Spring 2026 Course Search

Historical Dress: The Park-McCullough Project Spring ‘26

Delights of Ephemera explores the significance of mass-produced materials in the context of art movements and exhibitions. Contrary to its definition, ephemera can have power and permanence, giving agency to marginal and marginalized groups and providing a record of actions outside institutional structures. A poster for an exhibition can be as important—or, in terms of its historical presence, more important—as the exhibition itself.

In this course, we will explore various projects that aim to connect people with their surroundings and communities.
We will also explore the strategies that various artists have implemented to increase their audiences and interest in the arts.
We will analyze and design projects that seek sustainability, diversification, and access to the experience of art and culture.

By evaluating environments we could design artistic projects that promote art, artistic education, and the promotion of cultural products as actions to build community, identity, and a creative economy.

Composers throughout the ages have cut their teeth on the study of counterpoint – the intricate practice of writing melodies for several voices sounding at once. In this course, we’ll look mainly at 16th-century composers of counterpoint, and sing through pieces from Palestrina to Weelkes, while learning to compose in a variety of practices such as canons, the motet, and familiar style. We’ll gradually work our way from two-voice to four-voice counterpoint, and set texts in a variety of harmonic styles.

In this course, students will develop skills in aural perception, learning to visualize, sing, and notate music through melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic exercises. Students will learn to identify key signatures, intervals, 7th chords, triads, key relationships, common cadences and phrase structures, larger forms, tempo markings, and more.

Vandercook Proofing Presses were once a vital aspect of the printing industry and have been adopted widely by artists for letterpress printing and book arts. Bennington College is fortunate to possess three Vandercooks, housed in the Word and Image Lab.

Historical Dress: The Park-McCullough Project Spring '26

Working in collaboration with the local Park-McCullough Historic Governor’s Mansion, students will create a new archive of the historic dress collection.

The Tuning in the Trees is an advanced seminar in microtonality that treats tuning systems as both technical structures and living landscapes. Students will explore how musical intervals emerge from natural patterns—such as tree bifurcations, harmonic ratios, and number sequences—while engaging deeply with Just intonation, Meantone, Bohlen–Pierce, and other non-Western tunings.

This course is an introduction to the magic of copper plate Intaglio. We will explore various techniques to prepare our plates including hand working and acid etching with materials such as rosin resists and sugar lifts. By the end of term, we will be printing in color. Ultimately, the overall goal of our endeavors will be to begin a dialog about artistic production in a contemporary context while also exploring the unique history of the intaglio process.