Bennington College announces a gift of $12 million – $10 million to benefit the endowment and $2 million to advance current College priorities – from alumna and trustee Mary Bucksbaum Scanlan, class of 1991, of Woody Creek, Colorado. 

Ten million dollars of the gift will establish the endowed Mary Bucksbaum Scanlan '91 Visual Arts Creativity Fund, which will provide support in perpetuity for all aspects of visual arts priorities and programs, including: scholarships for students pursuing visual arts; Field Work Term scholarships for art-related internships; faculty positions; and art exhibitions and related programming, including in the Usdan Gallery. 

“I am thrilled to make this investment in the present and future of Bennington College,” said Mary Bucksbaum Scanlan. “My belief in the value and power of a Bennington education is unstinting; it changed my life. Bennington is a beacon in higher education and expanding the endowment to assure our future is paramount. I know how powerful the integration of art in a liberal arts education is to students’ ability to create new work in all fields, and I’m pleased to support today’s students and faculty – and those in the future – with this gift.” 

This gift is made as part of the $150 million comprehensive campaign, The World Needs More Bennington, the largest fundraising effort in the College’s history. The campaign is focused on raising funds to advance five priorities: Financial Aid; Field Work Term; Public Action; Campus Renewal; and the Bennington Writing Seminars. Mary’s gift brings total campaign donations, including deferred gifts, to $99.9 million. With this commitment, the endowment now reaches $52.9 million toward the campaign’s goal of increasing the endowment to $100 million.

“With Mary’s extraordinary gift and this historic campaign, we are further securing Bennington’s place as a leader of forward-thinking higher education and a hub of artistic and cultural innovation,” said Interim President Isabel Roche. 

“Artists and makers play an essential role in solving problems, building communities, and finding new solutions. Mary’s gift will ensure that future artists have access to an education that equips them to be the leaders we need in the world today,” said Paige Bartels, Senior Vice President for Strategy, Philanthropy, and Partnerships. “We are enormously grateful to Mary for her visionary commitment to Bennington.” 

“Bennington students graduate with a capacity to get things done, to explore new terrains, to find new solutions, and to thrive in a world without givens. This campaign is about ensuring that we have the resources to support and sustain the education that Bennington College provides,” said Nick Stephens ’77, chairman of the board of trustees of Bennington College and co-chair of the campaign. 

In addition to this gift, Mary has advanced the visual arts at Bennington in other important ways. She co-chairs the Art for Access initiative, launched in 2018, and recently gifted 110 works of art from the collection of her late mother, Melva Bucksbaum, to enrich the College both for teaching and to fund scholarships that provide access. Mary also contributed a collection of more than 500 art books donated from her mother’s library, increasing the depth and breadth of the Edward Clark Crossett Library’s collection of 16,000 art books and expanding the coverage of contemporary women artists and artists of color. The gift includes out-of-print catalogues and limited editions, including books on artists including Andrea Zittel, Mark Bradford, Dawoud Bey, Mona Hatoum, Wangechi Mutu, Yinka Shonibare, and Lorna Simpson.

 

About Field Work Term

Since its founding, Bennington College has required that every student, every year, get an internship or other work experience – called Field Work Term – which is integrated with their academics. Through these experiences, students develop a capacity to grasp and enter complex situations, to work and think independently, to collaborate, and to solve complex problems. Not only are these experiences what employers are looking for, but they are also critical in helping students identify the work they find most engaging.

“We know that work experiences – especially when coupled with academics, mentorship, and reflection – offer learning opportunities that are as important to our students as what happens in the classroom,” said Roche. “Given national trends – notably the decrease in the availability of paid internships, particularly in the arts – we are grateful for funding that allows students to access these rich educational experiences, regardless of financial circumstances.”

 

About Visual Arts at Bennington College

Bennington College has a long and pioneering history in the visual arts. Bennington was the first in the country to put the arts at the center of a liberal arts education, and one that has long embraced – for more than 80 years – the idea that art can shape our way of thinking about everything, from aesthetics and philosophy and literature to mathematics and environmental activism and community development. Bennington’s distinguished visual arts alumni have shaped the field of the visual arts, from artists to curators to dealers and gallerists. Alumni include Helen Frankenthaler ’49, Kathy Halbreich ’71, Stephen Mueller ’71, Sally Mann ’73, Dan Cameron ’79, Holly Block ’80, Carrie Moyer ’82, David Beitzel MFA ’83, Andrea Fiuczynski ’85, Matthew Marks ’85, Tom Sachs ’89, Odili Donald Odita MFA ’90, Anna Gaskell ’92, Güvenç Özel '02, and Heather Dewey Hagborg ’03.

 

About Usdan Gallery

The Suzanne Lemberg Usdan Gallery engages and advances the College’s history of innovation in the arts while addressing the wider community through exhibitions of contemporary artists and ideas. The 3,200-square-foot space is located on the main level of the Helen Frankenthaler Visual Arts Center. Since Anne Thompson was named the gallery’s first director in 2017, exhibitions have included Alexandra Bell’s Counternarratives, which was the first display of Bell’s work by an academic institution and the first to present her radical newspaper re-edits as a series. In 2018, Hyperallergic selected Scalar, a solo exhibition of work by painter Torkwase Dyson, as one of its top 20 exhibitions across the United States. 

 

About Bennington
Bennington College is a liberal arts college in southwestern Vermont that has distinguished itself as a vanguard institution within American higher education. It was the first to include the visual and performing arts in a liberal arts education and the first to integrate work in the classroom with work in the field. To this day, Bennington stands apart in requiring that every student, every year, get a job, complete an internship, or pursue an entrepreneurial experience. Bennington students work intensively with faculty to forge individual educational paths around their driving questions and interests.