willis Thomas (artist)
Thursday, April 5
6:30–7:45 pm: Person Place Thing
With guest Michael Bierut (graphic designer, critic, educator)
Thursday, May 17
6:30–7:45 pm: Person Place Thing
With guest Adi Shamir-Baron (New York City Landmarks Preservation Commissioner)
Person Place Thing is produced with the JCC in Manhattan and sponsored by WAMC Northeast Public Radio in partnership with Humanities NY.
Michael Bierut is a partner in the New York office of the international design consultancy Pentagram, where his work includes brand identity, book design, packaging, and environmental graphics. His clients at Pentagram have included The New York Times, Saks Fifth Avenue, The Robin Hood Foundation, MIT Media Lab, Mastercard, Bobby Flay Bold Foods, Princeton University, the New York Jets, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Playwrights Horizons. As a volunteer to Hillary Clinton’s communications team, he designed the H logo that was ubiquitous throughout the campaign. Michael is on the faculty of the Yale School of Management and a senior critic in graphic design at the Yale School of Art. A book on his work, How to use graphic design to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry, and (every once in a while) change the world was published in 2015 by HarperCollins. His collection of new essays, Now You See It, was published in fall 2017.
Adi Shamir-Baron serves as an appointed New York City Landmarks Preservation Commissioner. Shamir-Baron has also served as an appointed commissioner with the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO. Her advocacy and outreach work has focused on the conservation and interpretation of cultural heritage culture sites faced with global challenges including ethnic conflicts, rapid urbanization, and environmental degradation. Shamir-Baron has advised institutions, community groups, and public agencies in the strategic planning of design initiatives focusing on open space, historic preservation, sustainable re- purposing of infrastructure in underserved urban areas, and the roles that design platforms play in driving economic development.
Deborah Willis, Ph.D., is chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and has an affiliated appointment as University Professor with the College of Arts and Sciences, Africana Studies also at NYU. Professor Willis has been the recipient of Guggenheim, Fletcher, and MacArthur fellowships, the Infinity Award in Writing from the International Center for Photography, and recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation Award. Named one of the “100 Most Important People in Photography” by American Photography magazine she is one of the nation’s leading historians of African American photography and curators of African American culture. Willis’s books include Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery, with Barbara Krauthamer; Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, and many others.
Hank Willis Thomas is a conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to identity, history and popular culture. His work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and abroad including the International Center of Photography, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Musée du quai Branly, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Randy Cohen’s first professional work was writing humor pieces, essays and stories for newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic, Young Love Comics). His first television work was writing for Late Night with David Letterman for which he won three Emmy awards. His fourth Emmy was for his work on Michael Moore’s TV Nation. He received a fifth Emmy as a result of a clerical error, and he kept it. For twelve years he wrote “The Ethicist,” a weekly column for the The New York Times Magazine. His most recent book (an optimistic formulation) is Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics of Everything.