List of Bennington College people

This page lists notable alumni and faculty of Bennington College.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

Notable alumni

Architecture

  • Kevin Alter ’85: associate dean for graduate programs, Sid W. Richardson Centennial Professor of Architecture; director of the Summer Academy in Architecture; and associate director of the Center for American Architecture and Design at The University of Texas at Austin
  • David Choi ’96: principal, CHOIDESIGN + Partners; winner of Coptic Church International Design Contest, Edge as Center Competition
  • Patricia Johanson '62: designer of Fair Park Lagoon, Dallas; pioneer in the incorporation of art and ecology with infrastructure
  • Judith Munk: artist and designer associated with Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Art administration

  • Deborah Borda ’71: president and CEO, the Los Angeles Philharmonic; former president and CEO of the New York Philharmonic
  • Dan Cameron ’79: former director, visual arts, Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans), Chief Curator of the Orange County Museum of Art
  • Kathy Halbreich ’71: associate director, The Museum of Modern Art (New York)
  • Maren Hassinger ’69: director, the Rinehart School of Graduate Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art
  • Lindsay Howard
  • Harvey Lichtenstein ’53: chair, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Local Development Corporation; former executive director and president emeritus of the Board of Trustees, Brooklyn Academy of Music
  • Matthew Marks ’85: founder and owner, Matthew Marks Gallery
  • Sharon Ott ’72: former artistic director, Seattle Repertory Theater; Tony and Obie Awards; faculty, Savannah College of Art & Design; executive board member, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society
  • Virlana Tkacz '74; founding director of Yara Arts Group
  • Anne Waldman ’66: director and cofounder, Jack Kerouac School, The Naropa Institute; the Dylan Thomas Memorial Prize and NEA fellowships

Aviation

Business

  • Bruce Berman ’74: chairman and CEO, Village Roadshow Pictures; executive producer, The Matrix, Ocean's Eleven, Analyze This, Mystic River, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
  • Judith Jones ’45: vice president and senior editor, Knopf; author of The Tenth Muse: My Life with Food and The Pleasures of Cooking for One

Dance/choreography

  • Liz Lerman ’69: choreographer, founder/director, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange; 2002 MacArthur "Genius" Award winner
  • Lisa Nelson ’71: choreographer; former editor, Contact Quarterly; director of Videoda
  • Sara Rudner MFA ’99: director of dance, Sarah Lawrence College; former principal dancer, Twyla Tharp Dance; recipient of Bessie Award and Guggenheim grant

Education

  • Judith Butler ’78: professor and chair of comparative literature and rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley; author, Gender Trouble
  • Sheila Miyoshi Jager '84: professor of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College[1]
  • Ellen McCulloch-Lovell ’69: president, Marlboro College; former deputy assistant to President Clinton
  • Sally Liberman Smith ’50: founder/director, Lab School, Washington, DC

Film/theater/television

  • Betty Aberlin ′63: actress and poet, Mister Rogers′ Neighborhood
  • Alan Arkin ’55: actor, director, composer, author; film credits include Catch-22, The Russians Are Coming, Glengarry Glen Ross, Grosse Pointe Blank, The In-Laws, Little Miss Sunshine (Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor), Get Smart
  • Chris Bowen ’88: senior performing director, Blue Man Group; Obie and Drama Desk Awards
  • John Boyd: '03: actor, Bones[2]
  • Carol Channing ’42: Broadway and film actress; Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Hello, Dolly!; Golden Globe Award, Academy Award nomination
  • Spencer Cox (did not graduate): HIV/AIDS activist[3]
  • Tim Daly ’79: actor,Diner, Made in Heaven; TV credits include Witness to the Execution, Wings, The Fugitive, The Sopranos, Private Practice, "Madam Secretary"; Theatre World and Dramalogue awards
  • Peter Dinklage ’91: actor; film credits include Living in Oblivion, The Station Agent, Elf, Death at a Funeral, Saint John of Las Vegas, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, X-Men: Days of Future Past; TV credits include Nip/Tuck, 30 Rock, Game of Thrones
  • Mitchell Kriegman '74: Emmy award winning director and writer, The Book of Pooh, Bear in the Big Blue House, Clarissa Explains It All
  • Mitch Markowitz ’75: screenwriter, Good Morning Vietnam, Crazy People; TV credits include M*A*S*H, Too Close for Comfort, Monk
  • Alley Mills ’73: actress, The Wonder Years, The Bold and the Beautiful (Emmy and Golden Globe Award)
  • Barry Primus '60: actor/director/writer, Cagney & Lacey, The X-Files, LA Law; film credits include The Rose, American Hustle, Mistress, Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death
  • Anne Ramsey ’51: actress, The Goonies, Throw Momma from the Train; Saturn Award
  • Melissa Rosenberg ’86: writer/producer; TV credits include The Agency, Boston Public, Dexter; film credits include Step Up, Twilight, New Moon
  • Suzanne Shepherd ’56: actress; film credits include Working Girl, Goodfellas; TV credits include Law & Order, The Sopranos
  • Rider Strong: '09: Bennington MFA alum; screenwriter, director, producer: Irish Twins; actor, Boy Meets World
  • Holland Taylor ’64: actress; film credits include To Die For, The Truman Show, One Fine Day; TV credits include Bosom Buddies, The Practice (Emmy Award), Two and a Half Men
  • Justin Theroux ’93: actor; film credits include Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, Duplex, Mulholland Drive, American Psycho, Tropic of Thunder: Rain of Madness; TV credits include Alias, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, The Leftovers, John Adams
  • Virlana Tkacz '74: theater director
  • Jill Wisoff '77: film composer/actor; film credits include Welcome to the Dollhouse, Smart House, Creating Karma

Government/public service

  • Princess Yasmin Aga Khan ’73: vice chairman of Alzheimer's and Related Disorders Association; president of Alzheimer's Disease International

Journalism/broadcasting

  • James Geary ’85: former deputy editor of TIME magazine, Europe, Middle East, and Africa
  • Roger Kimball '75: art critic and conservative social commentator; editor and publisher of New Criterion
  • Ted Mooney ’73: senior editor, Art in America magazine
  • Wendy Perron ’69: editor-in-chief, Dance Magazine
  • Alec Wilkinson ’74: staff writer, The New Yorker; author of eight nonfiction books; Robert F. Kennedy Book Award

Music

  • Chris Barron ’90: lead singer, Spin Doctors
  • Alex Bleeker '08: member of the band Real Estate and Alex Bleeker and the Freaks
  • Alexander Huberty
  • Amelia Meath '09: member of the band Sylvan Esso and Mountain Man
  • Mountain Man: indie folk singing trio
  • Lisa Sokolov ’76: jazz vocalist, improviser and composer; originator, Embodied VoiceWork; director, The Institute for Embodied VoiceWork in New York; associate professor, NYU's Tisch School of the Arts
  • Michael Starobin ’79: orchestrator on Broadway for Sunday in the Park with George, Assassins, Falsettos, Guys and Dolls, King Lear, Visiting Mr. Green, Next to Normal
  • Will Stratton '10: singer/songwriter
  • Elizabeth Swados ’73: composer, writer, director; three-time Obie winner
  • James Tenney ’58: experimental composer; Roy E. Disney Family Chair in Musical Composition, CalArts
  • Joan Tower ’61: composer; Asher Edelman Professor of Music, Bard College; Grammy Award recipient
  • Susannah Waters ’86: soprano, profiled in Opera News; NYC Opera debut 1997 in Handel's Xerxes
  • Anthony Wilson ’90: composer/arranger, guitarist; toured with Diana Krall

Science/medicine

  • Barrie Cassileth ’59: Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
  • Jennifer Mieres ’82: director, nuclear cardiology; associate professor, New York University School of Medicine

Sports

Visual arts

  • Ralph Alswang ’87: official White House photographer, Clinton administration
  • Susan Crile ’65: painter; faculty, Hunter College
  • Helen Frankenthaler ’49: painter; pioneer in abstract expressionism
  • Anna Gaskell ’92: photographer; named as one of three Best and Brightest art photographers in America by Esquire magazine
  • Maren Hassinger '69: Installation, sculpture, performance artist also working in video. Director of the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
  • Sally Mann ’73: photographer; named one of "America's best photographers" by TIME magazine, author, Deep South, Proud Flesh
  • Robert Perkins (artist):Robert Perkins: poet and artist
  • Anne Poor: painter and war correspondent in World War II
  • Tom Sachs ’89: installation artist; work appeared in New York Times Magazine, Elle Décor magazine, The New York Post, GQ
  • Marian Zazeela '60: light-artist, designer, painter and musician

Writing

  • Mohammed Naseehu Ali '95: author; book, The Prophet of Zongo Street
  • Claire Blatchford '66: author and deafness advocate; book, Turning: Words Heard from Within
  • Carolyn Cassady ’44: author; book, Off the Road: My Years with Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg
  • Kiran Desai ’93: author; books, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (New York Times Notable Book) and Inheritance of Loss (winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize for fiction)
  • Gretel Ehrlich ’67: author; books, Arctic Heart: A Poem Cycle, Islands, The Universe, Home, This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland, The Future of Ice: A Journey into Cold; Whiting Creative Writing award, Guggenheim fellowship
  • Jill Eisenstadt '85, novelist; books, From Rockaway and Kiss Out
  • Bret Easton Ellis ’86: author; books, Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, American Psycho, Lunar Park, The Informers
  • Lynn Emanuel ’72: poet; books, Hotel Fiesta, The Dig, Then, Suddenly; National Poetry Series Award, Pushcart Prize, NEA, professor at University of Pittsburgh
  • Elizabeth Frank ’67: author; Pulitzer Prize for Louise Bogan: A Portrait; Cheat and Charmer: A Novel, Joseph E. Harry Chair in Modern Languages and Literature, Bard College
  • Tod Goldberg '09: author; books, Gangsterland, Living Dead Girl, Other Resort Cities, Burn Notice series
  • Sandra Hochman '57, poet and novelist, books, Manhattan Pastures, Jogging: A Love Story, Playing Tahoe; 1963 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award
  • Barbara Howes '37: poet; wife of William Jay Smith
  • Jonathan Lethem ’86: author; books, You Don't Love Me Yet, The Fortress of Solitude, Motherless Brooklyn (National Book Critics Circle Award), 2005 MacArthur "Genius" Award winner, Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, Chronic City, appointed Disney professor of creative writing at Pomona College
  • Cynthia Macdonald '50: poet; books, Amputations, (W)holes, I Can't Remember
  • Kathleen Norris ’69: author of Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, The Cloister Walk, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (New York Times Notable Book), and Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life; Guggenheim fellowship
  • Michael Pollan ’76: author; books, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore's Dilemma, The Botany of Desire (New York Times bestseller), Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, and A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder
  • Mary Ruefle '74: poet and essayist; books, Madness Rock and Honey (National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist), A Little White Shadow, Among the Musk Ox People; recipient of William Carlos Williams Award
  • Eva Salzman '82, poet; books, The English Earthquake, Bargain with the Watchman
  • Reginald Shepherd '88: poet, books, Some Are Drowning, Wrong, Otherhood
  • Donna Tartt ’86: author; 2014 Pulitzer Prize Winner for The Goldfinch; books, The Secret History, The Little Friend
  • Anne Waldman ’66: poet, books, Marriage: A Sentence, In the Room of Never Grieve, professor at Naropa University
  • Thisuri Wanniarachchi '16: author; books, Colombo Streets, The Terrorist's Daughter
  • Susan Wheeler '77, poet; books, Smokes, Bag o' Diamonds, Meme; Norma Farber First Book Award and finalist for National Book Award; Director of Creative Writing at Princeton University

Fictional characters

  • Rachel Owlglass, a wealthy woman from Long Island's Five Towns in Thomas Pynchon's 1963 novel V., graduated from Bennington

Notable current faculty

Notable former faculty

References

  1. ↑ "Sheila Miyoshi Jager". Oberlin College. Retrieved 11 May 2017.
  2. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-03-11. Retrieved 2015-02-25.
  3. ↑ Bernstein, Jacob (February 22, 2013). "Surviving AIDS, but Not the Life That Followed". NYTimes.com. Retrieved October 7, 2013.
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