Skidmore Announces 2025 Commencement Speakers

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Skidmore College will bestow honorary degrees upon poetjournalist and social entrepreneur Aaron P. Dworkin, and advocate and curator of the arts Adam D. Weinberg during the college’s 2025 Commencement Exercises on Saturday, May 17 at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

Both Dworkin and Weinberg will address graduates during the ceremony, which is open to all.

Dworkin is a 2005 MacArthur Fellow, advocate for the arts, best-selling author, poetjournalist, and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker. The longest-serving member of the National Council on the Arts, he has advised five presidential administrations. He is currently a professor of arts leadership and entrepreneurship at the University of Michigan and hosts the nationally broadcast show “Arts Engines.” He’s the author of poetry collections, “The Poetjournalist” and “They Said I Wasn’t Really Black,” as well as two memoirs, a children’s book, a science-fiction novel, and “The Entrepreneurial Artist: Lessons from Highly Successful Creatives.” He is the creator of both the Emmy Award-winning film “An American Prophecy” and the digital art project “Fractured History.” 

Weinberg is director emeritus and an honorary trustee of the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he served for 20 years as the Whitney’s Alice Pratt Brown Director. Throughout his career, he has curated exhibitions on dozens of 20th- and 21st-century artists, authored numerous catalogues, and lectured internationally.

Commencement exercises will begin at approximately 10:40 a.m., and a livestream of the event will be available via the Skidmore website.