Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies and Human Rights has launched its Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism thanks to a $400,000 grant from the Keith Haring Foundation. The Fellowship is a cross-disciplinary, annual, visiting Fellowship for a scholar, activist or artist to teach and conduct research at the Center for Curatorial Studies and the Human Rights Project at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The recipient will investigate the role of art as a catalyst for social change and present original research in an annual lecture. The findings will be published and distributed among colleges and universities worldwide.

Julia Gruen, Executive Director of the Keith Haring Foundation, said, “We are honored to establish this dynamic fellowship at Bard College in Keith Haring’s name. The artist as activist was a role integral to Haring’s own vision, identity and practice, and we are confident that a fellowship dedicated to this approach can produce illuminating opportunities for discourse and scholarship.” Haring, an American artist and social activist who succumbed to AIDS in 1990, often raised political questions about HIV/AIDS and gay identity through his work. Through his activism, Haring helped the mainstream understand the AIDS crisis as a human rights issue rather than an affliction faced by a specific community.

Bard College will begin accepting applications for the Keith Haring Fellowship in February. The first Fellow will be announced in the spring of 2014.