Holly Bass, a multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, and writer, will join the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy in fall 2026 as a Harry A. and Margaret D. Towsley Foundation Policymaker in Residence. Bass, whose award-winning work spans dance, theater, poetry, photography, installation, video, and performance, brings to the Ford School a powerful practice rooted in American history, social justice, community engagement, and the arts as a vehicle for public dialogue. As part of her residency, Bass will teach "Arts-Full Strategies for Public Policy."
Bass's work explores themes of generational labor, liberation, national identity, and personal histories. A socially engaged artist and cultural worker based in Washington, DC, Bass has collaborated with government agencies, cultural institutions, nonprofit organizations, schools, and academic communities to create artistic experiences that foster connection and dialogue across communities.
"The Ford School is honored to welcome Holly Bass as a Towsley Policymaker in Residence," said Celeste Watkins-Hayes, Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of Public Policy. "Her work asks urgent questions about history, inequality, power, and belonging—questions that are central to public policy and civic life. She brings a distinctive artistic and public-facing practice that will challenge and inspire our students and community."
The course begins October 26 and will meet Mondays from 4:00–6:50 p.m. during the second half of the fall semester. The 1.5-credit course will explore how artistic strategies such as improvisation and creative community engagement can be applied to public policy, with case studies in public health, education, and criminal justice. Students can register through Wolverine Access (PubPol 475.201 or 750.201).
During the 2025-26 academic year, Bass served as a Visiting Fellow at the Ford School's Center for Racial Justice and the Roman J. Witt Visiting Artist, a joint program of the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design and the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). Through that residency, she developed We Hold These Truths…, a major exhibition opening at UMMA on October 3, 2026. Drawing on the nation's anniversary years—1876, 1976, and 2026—the exhibition explores how national ideals are staged in public, preserved in private, and passed down across generations. Bass will preview the exhibition during a public event on Thursday, September 17, 2026, from 5:30–7:00 p.m. at the Michigan Theater, presented in partnership with the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series and the Roman J. Witt Residency Program.
Her artwork is held in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. She has performed and exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the 2022 Venice Biennale as part of Loophole of Retreat, Simone Leigh's special project for the U.S. Pavilion. Her current manuscript, Activating Joy, explores the differences between activism, organizing, and culture shift work, as well as how creativity and joy can guide social justice work for individuals and collectives.
"I'm interested in how art can create space for people to encounter history differently—not as something fixed, but as something we continue to perform, revise, and live with," said Bass. "I look forward to working with Ford School students to think about how public policy, public memory, and creative practice shape the stories we tell about who we are."
Bass was a founding member of DC WritersCorps, teaching poetry workshops in schools, community centers, and women's shelters. From 2014 to 2019, she directed an arts program for adjudicated teens in Washington, DC's Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. From 2019 to 2025, she served as national director of Turnaround Arts at the Kennedy Center, a program designed to increase arts access in under-resourced elementary and middle schools.
Bass has received awards and fellowships across multiple art forms, including a 2024 Washington Award for art and social justice, a 2022 MAP Fund award for theater, a 2020 Live Feed residency at New York Live Arts for choreography and dance, and a 2021–22 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. She contributes book reviews to The New York Times and was the first journalist to put the term "hip hop theater" into print in a 1999 article for American Theatre magazine.
Bass studied modern dance under Viola Farber and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College before earning her master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
Learn more about Holly Bass: https://www.hollybass.com/
About the Towsley Policymaker in Residence program
Since 2002, the Harry A. and Margaret D. Towsley Foundation Policymaker in Residence Program has brought distinguished leaders to the Ford School to teach, advise, and mentor students, and to host public events in their areas of expertise. Bass's residency will offer Ford School students and the broader U-M community opportunities to engage with the intersections of art, policy, public memory, racial justice, and civic imagination.