Commencement 2024
Schedule of Events
May 17-18, 2024

Held annually, the Periclean Scholar Awards competition recognizes excellence by awarding up to four prizes to seniors for distinguished projects in all disciplines. Periclean Scholar Awards recipients share the honor of this achievement at a ceremonial presentation of the project open to the College community. Following these presentations, Honors Forum members who are graduating seniors will receive their recognition medals. A reception will follow to celebrate graduating HF seniors and Periclean Scholar Awards recipients.

For additional information on Periclean Honors Forum, please contact Flagg Taylor.

At The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery

Yvette Molina: A Promise to the Leaves
State Farm Mezzanine Gallery
October 21, 2023 - September 7, 2025

Yvette Molina: A Promise to the Leaves is the fifth exhibition in a series that invites an artist to create a museum community space devoted to art, conversation, and contemplation. Yvette Molina presents new art and designs in this site-specific and evolving installation centered around the four elements—earth, air, water, fire—and a fifth constituent, the cosmos. In focusing on these ancient, fundamental substances, Molina reminds us that humans, plants, and all earthly beings are made of star stuff and survive by the elements. She encourages us to consider care as entangled within circles of life—care for one another, whether human or non-human, is care for ourselves and for all. Throughout the exhibition’s two years, Molina is inviting other artists to present their work in the space, bringing together multiple perspectives, styles, and materials and regularly re-energizing the installation’s balance between comfort and provocation.

Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour
Malloy Wing
February 3, 2024 - May 19, 2024

London-based artist Isaac Julien CBE RA is a multimedia filmmaker and photographer known for bringing history to life with a nuanced and thought-provoking visual language that critically addresses the politics of race and gender. His film installation Lessons of the Hour features actor Ray Fearon in the role of Frederick Douglass, the nineteenth-century abolitionist, writer, and freed slave. Open-ended narrative vignettes set in Washiongton, D.C., London, and Edinburgh portray Douglass with various influential women of his time - including Susan B. Anthony and Ottilie Assing - dramatizing ideas of racial and gender equality. Julien's work reiterates Douglass's belief in the importance and power of photography and picture-making in advocating for social justice. Julien conjures Douglass's role in the abolitionist movement, powerfully emphasizing its relevance to contemporary social justice struggles. Lessons of the Hour features ten screens of varying dimensions hung salon-style - referencing a popular ninteenth-century method of arranging a group of images.

Elevator Music 48: Alone, only in flesh
Elevator
February 10, 2024 - May 19, 2024

To leave, to live, then to return once again. How do we make sense of the newly unfamiliar? Expectations, hesitations, and new contemplations unfurl and transform prior to, during, and upon diasporic people’s returns to their homelands after forced and/or voluntary migration. Alone, only in flesh is a site-specific, collaborative meditation on three diasporic artists’ experiences in and between lands and waters, and how those experiences shape untranslatable connections to home and identity. In this exhibition, Antonius-Tín Bui, Theresa-Xuan Bui, and MIZU meld the language of altars—spaces of presence, transcendence, and transmission—with the liminality of the shifting elevator and welcome all to commune with the unknown. Through a combination of spoken word poetry, experimental cello, traditional Vietnamese áo dài (garments), Southeast Asian home goods, and Asian snacks, the installation engages all five senses—aural, visual, haptic, olfactory, and gustatory. Opening on Lunar New Year and stretching across several significant dates, including the anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, this installation will continually evolve. The artists will return to Alone, only in flesh after visits to Vietnam and Japan and make new offerings reflecting their ever-changing relationships to their motherlands. In this way, the expanding exhibition invites visitors to immerse themselves in it each time anew. Alone, only in flesh is anchored by the song “Sunrise” by Gus Dapperton, featuring the award-winning Vietnamese American poet and novelist Ocean Vuong.

Senior Thesis Art Exhibit
Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery
May 13–18, 2024
This exhibit showcases outstanding works in all media by senior studio-art majors.

Visit The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery website for more information on these exhibitions.

Induction ceremony for new members. Faculty, staff, students, and their families are welcome to attend. Reception follows.

A brief ceremony for seniors, families, and friends to announce the total raised by the senior 2024 class, and dedicate the Class of 2024 brick pathway, given by the families of the Class of 2024 in honor of their graduating seniors. Each brick is engraved with the name of the student whose families participate in the Class of 2024 Senior Family Project.

Visit the Class of 2024 Parent and Family Giving page for more information.

President's Reception
Scribner House, 791 North Broadway (Rain plan-Murray-Aikins Dining Hall, first floor)
President Marc C. Conner and Barbara Reyes-Conner greet seniors, their guests, trustees, faculty and staff at their home, historic Scribner House

Families, friends, and seniors are welcome as guests of the College.

Seniors arrive, pick up diplomas, and form processional.

Audience members are asked to be seated by this time.

113th Commencement Exercises
Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Saratoga Spa State Park

Commencement Reception
Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Saratoga Spa State Park
Come celebrate!  Please join graduates, families, friends, faculty, and staff for a celebratory reception following the Commencement Ceremony to acknowledge and celebrate the wonderful accomplishments of Skidmore College's Class of 2024.