CCS BARD

At a moment when artificial intelligence is reshaping debates about knowledge, creativity, labor, and judgment, this symposium seeks to move beyond familiar discussions of AI as either a tool of innovation or as bringer of the apocalypse, exploring what it does to the institutions and practices that have long organized cultural and intellectual life. Universities, museums, publishing houses, archives, research centers, and artistic communities all derive their authority from acts of judgment: selecting, interpreting, evaluating, attributing value, constructing narratives, and distinguishing significance from noise. It is precisely at this level that AI intervenes most forcefully. Bringing together artists, curators, scholars, and critics, the symposium will explore AI as a challenge to artistic authorship, the shifting relationship between generation and judgment, the politics embedded within seemingly neutral technical systems, the reconfiguration of labor, and the question of whether machine learning expands the horizons of imagination or merely automates existing forms of thought. Ultimately, the symposium proposes that the most urgent questions raised by AI are not technological but institutional, cultural, and ethical: what becomes of expertise, criticism, education, and cultural value when the production of plausible knowledge, images, and interpretations can increasingly be delegated to machines? What happens to institutions built on judgment when judgment itself becomes automated?

Full schedule and speaker information:

11:00am
Welcoming Remarks by Tom Eccles, Executive Director, Hessel Museum of Art and CCS Bard, and Mariano López Seoane, CCS Bard Director of the Graduate Program and ISLAA Fellow in Latin American Art, CCS Bard.

11:15am-12:30pm
Knowledge after AI
Artificial intelligence is transforming not only the tools through which knowledge is produced, but also the institutions and practices that determine what counts as knowledge in the first place. From classrooms and archives to scholarly publishing and cultural organizations, AI is reshaping the conditions under which we teach, write, research, evaluate, and disseminate ideas. This panel examines the implications of these transformations for higher education and cultural production, asking how AI is altering established notions of expertise, authorship, criticism, and intellectual labor. As machine learning systems become increasingly capable of generating texts, synthesizing information, and organizing vast bodies of data, what becomes of the forms of judgment that have traditionally underpinned scholarship and cultural work? Rather than focusing on technological innovation alone, the conversation will explore the broader epistemological, institutional, and political questions raised by AI’s growing presence in the production, circulation, and valuation of knowledge

Participants:

Natalie Bell is Curator and Head of the Art Museum at MIT Museum. Her work explores the intersections of contemporary art, science, technology, and public engagement, with a particular focus on how artists respond to emerging technological and social conditions.

Pamela M. Lee is an art historian and critic who is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at Yale University. Her scholarship explores the intersections of art, technology, media, and globalization, and includes influential books such as Chronophobia and Think Tank Aesthetics.

Sarah Johanna Theurer is a curator and art historian based in Basel, where she serves as Curator of Contemporary Art at Fondation Beyelet. Over the years, she has organized exhibitions on contemporary artistic practices engaging questions of technology, media, ecology, and social transformation. Her work often focuses on the relationship between art and the political conditions of the present.

Moderated by Dawn Chan, Senior Lecturer, CCS Bard

12:30pm-1:30pm
Lunch Break

1:30pm-2:45pm
Authorship, Imagination, and the Machine
Artificial intelligence is transforming not only how artworks are produced, but also how they are interpreted, circulated, exhibited, and assigned value. As generative systems become increasingly capable of creating texts, images, and audiovisual works, longstanding assumptions about creativity, originality, authorship, and artistic agency are being called into question. This panel explores the implications of these shifts for artists, curators, museums, and audiences alike. How do AI-generated images alter our understanding of artistic production? What new challenges do they pose for curatorial practice, visual literacy, and spectatorship? Can machine learning expand the horizons of imagination, or does it risk automating existing aesthetic conventions under the guise of innovation? Bringing together artists, curators, and scholars, the conversation will examine how AI is reshaping the cultural ecosystems through which art is made, interpreted, and experienced, while asking what forms of human judgment, creativity, and attention remain indispensable in the process.

Participants:

Catherine Griffiths is a designer and researcher exploring the politics of machine learning and its impact on labor, gender, algorithmic governance, and urban life. She is Assistant Professor in Computational Design Practices at Columbia GSAPP. Her creative research brings together critical AI studies, social documentary, and algorithmic visualization through simulations, films, installations, and critical software that expose and contest the often-invisible systems through which machine learning structures social life. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2024, she received a BRAID Responsible AI research grant from UK Research and Innovation and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Suzanne Kite is an Oglala Lakota artist, composer, and scholar whose work investigates contemporary Lakota ontologies, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. She is Assistant Professor of American and Indigenous Studies at Bard College and Director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI. Her interdisciplinary practice combines performance, computation, and critical Indigenous studies.

Michelle Kuo is Chief Curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A curator, writer, and editor, she previously served as Editor in Chief of Artforum. Her work focuses on modern and contemporary art, with particular attention to the intersections of aesthetics, politics, and social change.

Moderated by Lauren Cornell, Artistic Director, Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard

2:45pm-3:00pm
Break

3:00pm-4:00pm
Round Table
The symposium concludes with a roundtable bringing together all participants to reflect on the practical and institutional implications of the conversations that have unfolded throughout the day. Moving from diagnosis to proposition, this final discussion asks how universities, museums, and art schools might respond to the challenges and opportunities posed by artificial intelligence. Rather than attempting to predict the future, the session invites participants to consider what forms of knowledge, creativity, judgment, and education are worth preserving, transforming, or reinventing in a rapidly changing technological landscape.

Participants: All speakers
Moderators: Evan Calder Williams, Associate Professor, CCS Bard, and Lara Fresko Madra, Assistant Professor and Luma Fellow, CCS Bard

4:00pm-5:00pm
Public Reception