Director’s Welcome

May 2022

This is a hopeful moment when it seems perhaps the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic may be behind us. Flowers are blooming and trees are in leaf all over the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where Bard Graduate Center makes its home. For the first time since 2019, our MA students are preparing to travel to Paris for a ten-day study course, led by professor Jeffrey Collins and organized as part of an ongoing exchange with the École du Louvre, followed by a two-week archaeological field trip to Greece led by professor Caspar Meyer. As sad as we were that the 2020–21 academic year had to take place almost entirely online, it taught us a great deal about our capacity for adaptability and resilience. We put those lessons into productive use in 2021–22, incorporating digital tools to make BGC research and exhibition experiences available all over the world.

BGC students and faculty demonstrated an impressive ability to thrive under the difficult circumstances of the pandemic: launching new ways of presenting their research online; producing videos of fascinating object biographies; leading virtual and in-person tours of our critically acclaimed exhibitions; participating in conversations and trainings about racial justice, diversity, equity, access, and inclusion (DEAI) across our fields of study; and launching and giving essential feedback for our new course, “Unsettling Things: Expanding Conversations in Studies of the Material World.” I’m very proud of their achievements. I’m also thankful to the generous donors whose ongoing support allowed us to offer PhD candidates an additional year of funding to complete their dissertations after their research was delayed during Covid.

On a personal note, BGC curators Earl Martin and Laura Microulis, many other staff members, and I devoted years of work to the exhibition Majolica Mania: Transatlantic Pottery in England and the United States, 1850–1915. Postponed twice because of Covid, it was wonderful to see it reopen the BGC Gallery in fall 2021. I’m also very proud that the accompanying three-volume catalogue was awarded the 2021 Historians of British Art Book Prize for an outstanding multi-authored book on the history of British art, architecture, and visual culture. The

Susan Weber. Photo by Da Ping Luo.

exhibition has continuing impact with installations at the Walters Art Museum, March 13–August 7, 2022, and the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent, England, where so many of the objects in the exhibition were created, October 8, 2022–January 29, 2023. Two excellent exhibitions opened in the BGC Gallery in February: Conserving Active Matter and Richard Tuttle: What Is the Object? Conserving Active Matter and its corresponding publication and events represent the culmination of BGC’s ten-year project Cultures of Conservation, which was made possible by the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Richard Tuttle: What Is the Object?, encourages visitors to pick up, hold, and interact with the objects Tuttle has collected over five decades. We are honored that many of these objects will become a permanent part of the BGC Study Collection where they will provide opportunities for examination and research by generations of future students.

BGC owes a debt to its alumni, who reached out in the summer of 2020 to urge us to do more and move quickly on DEAI initiatives. Although there is much more work to do, we are making progress. Since 2021, Dean Miller and I have been meeting regularly with BGC alumni who have shared their wisdom and experience in curation and exhibitionmaking with us. They have also offered career advice to graduating students. Seemingly every week, I learn of a significant award won, position landed, publication or paper written, exhibition curated, or another entrepreneurial or creative project undertaken by a BGC alum. That alumni continue to care deeply for BGC and its current students even as they achieve such remarkable professional success fills me with pride and gratitude.

I want to thank BGC students, faculty, and staff for surmounting the difficulties of the past two years. Together we will meet whatever challenges the 2022–23 academic year may bring and continue BGC’s essential work of exploring new ways of thinking about decorative arts, design history, and material culture.

Susan Weber Founder and Director