Bard Graduate Center 2023–24 Year in Review

2023–24 Year In Review

About Bard Graduate Center

Founded in 1993 by Susan Weber, Bard Graduate Center (BGC) is a research institute in New York City dedicated to studying the human past through objects, from those created for obvious aesthetic value to ordinary things that are part of everyday life. Its MA, PhD, and summer programs; gallery exhibitions; research initiatives; publications; and events explore new ways of thinking about the decorative arts, design history, and material culture. BGC is a member of the Association of Research Institutes in Art History and an academic unit of Bard College.

bgc.bard.edu

Board of Trustees

Michele Beiny Harkins

Brandy S. Culp

Hélène David-Weill

Nancy Druckman

Helen W. Drutt English

Elizabeth English

Carol Grossman

Ana Horta Osório

Holly Hotchner

Fernanda Kellogg

Dr. Wolfram Koeppe

Dr. Sarah E. Lawrence

Dr. Arnold L. Lehman

Martin Levy

David Mann

Dr. Caryl McFarlane

Dr. Steven Nelson

Jennifer Olshin

Lisa Podos

Ann Pyne

Linda Roth

Sir Paul Ruddock

Emma Scully

Gregory Soros

Luke Syson

Dr. Charlotte Vignon

Shelby White

Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.

Philip L. Yang, Jr.

Ex-officio:

Dr. Leon Botstein

Dr. Christian Ayne Crouch

Dr. Susan Weber

Director’s Welcome

May 2024

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Bard Graduate Center’s board chair, Nancy Druckman, recently said that there is an undeniable sense of energy, engagement, and forward momentum at BGC these days. I couldn’t agree more.

As I write this, we are preparing to celebrate our new graduates, looking forward to summer travel and research projects, and reflecting on the many successes of our students, alumni, faculty, and staf. In the past year, several BGC alumni have been appointed to important academic and curatorial positions; our exhibitions have received an astonishing breadth of glowing press coverage; and a fascinating array of guest speakers and fellows have invigorated our community. In March we welcomed a new chief advancement ofcer, Lindsay Smilow, and in July, Julia Siemon will become BGC’s director of exhibitions and chief curator. We completed the purchase of 8 West 86th Street to create much-needed space for BGC’s growing object Study Collection and for student research and presentations. To top it of, we have accepted our largest incoming class since 2010. As you can imagine, I feel incredibly proud of the institution I founded thirty years ago and of the faculty, staf, and board, whose unparalleled dedication makes it thrive.

You can explore the research, publications, exhibitions, and events that our remarkable community of scholars and curators has produced over the past year on the pages of this edition of the Year in Review. More importantly, I invite you to visit us on West 86th Street in the coming academic year to sample for yourself all that BGC has to ofer, including the project that has occupied much of my time over the past year, Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today. It has been a pleasure to work with Charlotte Vignon, Tamara Préaud, and Soazig Guilmin to bring many stunningly beautiful objects that have never before left the grounds of the Sèvres Museum and Manufactory to BGC.

Whether you come for an event or an exhibition, explore one of our catalogues or engage with us online, you are sure to feel the energy and momentum of the place. Join us!

by Brayden Heath.

Susan Weber Founder and Director

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Teaching

BGC Students Get in the Game

Jesse Merandy, director of Digital Humanities / Digital Exhibitions at Bard Graduate Center, has been a gamer his entire life, a passion that deeply informed the course he taught in fall 2023: Get in the Game. With the assistance of his colleagues, educational technologist Julie Fuller and associate curator of exhibitions Emma Cormack (MA ’18), he developed a syllabus that explored the material world of gaming from the nineteenth century to the present and the ways that museums and cultural institutions have used gaming experiences to engage their visitors.

Fortuitously, the New-York Historical Society (NYHS), just a few blocks from BGC, is home to the Liman Collection of antique games. This collection provides an important record of early game design, manufacturing, and

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Photo by Hemamset Angaza.

marketing in nineteenth-century America. Adding to the good fortune, BGC alumna Rebecca Klassen (MA ’11), NYHS’s curator of material culture, oversees the Liman Collection and has organized exhibitions that explore diferent themes and genres of games.

“From our first conversation, [Klassen] was incredibly accommodating and generous with her time,” noted Merandy. She presented him with a list of games in the collection, which reflected cultural contexts impacting the aesthetic and conceptual trends in board games, including the emergence of the parlor in the mid-nineteenth century, the events of the Civil War, and an increasing interest in travel.

Merandy and Klassen planned a class visit to view the games, which are housed in NYHS’s storage facility in Jersey City. Klassen carefully unboxed each game, drawing attention to its historical context and materiality, as well as various design, mechanical, and artistic elements. Merandy emphasized, “These historic games have a lot in common with popular modern games, particularly the player’s physical interaction with miniatures and game pieces. Some of them were visually intricate and featured early examples of chromolithographic printing. There is an amazing juxtaposition of simple materials, like cardboard, and the complex worlds they create.”

Some favorites among the students were The Great Game of Pharaoh’s Frogs (1891), in which molded tin and wire frogs leap into a painted cardboard pond, and The Game of Basket Ball (1898), whose illustrations of Victorian girls playing basketball reflect the emergence of team sports at women’s colleges.

MA student Ev Christie reflected, “Seeing these games gave us a better sense of how people might have enjoyed playing them over a hundred years ago.” Visiting the storage facility was itself a valuable experience that allowed students to see how museums store and preserve these kinds of objects. The students were also inspired by the chance to spend time with Klassen, a BGC alumna who holds a curatorial position in a highly regarded New York City museum. In the future, Merandy hopes to help create an exhibition that features these historic board games and encourages visitors to engage with them using gaming principles.

Faculty Reports

Susan Weber

Photo by Rathkopf Photography.

Two exhibitions dominated my curatorial and scholarly work this past year. The first, Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today, is organized by BGC in conjunction with Sèvres, Manufacture et Musée nationaux, and will open in September. As the first comprehensive history of the making and artistry of sculpture at Sèvres from its beginnings in the early eighteenth century to the present, it will showcase more than one hundred and eighty objects, including busts, medallions, vases, and table centerpieces. Many have never been on view, and others have never been shown outside of France. Visitors will learn about the institution’s long history of artist collaborations that continues to the present day, and some of the contemporary objects may surprise them. Finalizing the checklist and

the show’s design, catalogue, and interpretation consumed my time. I continued work on the multi-author catalogue that will accompany Philip Speakman Webb (1831–1915): Architect and Designer of the Arts and Crafts Movement, including research at institutions in Great Britain and the United States and refinement of my chapters on furniture design, stained glass, table glass, and tiles. I visited Webb’s London and country houses and organized two authors’ meetings at the Victoria and Albert Museum to shape the catalogue. Selection of objects and drawings for the show advances.

In addition, I turned a paper I delivered on the friendship and careers of architect-designers E. W. Godwin and William Burges at the Burges and Friends Conference at Worcester College, University of Oxford, into an essay for 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, which will be published this coming autumn.

Finally, I am thrilled that BGC will extend its presence on our block with the purchase and development of 8 West 86th Street. It will house our beautiful and ever-expanding Study Collection. I am excited about what this new addition will offer to our faculty and students in the field of decorative arts and material culture.

Jeffrey Collins

In fall 2023, I worked on my coauthored book investigating the rediscovery, repair, original form, and significance of an early first-century statue of a faun in rare red marble commissioned by Emperor Hadrian for his villa at Tivoli and displayed at Rome’s Capitoline Museum since the 1740s. In the spring, I coordinated admissions with Professor Andrew Morrall, conducting over ninety interviews to select this fall’s incoming class. I served on BGC committees to support diversity, equity, access, and inclusion; update the representation of the academic program on the website; consider the design of the new building at 8 West 86th Street; and select research events programmed by the Public Humanities + Research department. I also organized the 2024 Qualifying Paper Symposium at which graduating MA students presented their capstone projects.

I contributed to Forgery Beyond Deceit: Value, Fabrication, and the Desire for Ancient Rome (Oxford

University Press, 2023), an anthology investigating literary and material forgery in and of ancient Rome from antiquity to today. My epilogue, “Beyond Deceit and Beyond: Situating Scholarship on Forgery,” sets these contributions in historiographical context and considers the value of forgery studies as a transdisciplinary practice. I submitted two further essays for review and joined the editorial board for the series Le età del museo (The Museum Ages) from Ginevra Bentivoglio Editoria and the organizing committee for a conference on “El ojo experto: Método, limites, y la discipline de la Historia del Arte” at UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia), Madrid.

Ivan Gaskell

In fall 2023, I collaborated with associate professor Catherine Whalen to convene and teach the obligatory course for entering students, Approaches to the Object. I also taught a new course, “Simplify, simplify”—Henry David Thoreau and Material Culture, which included a collaborative close reading of Walden

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Photo by Rathkopf Photography.

BGC Faculty Contribute to Bloomsbury’s A Cultural History of Furniture

By Allison Donoghue (MA ’24)

Have you ever wondered about the materials and techniques used by ancient furniture makers? Or considered how furniture was depicted visually in early modern Europe? A long-awaited anthology with many Bard Graduate Center connections answers these questions.

A Cultural History of Furniture, published in six volumes (Bloomsbury, 2022) and recently added to the shelves of the BGC Library, follows the rich and diverse traditions of furniture design, manufacture, and use in Western Europe and its colonies over a 4,500-year period. Its ambitious scope required contributions from seventy experts in fields ranging from decorative arts, design, and material culture, to archaeology, history, and art history. Its general editor, Christina M. Anderson—a research fellow at BGC in fall 2016—tapped professors Jefrey Collins and Deborah L. Krohn to assist.

Photo by Byline Studio.

Treating furniture as an artifact deeply embedded in its cultural contexts, the anthology investigates how diverse social, religious, political, economic, and aesthetic factors shaped furniture’s production, circulation, and reception over time. It explores shifting definitions and understandings of furniture across a range of eras and places, as well as changes in forms, styles, materials, and methods of manufacture, going beyond existing art historical studies to explore how furnishings functioned in and across cultural contexts.

The anthology’s authors combine object-centered case studies with a careful reading of primary sources to shine new light on furniture’s social and cultural significance. Krohn explored the many ways that furniture was described or represented verbally in her chapter for volume three, The Age of Exploration. “My aim,” she explained, “was to use the ‘paper trail’ in inventories, cookbooks, plays, and poems to help get at the ways furniture was experienced, imagined, and recorded. Although my focus was on Italy and England, I’m convinced that similar dynamics involving gender diferences, the cultivation of privacy, and the organization of the household played out across Western Europe.”

Collins’s chapter for the same volume considers the diverse media and settings in which furniture was represented visually in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From design drafts, project drawings, and pattern books intended largely for makers, to engravings, tapestries, and paintings targeted to consumers, this broad graphic repertoire suggests how images of furniture circulated in early modern Europe and what values they communicated to their audiences.

His second chapter on furniture in the public setting for volume four, The Age of Enlightenment, proved more challenging due to limited survivals and a paucity of existing scholarship. “Even defining what ‘public’ furniture meant was not immediately obvious,” Collins explained, “which spurred me to think about the period and its material traces in a new way.” His chapter investigates a wide range of non-domestic sites including schools, government buildings, churches, synagogues, taverns, and social clubs, highlighting the key role furniture played in creating but also conditioning the emerging spaces of public sociability.

Krohn and Collins plan to use the volumes in teaching and are proud to have brought a BGC perspective to the project. They hope A Cultural History of Furniture will help students, curators, and professors mobilize object-based research in search of a broader historical synthesis. The series, and the many contributions from Bard Graduate Center faculty, underscore how artifacts of all kinds can be studied as primary evidence of the social and cultural practices of the past.

and an examination of Thoreau’s herbarium, his collections of minerals and Indigenous stone items, and his many surviving personal possessions. I taught two courses in spring 2024: The Art and Material Culture of Oceania; and Peter Paul Rubens: Designer and Diplomat. I continued to advise three PhD candidates researching and writing their dissertations, guided three PhD candidates through their field exams, and served as reader for one Qualifying Paper.

My term as an elected trustee of the American Society for Aesthetics ended in February 2024, but I continued to serve as the delegate of the American Society for Aesthetics to the American Council of Learned Societies, attending its annual meeting in Baltimore. I delivered “Reconstruction after Conflict: Heritage versus History” at the American Society for Aesthetics national annual meeting in Arlington, Virginia, in November 2023, and chaired the session “Connecting with Others” at the annual meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Society for Aesthetics in April 2024.

I published the exhibition review “Fashioned by Sargent,” for BGC’s journal, West 86th, online in February 2024. Following a research visit to the UK, I will spend the summer at my retreat in Massachusetts working on a book on museum values.

Aaron Glass

My new position as the inaugural associate chair of research programs

occupied much of my energy this year, as it involved establishing new administrative structures, workflows, and committees across BGC. In addition, I taught my two core seminars: The Social Lives of Things: The Anthropology of Art and Material Culture (fall 2023); and Exhibiting Culture/s: Anthropology in and of the Museum (spring 2024). I gave a paper on a memorial panel for my colleague Ira Jacknis at the biennial conference of the Native American Art Studies Association in Halifax, Nova Scotia; delivered a lecture on Franz Boas via Zoom to a museum anthropology class at the University of Illinois; and contributed to the Smart Lecture Series in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago, followed by a workshop on Northwest Coast Native art for faculty and graduate students at the Field Museum. I also continued to manage a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Advancement Grant that supports development of the digital platform to host my planned critical edition of Boas’s landmark 1897 monograph on Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) culture.

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Goals for this summer include editorial work and the completion of an introduction for the critical edition.

Freyja Hartzell

I was granted tenure in June 2023. A summer fellowship at the Strong National Museum of Play supported my forthcoming book, Dollatry: Designing Likeness. I presented “‘Nothing but a DOLL!’ Defining and Designing Likeness,” at the International Toy Research Association Conference in August 2023.

During my fall sabbatical, I developed my book. I presented “Welcome to the Dollhouse: Displaying Human Likeness” at the Design History Society Conference and “‘The Real Canvas is the Child’: Dollmaking for Disability and Physical Difference” at Hidden Worlds: Histories of Disability Things and Material Culture Workshop at the University of Manchester. I have been asked to submit the latter to an edited volume on the material culture of disability to be published by Manchester University Press.

During spring break, I conducted book-related research in Paris at the archives of the Palais Galliera and the Musée des Arts décoratifs.

This summer, I will lead BGC’s undergraduate summer school program: Designing Utopia.

Deborah L. Krohn

I’ve completed my first year in an enhanced chair of academic programs position created after the departure of the dean last summer. In October, an episode of the podcast Around the Table that I recorded with host Sarah Kernan was released. In November, I delivered a paper at a conference at the University of Copenhagen— Celebrations at Court: Ephemeral Objects, Materials, and Machineries in the Early Modern Period—and am revising it for publication in 2025. In December, I presented a talk for the Antiquarian Society in Chicago about my exhibition, Staging the Table in Europe 1500–1800. I returned in March for the Renaissance Society of America conference, where I spoke

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on a panel organized by two BGC alumnae, Sophie Pitman (MA ’13) and Hannah Kinney (MA ’14), “Curating the Early Modern Now.” I continued through the Midwest to Madison to participate in a panel at the University of Wisconsin on an exhibition curated by Sophie Pitman called Remaking the Renaissance. In March, I traveled to Los Angeles to visit the exhibition Dining with the Sultan: The Fine Art of Feasting at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I contributed an essay, “Material Culture and Elite Dining in Renaissance Italy,” to its catalogue. My book, Staging the Table in Europe 1500–1800, was awarded an honorable mention by the inaugural Nach Waxman Prize for Food and Drink Scholarship.

Meredith Linn

Archaeological Repository on artifacts excavated at the 7 Hanover Square site. As director of master’s studies, I helped students secure internships, building relationships with sponsoring institutions. In April, with BGC colleagues Andrew Kircher, mary adeogun (MA ’22), and PhD candidate Lauren Drapala, I attended the North Eastern Public Humanities Consortium’s annual meeting.

In summer 2023, I co-taught BGC’s undergraduate summer school with PhD student Tova Kadish. During the academic year, I taught Excavating the Empire City, Archaeology of African American Communities, and Archaeological Lab Methods, working with the New York City

This year, I continued work focused on Seneca Village, the predominantly African American community the city displaced in 1857 during the construction of Central Park, including leading site tours; presenting a paper at the annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology that will be part of a conference volume; working on Revealing Communities, a book I am editing based on a symposium I convened at BGC about the archaeology of free African American communities; and coauthoring a book about Seneca Village with Nan Rothschild and Diana diZerega Wall. I am also collaborating with Gergely Baics (Barnard), Leah Meisterlin (Columbia), and Myles Zhang (University of Michigan) on a 3D digital model, Envisioning Seneca Village, which is supported by the Central Park Conservancy and an advisory board of scholars and descendant community members.

Lastly, my book, Irish Fever: An Archaeology of Illness, Injury, and Healing in New York City, 1845–1875, was published in March.

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François Louis

In fall 2023, I taught two courses: the introductory Decorative Arts of Later Imperial China, 1000–1900; and a seminar, Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties (ca. 300 BCE–200 CE). During the spring semester I was on sabbatical. Among other things, I am revisiting research on the antiquarian history of the jue vessel. Last September I gave a talk entitled “Fake Plunder: The Case of Liao Gold and Silver” at the Third Conference of the European Association for Asian Art and Archaeology at the University of Ljubljana, in Slovenia. This talk was part of a panel on collecting entitled “The Object that Isn’t.” In February of this year I spoke on shipwreck archaeology in the history seminar China’s Age of Discovery at Yale University.

Annissa Malvoisin

In 2023–24, associate professor Drew Thompson and I organized the symposium Exhibiting Africa: State of the Field in African Art and the Diaspora. I participated

in several conferences including the Society for Africanist Scholars 26th Biennale Meeting; the Sudan Studies Research Conference; and Neu Conversations: African Art in American Museums. Additionally, I hosted a museum-focused roundtable at the American Society of Overseas Research Annual Meeting titled “Museums and the Nile Valley,” and gave guest lectures at New York University, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Rutgers. I contributed to the exhibition visiting guide for Africa & Byzantium at the Met and created a personal audio reflection for the BGC exhibition SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa

I attended the Council for Museum Anthropology’s Ivan Karp Workshop: Clay, Ceramics, Curation. It focused on the exhibition Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects about which I will publish a short report for Anthropology News. I have several publications in progress, including exhibition reviews, conference proceedings, and a chapter

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Photo by Liz Ligon.

on museums and ancient African collections. This summer, I will participate in the Arts Council of the African Studies Association Triennale’s roundtable, “Knowledge Creation and Co-Curation in Museums and Public Spaces: Contestations and Advances,” and I will cochair a panel on ancient North African art in African art galleries for Museum Day.

Jennifer Mass

This year I taught Twelve Critical Conservation Topics for the Humanities Scholar: When What Is Essential is Invisible to the Eye. We examined patina as a chemically created status signifier, the industrial revolution and artists’ materials, the causes of color, the ephemerality of born digital artworks, silver plate and economic history, controversies in conservation, object biography through chemistry and conservation, art forgery, Classical marbles, plastics, and inherent vice. Students wrote about authenticity through the lens of conservation and science and submitted a version of the same

paper written by ChatGPT. We then discussed the meaning of authenticity in the face of text, image, and multimedia generative software. I also co-taught PhD student Deena Engel’s directed readings course.

I gave several presentations at professional conferences this year including being on an ASA panel discussing the legacies and archives of Jacob Lawrence, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Alma Thomas. I also began a new research project on the Barnes Foundation’s collection of Blue and Rose Period and cubist works by Picasso. I continued to lead the scientific vetting committee at TEFAF (The European Fine Art Foundation) New York and gave lectures at Columbia University, the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU, and the NYU Museum Studies Program on the intersection of artworks’ condition issues, authenticity, and the law. I have also begun experimenting with using DALL-E from OpenAI to explore generating historic Syrian interiors that have been damaged or lost in Damascus during the Syrian civil war.

Caspar Meyer

I spent fall 2023 in BGC’s Research Institute and spring 2024 on sabbatical. This allowed me to complete several research outputs, including a volume in BGC’s Culture Histories of the Material World series, Finding the Future in the Past: Object Orientations between Innovation and Anticipation, coedited with M. J. Versluys, and my monograph on the Scythians for Reaktion Books,

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to be published in the coming year. Furthermore, I edited an open access collection of articles entitled Situating Eurasia in Antiquity: Nomadic Material Culture in the First Millennium BCE with an international roster of colleagues. It will appear in print this summer. My contribution, coauthored with Barbara Armbruster, presents the first English-language examination of the spectacular gold artifacts from the Early Scythian princely tomb Arzhan 2 in the Republic of Tuva. Most contributors to the volume live and work in Ukraine, several of them in the war-torn eastern part of the country. The bravery and devotion they display in their work is humbling.

I am currently finalizing the schedule of the student trip to Greece, part of the BGC summer travel program. The students will explore sites and museums in Athens and participate in fieldwork at the Archaic-period sanctuary on the island of Despotiko, where they will receive training in archaeological methods, architectural restoration, and museum conservation. Afterward, I will travel to Crete to

conduct an experimental project with the potter Vassilis Politakis to recreate several Athenian vase shapes using traditional materials, tools, and methods of forming and firing.

Andrew Morrall

October 2023 saw the opening of the newly reinstalled Northern Renaissance gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and with it the completion of the work of the External Advisory Committee on which I sat. The content, thematics, and presentation of its display inspired discussion in my course, Metamorphosis in the Arts of Early Modernity. In April 2024, I gave a talk in Princeton entitled “Metamorphosis and Metalwork,” at the conference Metamorphic Matter: Elemental Imagery in Early Modern Art, that drew on themes explored in that class.

In December 2023, my article, “Turning Back the Sun: Christoph Schissler’s Horologium Achaz as Kunststück,” appeared in Manipulating the Sun: Picturing

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Photo by Brayden Heath.

Astronomical Miracles from the Bible in the Early Modern Era, edited by Volker Remmert and Julia Ellinghaus, as part of the Nuncius Material and Visual History of Science series. It reconstructs the nature, purpose, and afterlife of an extraordinary sundial. Its themes—the links between craft technologies, emergent scientific ideas, cultural attitudes, and political economies—informed many student projects in my Ceramics and Society class.

This summer, I will present a paper at the University of Melbourne as part of a research project, Dürer’s Material World. This brings together an international team of scholars to provide a new, interdisciplinary account of the relationship between the material and sensory world of early modern Nuremberg and its print culture. My talk explores the expressive and affective dimensions of Dürer’s absorption of a mechanical, “objective” method of perspective drawing into the fabric of his art.

Helen Polson

In 2023–24, I taught Writing Objects in the fall and spring semesters, a required course for all incoming MA and PhD students that develops the knowledge of forms and proficiency in techniques required for effective graduate-level writing. I enjoyed helping students refine assignments, essays, qualifying papers, and dissertations, write grant applications, and craft personal statements and cover letters for internships and full-time employment. One of the highlights of

my year has been working with a number of ambitious master’s students to write successful proposals for conferences, workshop their papers with groups of peers and faculty, and then report back on their experiences to our class. In 2024–25, I hope to extend this community workshop model to include students interested in polishing essays and other writing created for BGC courses and submitting them for publication. This year I have edited interpretive texts for the BGC exhibitions SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa; Sonia Delaunay: Living Art; and am currently at work on the texts for the upcoming Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today

Mei Mei Rado

In the past year, I published three articles: “Botanical Fantasy in Silk: Transformations of a Rococo Floral Design from England to China,” in Material Cultures of the Global Eighteenth Century: Art, Mobility and Change (New York: Bloomsbury); “Le rideau tiré: Interior Drapery, Architectural Space, and Desire

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in Eighteenth-Century France,” in Textile in Architecture: From the Middle Ages to Modernism (New York: Routledge); and “The Court” in the exhibition catalogue China’s Hidden Century, 1796–1912 (British Museum / University of Washington Press). I am currently coediting a special issue, “Japonisme and Fashion,” for the Journal of Japonisme, which will be in print in fall 2024. I presented at symposia organized by the French Porcelain Society, UK; the British Museum; the Käte Hamburger Research Centre, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich; the National Palace Museum, Taiwan; the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society; and the Kunsthistorisches Institut–Max-Planck-Institut, Florence. In fall 2023, I was invited to speak in the lecture series New Directions in Art History in the Department of Art History at Harvard University, where I presented my forthcoming book, The Empire’s New Cloth: Cross-Cultural Textiles at the Qing Court (Yale University Press, early 2025). In June 2024, I will speak at the symposium Intertwined Textiles: Influence of Asian Fabrics

in the European Textile Industry (ca. 1200–1900) at the Museu do Oriente, Lisbon.

Drew Thompson

In fall 2023, I curated the exhibition SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery. As part of the exhibition, I organized with colleague Annissa Malvoisin a two-day symposium titled Exhibiting Africa: State of the Field in African Art and the Diaspora hosted by Bard Graduate Center and Brooklyn Museum. In addition to my curatorial work, I authored the essay “From Color to Blackness: The Subtleties of Liberation and the Search for Diaspora,” published in Meleko Mokgosi’s artist monograph, Spaces of Subjection. I also wrote on the multimedia artist Kara Walker and the printmaker Robert Blackburn for the Studio Museum’s Collection Handbook. In spring 2024, I moderated a discussion as part of The Library Is Open series at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and

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Preservation and was a panelist at the study day “Reframing ‘African Art’” hosted by Julie Crooks, curator of the arts of global Africa, hosted by the Art Gallery of Ontario. Finally, I attended The Radical Practice of Black Curation: A Symposium, organized by Tina Campt and Tania Nyong’o.

Ittai Weinryb

In June 2023, I published my first book in German, Die Hildesheimer Avantgarde: Kunst und Kolonialismus im mittelalterlichen Deutschland It centers on the material culture of colonialism in eleventh-century Germany. I have also published the two first books, Ceramic Arts and Pigments, in my new book series Art/Work (Princeton), which narrates a new history of art founded in the study of objects, materials, and technology. We are currently in production of the two next volumes, Plastics and Weaving.

Together with professor Caspar Meyer, I edited an issue of BGC’s journal West 86th centered on the

material culture of magic across cultures. In March, together with a team from Dumbarton Oaks, the National Museum of Asian Art, and the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France, I began a conservation project on the late-antique bronze horse from Yemen, which hopefully will lead to an exhibition centering on material culture and the mobility of technology in the Indian Ocean. In December I co-organized a two-day conference at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin on material culture of the Mongol Golden Horde. Currently I am co-organizing a two-day conference titled Enslavement and Art: Forced Labor in the History of Art that will take place in June at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. It will explore the relations between forced labor and art and material culture, from antiquity to modernity. This year, I also lectured in Princeton, Berlin, Hildesheim, Mexico City, Warsaw, Göttingen, Lyon, and Washington, DC.

Catherine Whalen

In 2023–24, I completed my book Material Politics: Francis P. Garvan and Collecting American Antiques in the Interwar United States for the series Public History in Historical Perspective at the University of Massachusetts Press. This project shows how this outspoken ideologue’s political and business dealings informed his collecting practices and unpacks the symbolic freight that he believed American antiques

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carried in service of what was, by the 1930s, an ambitious project of cultural and economic nationalism.

This year, I taught the seminar Americana Redux: Materializing Multiculturalism in the Postwar United States, which investigated how individuals and groups have deployed material culture to challenge, redefine, and expand constructs of citizenship and belonging in the US. Topics included the American Revolution Bicentennial in 1976 and the upcoming 250th commemoration in 2026. I also taught American Collectors and Collections, which explored the history, theory, and practice of collecting in the US from the nineteenth century to the present. Students learned oral history methodology and conducted interviews with collectors with a wide variety of interests. I also co-taught the foundation course Approaches to the Object with professor Ivan Gaskell and convened the spring semester of the year-long course Objects in Context: A Survey of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. I served on selection committees for

the Horowitz Book Prize and Public Humanities + Research events, and the faculty committee on Bard Graduate Center’s new building, 8 West 86th Street.

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Degrees Conferred

Doctor of Philosophy

Julia Grace Lillie, New York, NY

“Taking Refuge in Print: Immigrant Engravers from the Netherlands in Cologne, 1570–1610”

CINOA Award for Outstanding Dissertation

Courtney Ann Stewart, Toronto, Canada

“The Multifaceted History of The Brilliant Cut Diamond: From Sacred Solar Motif to Commercial Commodity, 1600–1750”

Diana Xiaoyi Yang, Shanghai, China

“Migrating Dragons: Zhangzhou Ceramics for Japan and Southeast Asia”

Lee B. Anderson Memorial Foundation Prize

BGC Class of 2024. Photo by Samuel Stuart Hollenshead.

Master of Philosophy

Caroline Elenowitz-Hess, New York, NY

“The Most Beautiful Woman in Paris: Politics, Art, and Fashion in France’s Third Republic”

Kenna Libes, Bethesda, MD

“‘The best of a bad job’: Navigating Fashion and Fatness in the Long Nineteenth Century”

Jeremy Julien Reeves, Montreal, Quebec

“Sixteenth-Century French Firearms”

Master of Arts

Karlyn A. Allenbrand, Olathe, KS

“‘Powered by the Sun’: The Commodification of Solar Energy during the Cold War, 1954–1960”

Antonia Anagnostopoulos, Kitchener, Ontario

“‘Are You French, Greek, Ottoman, Hellene, Or Roman’: ‘Amalia’ Dress in the New Greek Nation, 1832–1865”

Irène Berthezène, Paris, France

“Recovering the Design of Noémi Pernessin Raymond”

Elliot Camarra, West Falmouth, MA

“On Reflection: Mirrors at the Sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron” Clive Wainwright Award

Katherine Cohen, London, England

“How to Fix a Broken Pot: Conceptual Normativity in the Archaeology of Craft”

Angela Hermano Crenshaw, Providence, RI

“‘From out the filmy piña draperies around her white and shapely neck’: Philippine Piña Textiles and Discourses of Distinction”

Allison Frances Donoghue, Cohasset, MA

“‘A bead, a thimble or some other pauble’: Thimbles and Self-Identity in Early New York”

Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts Award

William Dunsmore, McKinney, TX

“‘A Winter Temperature in the Summer Time’: Preserving Nineteenth-Century Lagerkellers and German-American Heritage”

Mackensie Baxter Griffin, Trumbull, CT

“A Seat at the Table: The Dining Table in Black Art and Design, 1850–2022”

Robert Christopher Hewis, Grimsby, England

“Drinks and Desire: Coffee Culture in Early Modern Europe”

Clive Wainwright Award

Raphaël Machiels, London, England

“Finding Flanders: (Sub)national identities in the work of Maarten van Severen”

Patricia V.B. Madsen, Forest Hills, NY

“The Business of Art: The Union Porcelain Works”

Sydney Maresca, Kingston, NY

“‘Coats Woven of Turkie-feathers’: Indigenous Featherwork Mantles in the Seventeenth-Century American Northeast”

Caroline Genevieve Montague, Minneapolis, MN

“Gender, Technology, and Fashion: Knit Stockings in Seventeenth-Century England”

Rachel Salem-Wiseman, Toronto, Ontario

“Ruff Work: Laundresses and their Labor in Early Modern England and the Netherlands”

Samantha Kanoelani Santana, Livermore, CA

“Picture Perfect Hula Girls: A Story of Hula in New York City”

Mabel Capability Taylor, Muir Beach, CA

“Nostalgic Bulldozers and Glass Boxes: Nineteenth-Century Spectacle at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1970s”

Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts Award

Luli Zou, Yantai, China

“Beyond China Trade—A Biography of a Qing Dressing Case in Kingscote, Newport”

Digital Humanities / Digital Exhibitions

Bard Graduate Center’s Digital Humanities / Digital Exhibitions (DH/DX) initiative is a comprehensive curricular approach to decorative arts, design history, and material culture studies that leverages emerging digital tools and methodologies to support new modes of scholarship in the human sciences.

Each year, Jesse Merandy, director of DH/DX, and Julie Fuller, educational technologist, organize a salon at which students present digital projects that they have created for a variety of courses and in support of BGC exhibitions. This year, students presented virtual exhibition demonstrations created for professor Deborah L. Krohn’s Curatorial Thinking course and Merandy’s Game Design course; Object Interventions, a new website created by students in Approaches to the Object, a course required of every first-year student; web-based projects created in Meredith Linn and Caspar Meyer’s Digital Archaeological Heritage course; and 3D-printed objects created to support tours of the exhibition Sonia Delaunay: Living Art Students explained the digital resources they used, their sources of design inspiration, challenges they faced in completing their projects, and most importantly, how the projects could be used “in real life.”

Photo by Fresco Arts Team.

The “real life” application of the 3D-printed objects was especially evident. Students who work in the Digital Media Lab created a replica of a wooden printing block used in the fabrication of Sonia Delaunay’s textiles, which appears under glass in the exhibition. According to mary adeogun (MA ’22), BGC’s lead gallery educator, the 3D-printed model is an important component of the exhibition tours that she and BGC students ofer to the public. Adeogun said, “It helps visitors visualize how much labor goes into woodblock printing. Each color in Delaunay’s woodblock-printed textile designs had its own block. There is a textile in the exhibition that includes at least two colors—black and rust orange—but we only have the original woodblock for the black portion of the print. The DH/DX team printed a second woodblock that reconstructed what the rust orange portion of the print might have looked like. Holding two woodblocks in my hands as I talk through the woodblock printing process better represents for visitors just how many steps were involved.”

In the future, Merandy, Fuller, and the students hope to continue collaborating with faculty, curators, and visitor services staf on projects that incorporate 3D-printed objects, searching for opportunities to push the technology in service of learning and accessibility. Merandy said, “We have been developing prototypes that could be used by visitors with low vision or blindness.” The ability to hold and touch a 3D model might ofer a new way to understand an object’s dimensions, shapes, and contours, and printed textures may be able to represent its colors or materials. According to Merandy, “We are just at the beginning, but already we are seeing the unique potential that 3D printing ofers our community.”

Photo by Fresco Arts Team.

Courses Offered

Fall 2023

440. Get in the Game

Jesse Merandy

441. African Arts and Design

Drew Thompson

442. “Simplify, simplify”—Henry

David Thoreau and Material Culture

Ivan Gaskell

443. Design and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Europe

Elizabeth Koehn

444. Sèvres Extraordinaire! History and Production of the French Porcelain Manufactory of Sèvres from 1740 to the Present

Charlotte Vignon

445. Towards a Global Art History: Encounters in the Long Eighteenth Century

Mei Mei Rado

471. Americana Redux: Materializing Multiculturalism in the Postwar United States

Catherine Whalen

474. Archaeology of African American Communities

Meredith B. Linn

482. Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties, ca. 300 BCE–200 CE

François Louis

494. Twelve Critical Heritage Conservation Topics for the Humanities Scholar

Jennifer L. Mass

500. Objects in Context: A Survey of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture I

Andrew Morrall

502. Approaches to the Object

Ivan Gaskell, Catherine Whalen

509. History of European Textiles, Fourteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

Mei Mei Rado

510. Writing Objects

Helen Polson

526. Decorative Arts of Later Imperial China, 1000–1900

François Louis

730. The Social Lives of Things: The Anthropology of Art and Material Culture

Aaron Glass

748. The Sea Inside: Art and Material Culture of the Mediterranean World

Ittai Weinryb

959. Curatorial Thinking: Exhibition as Medium

Deborah L. Krohn

964. Excavating the Empire City: An Introduction to the Historical Archaeology of New York City

Meredith B. Linn

Spring 2024

434. Art and Iconography of African Kingdoms and Empires, from ca. 1500 BCE

Annissa Malvoisin

436. Crafting Intersectionality

Amanda Thompson

437. In Focus: Dollatry

Freyja Hartzell

438. Japonisme: The Great Wave and Beyond

Mei Mei Rado

439. In Focus II: (Re)Dressing the American Body

Emma McClendon, Lauren Downing

Peters

501. Objects in Context: A Survey of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture II

Catherine Whalen

510. Writing Objects II

Helen Polson

584. Ceramics and Society: A Social and Cultural History of European Ceramics, 1500–1900

Andrew Morrall

795. Exhibiting Culture/s: Anthropology In and Of the Museum

Aaron Glass

989. Metamorphosis in the Arts of Early Modernity and Beyond

Andrew Morrall

834. American Collectors and Collections

Catherine Whalen

851. The Occult and Its Artifact in the Middle Ages

Ittai Weinryb

950. Cleaning Up in Early Modern Europe: Intellectual, Social, and Material History

Deborah L. Krohn

967. Oceania: Art and Material Culture

Ivan Gaskell

970. Archaeological Lab Methods

Meredith B. Linn

993. Peter Paul Rubens: Designer and Diplomat

Ivan Gaskell

Beyond the Classroom

Student Internships

Bard Graduate Center’s internship program provides MA students with a range of professional experiences to explore potential career paths in museums, auction houses, archaeological sites, education, and public history. Students ordinarily satisfy this requirement during the summer between their first and second years.

The internship program is generously supported by Lewis I. Haber and Carmen Dubroc, the Scully Peretsman Foundation, the English Professional Development Award, Elizabeth English, and other sources.

2023 Internships

Karlyn Allenbrand R & Company (New York, NY)

Irène Berthezène O-di-C (Paris, France)

Angela Crenshaw

Excavating the Empire City: BGC Summer Program for Undergraduates (New York, NY)

Anna Crowley Bode (New York, NY)

Allison Donoghue Copley Society of Art (Boston, MA)

William Dunsmore Adkins Environmental Inc. (Durango, Colorado)

Robert Hewis Borscht Belt Museum (Catskill, NY)

Dorothy Hudson New-York Historical Society (New York, NY)

Raphaël Machiels Musée Carnavalet (Paris, France)

Caroline Montague Musée Cognacq-Jay (Paris, France)

Rachel Salem-Wiseman Borscht Belt Museum (Catskill, NY)

Samantha Santana Historic Districts Council (New York, NY)

Luli Zou Preservation Society of Newport County (Newport, RI)

Beyond the Classroom

Photo by Nishtha Dani (MA ’25).

Materials Day at BKLYN Clay:

Students Take the Wheel

By Nishtha Dani (MA ’25)

At Bard Graduate Center, students research human history through objects. Materials Days take us to studios all over New York City for hands-on experiences working with the raw materials from which those objects are made. Over the years, students have learned to blow glass, dye textiles, and make paper.

On a sunny day this past March, my fellow students and I visited BKLYN Clay in Tribeca for a ceramics Materials Day. The instructor, Emily Hofman, welcomed us to the studio. It looked like a warehouse for works of clay, fired and glazed in various colors. We donned yellow and blue aprons and took our seats.

Photo courtesy of Nishtha Dani (MA ’25).

Hofman demonstrated how to use each piece of unfamiliar equipment— the bat, the wheel, and the splash pan—with the patience of a skilled artist and teacher. She explained that centering the clay is the most important part of making ceramics, and often the hardest for beginners. Hofman showed us how to keep the wheel moving after centering the ball of clay on the bat and angling our hands to shape the work.

As she got us started, with our feet on the pedals and our bats on the wheels, Hofman realized that we would need all the help we could get and ofered us as many balls of clay as we wanted.

We learned a fundamental aspect of creating pottery: the clay can be used over and over as long as it is unfired. This quality grounded my whole experience of working with the material. My initial failed attempts ultimately led me to making three pieces that I was quite proud of.

Everyone eventually made pottery of various shapes, sizes, widths, and heights. Many pieces were crooked or unstable, and I was concerned about them not being perfect. This prompted Hofman to tell us how works made out of clay have a set of aesthetic properties that lie in harmony with their kinetic properties. Ceramics with deformed edges or uneven surfaces are a sign of the intrinsic malleable qualities of clay. They reflect the process of learning an ancient skill.

In our studies at BGC, we examine ceramics with varied shapes, sizes, glazes, and even techniques. Often, we discuss the process of making and emphasize the makers and their skilled labor. The diferent techniques employed all over the world, from Iran to China, have fascinated me for a long time, but I was able to gain a much closer and deeper understanding of the techniques by touching the clay and understanding the ways a pot is made and even unmade.

At the end of our session, Hofman told us to choose the glaze color for our works. As I cleaned my workstation and watched my classmates deliberate over their glazes, the intensity of labor, skill, and creativity required to make pottery out of balls of clay was visible on all our faces.

Three weeks later, our creations made their way to BGC. Seeing the glazes translated onto our pieces was an extraordinary feeling. As students of material culture, we encounter countless pottery shards in classes and writing exams and papers. And yet, this two-hour experience of making my first cup and wobbly dishes has transformed the way I will look at the ceramic objects in my books forever.

Student Travel and Research

Researching the Ruff: My Summer Research Trip in England

By Rachel Salem-Wiseman (MA ’24)

In the summer of 2023, with support from the BGC Student Travel and Research Fund, I embarked for England to conduct research for my qualifying paper—the capstone project for all graduating MA students— on the ruf, the starched, pleated collar that epitomizes the structured and sculptural elements of Elizabethan dress. I visited the Devon Archives, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Kent Archives, National Archives at Kew, several museums and historic sites, and the School of Historical Dress.

It is difcult to grasp the full history of the ruf as very few survive, and the starch women and laundresses who made them were illiterate and without a public voice. Although many men wore rufs, they spoke of the women who made them with disdain motivated by puritanism. To better understand the ruf as an object, free from biases and anxieties related to class and gender, I needed to access archival materials such as court cases, shopping lists, bills, and permits.

Photo by Fresco Arts Team.

At the Devon Archives, I viewed a document that recorded a new year’s gift from King Charles I to Dorothy Speckhard, the starch woman of Queen Elizabeth I, Anne of Denmark, and Henrietta Maria. At the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, I examined shopping lists and inventories pertaining to the use of blue starch in rufs. And at the Kent Archives, I viewed legal documents about the theft of rufs. Many of these documents are written partially in Latin, so transcribing them took a long time and a lot of cofee.

To my great excitement, Jenny Tiramani at the School of Historical Dress gave me a private tour. I am so grateful to her for showing me many of her reconstructions of historical rufs as well as diferent tools and techniques that were used to starch and pleat rufs. Meeting and speaking with her was one of the most enriching and interesting experiences of my academic career so far.

At the National Archives at Kew, I viewed a document discussing the process of gaining a permit to produce starch. It was interesting to see that the crown created such a long and in-depth document solely to address the production of starch. It was kept in a huge box full of other documents that I had to sort through until I found what I was looking for. I appreciated being able to touch and smell things from the sixteenth century and imagine who wrote them and who has touched them since.

Throughout my trip, I studied many portraits of individuals wearing rufs including those at the Cotehele House and Gardens in Cornwall, the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, and the Tate Britain, Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Wallace Collection in London. Viewing so many portraits featuring diferent styles of rufs and seeing such a range in the ages of wearers was an important aspect of my studies.

The experience of my research trip was eye-opening. Now I better understand the process of accessing archives and how to incorporate archival documents into my research. I am so grateful for the kindness that I was shown by the archivists, scholars, and librarians who I met with. I know that my qualifying paper, “Ruf Work: Laundresses and their Labor in Early Modern England and the Netherlands,” will be stronger because of this trip.

Rachel Salem-Wiseman’s travel expenses were covered in part by the Lee B. Anderson Memorial Foundation.

Elena Kanagy-Loux and Billy DeGregorio: Trading Places

BGC alumnus William DeGregorio and first-year PhD student Elena Kanagy-Loux connected at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Antonio Ratti Textile Center in late summer 2023, just before DeGregorio was appointed associate curator of the Costume Institute at the Met and Kanagy-Loux, a lacemaker and historian of women’s skilled labor who specializes in bobbin lace, left her post as a collections specialist at the Ratti Center to enroll in BGC’s PhD program. The two discussed DeGregorio’s new two-volume set about collector and connoisseur Percival D. Griffiths, which featured several pieces from the Met’s collection in the volume about Griffiths’s collection of early English needlework, and BGC’s role in their respective career paths.

Elena Kanagy-Loux: Hi Billy. It seems we’re like passing ships in the night!

William DeGregorio: Yes, we’re sort of switching positions. Are you excited to start your PhD?

Photo by Brayden Heath.

EKL: I am! My desire to pursue a PhD at BGC stemmed from working on the lace exhibition there last year, Threads of Power (2022–23). I was involved in many different facets of the exhibition, from consulting on the catalogue, to programming, to making a piece for the show itself and creating educational videos for social media. So, I realized that as much as I loved the experience of working with historic textiles and a wide community of scholars at the Ratti Center, I was spending more and more of my decreasing free time writing papers and presenting. After my experience working with BGC, I felt ready to make my own research a full-time pursuit. I admit, not being in the presence of objects every day will feel like a big change, as the best part about working in this department, or in a curatorial department, is having access to the art.

WDG: Agreed. I worked in museums first. I didn’t study art history as an undergraduate, I studied English, and I always thought I would be a journalist or something like that. I was interested in fashion, but I thought I would write about it. And then my first job out of college was at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I had seen exhibitions, but I didn’t really understand what it meant to create them. I worked there for two years as a department assistant, and the whole time I just pulled things out of cabinets and looked at them and read information in the databases. I got really interested in collecting and provenance, and then all roads led me to BGC. There

were a few colleagues at the MFA, Michelle Tolini-Finamore (PhD ’10) and Rebecca Tilles (MA ’07), who were alumni and recommended it highly to me.

EKL: Interesting. I did my undergrad at Fashion Institute of Technology where I studied textiles and surface design, so I have a maker’s background first and then layered history on top.

I’m curious about the work that you’ve done with Cora Ginsburg and how it led to the Percival Griffiths publication.

WDG: I started working for the Cora Ginsburg Gallery in 2012, right after I got my master’s. Titi Halle, the director, got a call one day from her friend, Chris Jussel, a very respected dealer and scholar who was the first host of Antiques Roadshow in the US. He had been approached by a collector in Chicago named John Bryan, who collected English furniture, needlework, and Arts and Crafts works, to write about Percival Griffiths, who is known in collecting and dealing circles as the pinnacle of connoisseur collectors. Chris wanted a collaborator, so he contacted Titi and she recommended me. We decided to try to track down everything that Griffiths ever owned. It became two volumes and was just published by Yale University Press earlier this year.

EKL: It’s a staggering set of volumes. I have such a soft spot for this period of English embroidery. BGC’s exhibition, English Embroidery from The Metropolitan Museum of Art,

ca. 1580–1700: ’Twixt Art and Nature (2008–09), introduced me to it. But I was surprised to learn in reading your volume that nineteenth-century collectors didn’t have a positive perspective of this era of embroidery and that there is a lot of criticism of the “quaint” or “childlike” quality and the intimacy of it. At that same time, antique lace was very fashionable, and lots of women were collecting it, and then later in the twentieth century, lace became totally outré. Your work clearly illustrates how the taste and value of art shift over time.

WDG: There’s always a pendulum swing. The chapter on the changing fashions and interest in this type of needlework was the most rewarding chapter to write because, as you said, it was not always highly valued. There was a prevailing nineteenth-century perspective that all great English art comes from the medieval tradition, and the seventeenth-century needlework by young women was viewed as quaint or homey in the nineteenth century.

Any time I look at a textile, I immediately think about how many hours of labor are behind it.

But, as I tried to trace in the book, there was a real change in interest around 1900. Marcus Huish said that these embroidered works were really documents of material culture, and they had so much to tell us about the fashions of the time—the furniture, the hairstyles, the gardens.

EKL: Any time I look at a textile, I immediately think about how many hours of labor are behind it. It varies, but often the best pieces take years to create. Some people think that most lace was produced by aristocratic ladies as a leisure activity, but if you understand the number of hours it would have taken to make, for example, a really elaborate Valenciennes lappet from the eighteenth century, and the skill level and years of apprenticeship and mastery needed to be able to produce something like that, it just can’t be a domestic product. It is the same with this embroidery—you have both professional workshops and solo young women producing it.

WDG: There was this obsession, particularly during the 1920s and 30s, with the idea that women had time to sit and do these things, and that all these idle hours were passed creating these beautiful works of art. Some of these pieces spoke to a kind of religious devotion, and there are pieces featuring portraits of monarchy that point to monarchical devotion as well. There’s also a strong nationalist bend to it because English embroidery from this period was really a unique product, and that’s why it was kind of despised for so

long. But then the pendulum swung, and it was, “Look how great they are!” So, a combination of all those things created a strong sense of nostalgia that these pieces evoked in people.

EKL: Something in your writing that really resonates with me is that we’re still battling these constructions of a nostalgic history that may or may not be based in reality. In this chapter, you included a quote from Connoisseur magazine, I believe, about how this type of embroidery represents the human and not art. That really stood out to me because textiles can be denigrated as less than fine art, but they’re actually so deep and layered that they represent something more intimate.

WDG: What I found so interesting in reading what people were writing about English embroidered caskets and cabinets at this time is that they speak of this kind of intimate connection that you have with the maker, specifically because you’re

interacting with these pieces— you’re opening them, you’re pulling out drawers, you might find things inside. There was a sense of discovery. The same goes for some costume pieces—when people talk about gloves or caps or shoes, they say things like, “Oh, well, you could just imagine Mary Queen of Scot’s little hand in this glove.” I understand the problems with that, but I’m also intrigued by how textiles function sort of uniquely in this way to draw people in. That’s why I study them.

EKL: I’m so glad you say that because that’s also what’s so fascinating for me about these objects. Looking at these gloves, there are tangible signs of human impact on them from four centuries ago. We can call it damage, but I think it’s more interesting than that. When studying art history and decorative art, there’s a resistance to exhibiting objects with signs of wear because you want to highlight the most perfect examples of everything, and

by Brayden Heath.

Photo

you want them to be unmarked by humans in a way, so I’m curious about your thoughts on that.

WDG: I think you’re right in that what stopped people from appreciating this material in the nineteenth century was that it was too human. It wasn’t aspiring to any kind of degree of perfection in terms of any of the traditional canons of art or taste.

EKL: We no longer have early provenance or original provenance for so many of these objects, and I always wonder, when was that lost?

WDG: I’m obsessed with this question too, because I hate when costume or textiles are used illustratively, to represent big ideas like industrialization or neoclassicism, as if they have no individual histories. Each of these items has a specific history, which is often ignored, but sometimes you can track it down. For example, we found that a pair of gloves in Griffiths’s collection came from another antiquarian collector named Alfred de la Fontaine, and they were published in a book by W. B. Redfern in 1905 called Royal and Historic Gloves and Shoes, and that’s where it says “Owned by James I.”

EKL: It’s so interesting for me to hear you talk about these objects, because I have handled most of them during my time here. I’m very familiar with their accession numbers and what cabinets they live in, but I don’t always know the history of how they

Photo by Brayden Heath.

got here. We also have the benefit of looking backwards at these things as a group and seeing the similarities, but perhaps somebody making them wouldn’t. It’s impossible to really get the full perspective of what someone would have experienced or how they would’ve seen their own work. But we can do our best; we can take a stab at it.

WDG: I try. My whole goal in life is to contextualize things as much as possible.

EKL: Now that you will be a curator in the Costume Institute, can you give me an overview of the collection that you’ll be working with?

WDG: It’s one of the best collections of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century costume, and I’m excited to see the things that have not been exhibited and to dig into archives and object files.

Do you have an idea of what you’ll be working on at BGC?

EKL: I’m interested in looking at the dissemination of lacemaking and how it got from Europe to places like China, Jamaica, and Madagascar. I already have a list of archives I want to visit.

WDG: Amazing! I wish you the best on your time at BGC.

EKL: And I am so excited to see what you will do at the Met!

Exhibitions

Photo by Brayden Heath.

Bard Graduate Center offered two exhibitions this past year. SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa, curated by associate professor Drew Thompson, forged new ground in our gallery by bringing historic African metal arts together with the work of contemporary artists of the African Diaspora. Sonia Delaunay: Living Art, curated by Waleria Dorogova and BGC research curator and alumna Laura Microulis (MA ’97, PhD ’16), reflected the institution’s longstanding tradition of ensuring that women artists, designers, and makers receive the attention they deserve, even belatedly. Together, these exhibitions and their corresponding events attracted more than 17,000 visitors to Bard Graduate Center this year.

Both shows received an astonishing breadth of positive press. An array of events curated by Andrew Kircher, director of the Department of Public Humanities + Research, and an online companion site designed by Jesse Merandy, director of Digital Humanities / Digital Exhibitions, and Laura Grey, art director, accompanied each exhibition.

The Irma Boom–designed catalogue for Sonia Delaunay: Living Art has already been called “a shoo-in for Most Beautiful Art Book of the Year” (Sebastian Smee, Washington Post), and a forthcoming BGCX book will provide scholars and thinkers with access to the rich material that the SIGHTLINES exhibition and its corresponding symposium and events generated on the topic of presenting African and Diasporic art today.

The future for exhibitions at Bard Graduate Center is equally bright. This summer we welcome Julia Siemon who will assume the role of chief curator and director of exhibitions. We look forward to her leadership and to enacting her vision for the gallery moving forward. In fall 2024, the BGC Gallery will mount Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today, curated by Charlotte Vignon, Tamara Préaud, Soazig Guilmin, all of whom have played important roles in the history of Sèvres, and BGC founder and director Susan Weber. It will display nearly 200 works from the Manufacture et Musée nationaux de Sèvres, many of which have never before been on view outside of France. And in spring 2025, we will ofer two exhibitions. Dollatry, curated by associate professor and BGC alumna Freyja Hartzell (MA ’04), explores human relationships with dolls. (Re)Dressing American Fashion: Wear as Witness, curated by BGC PhD candidate Emma McClendon (associate professor of fashion studies, St. John’s University) and BGC visiting assistant professor Lauren Downing Peters (assistant professor of fashion studies, Columbia College), expands the history of American fashion by highlighting garments that carry material traces of everyday wear.

SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa

September 29–December 31, 2023

Curated by Drew Thompson, associate professor, Bard Graduate Center Exhibition Design and Curatorial Advisors: AD—WO, the architectural firm of Emanuel Admassu and Jen Wood

SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa was a new and expanded presentation of Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa, a touring exhibition curated by Susan Cooksey, former curator of African art at the University of Florida’s Harn Museum of Art.

Support for SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa was generously provided by the Scully Peretsman Foundation and other generous donors to Bard Graduate Center.

Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa was organized by the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida (UF). It was made possible with support from the UF Office of the Provost, Dr. Richard H. Davis and Mrs. Jeanne G. Davis, the C. Frederick and Aase B. Thompson Foundation, the UF Office of Research, Drs. David and Rebecca Sammons, the UF International Center, the Margaret J. Early Endowment, Visit Gainesville Alachua County, the Harn Anniversary Fund, Marcia Isaacson, Roy Hunt, Robin and Donna Poynor, UF Center for African Studies, Kenneth and Laura Berns, and retired Lt. Col. David A. Waller, with additional support from the Harn Program Endowment, the Harn Annual Fund, and a group of generous donors.

Explore SIGHTLINES through its online exhibition.

Photo by Da Ping Luo.

In fall 2023, at a pivotal moment in approaches to the display of African art, with many major institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art reevaluating and reinstalling their African collections, Bard Graduate Center associate professor Drew Thompson forged an innovative approach in curating SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa. With a traveling collection of historic African metal works from the University of Florida’s Harn Museum as his launch point, Thompson imagined a show that would be organized according to themes such as “extraction,” “protection,” and “devotion” to demonstrate how the traditional practices of African metal arts, practiced for centuries, are reflected in the work of leading contemporary artists of the African Diaspora.

Thompson’s partners in this endeavor, Emanuel Admassu and Jen Wood of the award-winning architectural firm AD—WO, challenged long-held conventions of keeping historic and contemporary African works separate and siloed with an exhibition design that instead provoked conversations between the past and present. Its layout mapped “sightlines” among the historic objects and contemporary creations by Radclife Bailey, Sammy Baloji, Sharif Bey, Lubaina Himid, Bronwyn Katz, Kapwani Kiwanga, Abigail Lucien, Tsedaye Makonnen, Otobong Nkanga, Julia Phillips, Zohra Opoku, Nari Ward, and Amanda Williams.

BGC’s Department of Public Humanities + Research invited composer and performance artist JJJJJerome Ellis, art critic and writer Jessica Lynne, novelist Maaza Mengiste, and choreographer and performance artist Okwui Okpokwasili to create and perform their own “sightlines,” personal responses to specific objects that were presented in the Wednesdays@BGC series and as audio recordings in the exhibition.

The legacy of this innovative exhibition will live on through its online companion, recordings of its events available on BGC’s YouTube channel, and a forthcoming BGCX book.

Exhibiting Africa Symposium’s Far-Reaching Impact

By Mackensie Griffin (MA ’24)

In mid-October, Bard Graduate Center collaborated with Brooklyn Museum to host a historic two-day symposium, Exhibiting Africa: State of the Field in African Art and the Diaspora, in conjunction with the fall 2023 exhibition, SIGHTLINES. Drew Thompson, exhibition curator and associate professor of visual culture and Black studies at BGC, and Annissa Malvoisin, the BGC / Brooklyn Museum Postdoctoral Fellow in the Arts of Africa and a co-organizer of Africa Fashion at Brooklyn Museum, convened the symposium to explore current perspectives on the display of the arts and material culture of Africa and the diaspora, examining its historiography in Western cultural institutions and considering directions for its future. According to Thompson, “We had two aims: to illuminate the diversity of approaches and perspectives on exhibition design, display, and curatorial practices within the field of African art, and to bring African art and material culture into a larger conversation about design, display, and collecting.” BGC founder and director Susan Weber opened the symposium and welcomed its participants by noting, “BGC prides itself as being a home for discussions, big ideas, and pressing

Photo by Hemamset Angaza.

questions of our time, so I’m very proud to host this conversation today, and I hope it will have an impact on the field in the years ahead.”

“These kinds of programs are a necessity, in this time, in America, and wherever they are possible.”

—N’Gone Fall

The panels featured curators and scholars from major universities and museums across the country and around the world. They discussed mounting exhibitions in an African context, the criteria used to select and display contemporary works of African art, (in)visibility of museum spaces devoted to the art of Africa and the African Diaspora, the recognition of African art in Byzantium, partage agreements, structural racism and decolonizing museums, objectification of human bodies and humanization of objects, and the future of the fields. Each of the participants connected their presentations to a specific exhibition.

Many who attended the symposium expressed gratitude to BGC and Brooklyn Museum for the convening. Kevin D. Dumouchelle, a curator at the National Museum of African Art, said, “We are at an inflection point in thinking through how we interpret African art, the way we show it, and the audiences that we’re speaking with.” N’Goné Fall, an independent curator and cultural policies specialist, moderated one of the panels and said, “These kinds of programs are a necessity, in this time, in America, and wherever they are possible. I hope it’s the beginning of a series of conversations involving diferent protagonists from diferent institutions, diferent generations, and diferent contexts to share and to transcend together.”

Watch a recording of this event on BGC’s YouTube channel.

Sonia Delaunay: Living Art

February 23–July 7, 2024

Curated by Waleria Dorogova and Laura Microulis (MA ’97, PhD ’16), research curator, Bard Graduate Center

Support for Sonia Delaunay: Living Art was generously provided by the David Berg Foundation, Ann Pyne, the Sherrill Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Galerie Zlotowski, Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown, the Kroll Family Trust, the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, and other donors to Bard Graduate Center.

Sonia Delaunay: Living Art presented new research into the remarkable and diverse career of the titular artist, from her celebrated early career to her lesser-known post-war output. The exhibition presented Delaunay (1885–1979) as an artistic innovator, skilled entrepreneur, and a leading proponent of the avant-garde’s pursuit to unite art with everyday life. It illuminated her ingenious strategies of promotion and branding, her embrace of new media, and the way she broke down barriers between the fine and decorative arts. The nearly two hundred objects in Sonia Delaunay: Living Art also showcased the artist’s masterful use of color across mediums—from paintings to playing cards to fashion. Many of the works in the

Photo by Fresco Arts Team.

Explore Sonia Delaunay: Living Art through its online exhibition.

exhibition had never been displayed or were on view in the US for the first time, including rare couture garments, exquisitely crafted furniture that Delaunay designed for her Paris apartment, and a tapestry commissioned by the French state. Press response to the exhibition was swift and overwhelmingly positive, attracting reviews in national and international publications. Exhibition attendance was the largest in the BGC Gallery’s history.

Films and digital interactives enhanced visitors’ understanding of Delaunay’s career, including an interactive map that traced her life and work in exile during World War II. An online companion site created opportunities for close looking at objects from the show and preserves the curators’ interpretative texts. Exhibition programming included Simultaneous Saturdays, featuring tours led by BGC student gallery educators, Drag Story Hour incorporating books about Sonia Delaunay and art activities for children, and studio visits with pochoir artist Kitty Maryatt. Other events included a symposium focused on Delaunay’s relationships with other women artists of her era; a unique poetry tour of the exhibition conceived by Modesto “Flako” Jimenez; a presentation by Laird Borrelli-Persson, senior archives editor at Vogue; and a recreation of costumes designed by Delaunay. Published by Bard Graduate Center in collaboration with Yale University Press, the exhibition catalogue features a design by award-winning book creator, Irma Boom, that embraces Delaunay’s approach to color and typography.

Photo by Rod Morata.

Bringing Sonia Delaunay’s Costumes Back to Life

By Mackensie Griffin (MA ’24)

Bard Graduate Center MA student and Broadway costume designer

Sydney Maresca recently resurrected a pair of costumes designed by Sonia Delaunay for the 1923 Dadaist musical, Le coeur à gaz (The Gas Heart) that were ultimately installed in the Sonia Delaunay: Living Art exhibition. Andrew Kircher, director of Public Humanities + Research, inspired the project and supervised Maresca’s independent study, but he said, “Sydney made magic.”

Armed with nothing more than Delaunay’s costume sketches and two black-and-white photographs, Maresca worked with a custom costume construction company to determine possible color schemes and materials and create faithful reproductions. She said, “These costumes are iconic, and they’ve been featured in many publications about Dada theatre or design, but they don’t physically exist. So, when I showed the exhibition curators a version of this thing that we had never seen in real life, it was like being in the room with a celebrity or a ghost. I almost cried because it was so incredible to participate in making this dead thing come back to life.”

Cardboard and Dada: Sonia Delaunay’s Costume Design, a lecture and demonstration by Sydney Maresca. Photo by Hemamset Angaza.

Maresca revealed these iconic ghosts to the public at a Wednesdays@BGC event. She shared how she approached the project and walked the audience through her trajectory of research, modeling, and, ultimately, activation. She considered the flattening efect of abstract, modernist graphics, how Delaunay applied it to the human body through her designs, and how the choice of cardboard contributed to that efect.

Activating the recreations of Delaunay’s costumes through restaging excerpts of The Gas Heart was a crucial component of the project. When Maresca told the audience that they would view performers wearing the costumes, a man seated in the front, who turned out to be esteemed performance theorist Richard Schechner, asked if the audience could stage a riot (as the original 1923 production had done). Sadly, or perhaps fortunately, the reenactment did not reach that level of historical accuracy. However, the presentation did culminate in actors promenading down the aisle of the lecture hall in the cardboard creations. They performed text, movements, and a dance inspired by the musical, which demonstrated the limits the costumes imposed on the actors’ movements.

According to Kircher, Maresca’s event “epitomized what BGC has to ofer in the realm of public humanities. She invited a packed room into the craft of object research, and it was at once accessible and rigorous.” Maresca reflected that at BGC, she has built “a new skill set of thinking and talking about and researching objects. I [have] this history of being a maker and a theatre artist, which I sort of put in a box to learn to do this new thing, so it was exciting to … bring my practices together. Sharing this work with the BGC community and the public felt like a moment of self-unification.”

Watch a recording of this event on BGC’s YouTube channel.

Introducing Julia Siemon, Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions

Bard Graduate Center announces the appointment of Dr. Julia Siemon to the position of director of exhibitions and chief curator, efective July 1. Susan Weber, director and founder of BGC, said, “Julia ofers impressive experience as a curator, scholar, and lecturer, and I look forward to working with her to shape the future of exhibitions at Bard Graduate Center.”

A specialist by training in Italian Renaissance art, Siemon most recently served as assistant curator of Paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Prior to that, she was assistant curator for Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and assistant research curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

For the Getty, Siemon has organized an exhibition on Joseph Wright of Derby, opening in December 2026. The show and accompanying catalogue will ofer a critical reassessment of the development of the painter’s

Photo provided by Julia Siemon.

signature “candlelight” style. At Cooper Hewitt, her exhibitions included Mr. Pergolesi’s Curious Things: Ornament in Eighteenth Century Britain and Nature by Design: Katagami, focused on historic Japanese textile patterns. In 2021, Siemon was awarded a Getty Paper Project grant for a multi-year research and conservation project dedicated to Cooper Hewitt’s sketches by Jan van der Straet, called Stradanus; that ongoing work is set to conclude with findings shared with the public in 2025.

In 2017, Siemon organized The Silver Caesars: A Renaissance Mystery at the Met, an exhibition on the monumental standing cups known as the Aldobrandini Tazze; she was also editor and co-author of the accompanying scholarly volume. In 2018, The Silver Caesars traveled to Waddesdon Manor in the UK, with Siemon again serving as curator. The exhibitions and publication received acclaim in, for example, The Wall Street Journal, Times of London, New York magazine, Corriere della Serra, Renaissance Quarterly, the Art Newspaper, Apollo Magazine, BBC Culture, the Guardian, and The Burlington Magazine.

In addition to her exhibition publications, Siemon has contributed to volumes published by institutions including the British Museum Press, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hill Art Foundation, and the National Museum, Krakow. Topics treated in these works range from the legacy of Dante and Petrarch in Florentine portraiture to the role of the Rothschild family in shaping British taste for the decorative arts. A forthcoming article studies eighteenth-century competition drawings by architecture students at Rome’s Accademia di San Luca.

Siemon regularly presents on her work, having spoken, for example, at the Frick Collection, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Goldsmith’s Company, the Kunsthistorisches Institut, Waddesdon Manor, the Getty, the Met, Master Drawings New York, the International Congress for Eighteenth Century Studies, College Art Association, and the Renaissance Society of America.

Julia holds a bachelor’s degree in art history from Washington University and a master’s degree and PhD in art history from Columbia University. She has taught frequently at Columbia as an adjunct Core Lecturer and served as a resource for the master’s program in the history of design and curatorial studies at Parsons School of Design, ofered in partnership with Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Siemon said, “I am delighted to be joining Bard Graduate Center. I have long admired the institution’s innovative and ambitious exhibitions, publications, and programs, and I am eager to collaborate on future projects with its talented faculty, staf, and students.”

Publications

Bard Graduate Center publishes exhibition catalogues and scholarly books and journals that pertain to material culture, design history, and the decorative arts. Our journals include West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture and Source: Notes in the History of Art. Our book series include Cultural Histories of the Material World and BGCX, which aims to extend the learning period around time-based programming by reflecting the spontaneous alchemy of conversation, performance, and hands-on engagement that occurs at BGC events with artists, makers, scholars, and others.

PhD candidate Geoffrey Ripert with the editors of Sonia Delaunay: Living Art, Waleria Dorogova and Laura Microulis (MA ’97, PhD ’16), at Villa Albertine. Photo by Da Ping Luo.

Photo by Bruce M. White.

Published in 2023–24

Sonia Delaunay: Living Art

Edited by Waleria Dorogova and Laura Microulis (MA ’97, PhD ’16)

Designed by Irma Boom

“A

shoo-in for most beautiful art book of 2024.”

—Sebastian Smee, Washington Post

This exhibition catalogue is a richly crafted tribute to the pioneering artist, designer, and entrepreneur Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979), whose boundary-breaking approach is echoed in the volume’s interdisciplinary and inspired design. The publication sets a new standard for the study of Delaunay, eschewing traditional chronological structures to better showcase groundbreaking research unifying the artist’s timeless oeuvre across mediums. It demonstrates Delaunay’s innate versatility and willingness to create without material limitation using her unique language of light and color. Textiles, fashion, interiors, book art, and more are highlighted across twenty-six chapters by leading international scholars to give new insight into Delaunay’s strategies of self-promotion, entrepreneurial endeavors, legacy-building eforts, and vast network of collaborators.

Bard Graduate Center publishes exhibition catalogues and scholarly books and journals that pertain to material culture, design history, and the decorative arts.

Photo by Bruce M. White.

The Designs of Dorothy Liebes: The BGC Connection

By Mackensie Griffin (MA ’24)

In July 2023, A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes opened at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Many threads connect Bard Graduate Center to this important exhibition celebrating the career of twentieth-century American textile designer Dorothy Liebes. Alexa Grifth Winton (MA ’03), manager of content and interpretation at Cooper Hewitt, cocurated the exhibition and wrote a catalogue chapter titled “Vibrance and Luminosity: Textiles Designed for Light.” She tapped two other BGC alumni to contribute chapters. John Stuart Gordon (MA ’03) wrote “Curtain Walls: Dorothy Liebes and the Modern American Interior,” and Leigh Wishner (MA ’01) wrote “Modern Fashion’s Secret Weapon: Dorothy Liebes’s Textiles for Fashion.”

Leigh Wishner (MA ’01) speaks about Dorothy Liebes at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Photo by Amy Estes.

Winton said, “It was obvious that Leigh was the perfect person to be the first to write about the extensive work Liebes did in the fashion industry.”

Wishner recalled first encountering one of Liebes’s textiles in the BGC Gallery while serving as a docent for professor emerita Pat Kirkham’s exhibition, Women Designers in the USA, 1900–2000, and being “wowed” when she saw it.

While conducting research for her chapter, Wishner looked to the digitized Dorothy Liebes Papers from the Archives of American Art. The Bonnie Cashin Archive, created and managed by Stephanie Lake (MA ’00, PhD ’09), was another important resource, as Cashin featured Liebes’s fabrics in her fashion designs. According to Wishner, Lake generously shared her archival research and her extensive knowledge of the Liebes-Cashin collaboration.

Wishner’s role in the Cooper Hewitt project deepened when she was asked to be the inaugural speaker in the exhibition’s public programming series. She spoke about Liebes’s work with fashion designers and sportswear manufacturers from the 1930s to 1960s and its influence on the fashion industry today. Winton moderated and many members of the BGC community attended, including Marilyn Cohen (MA ’05), William DeGregorio (MA ’12, PhD ’21), current PhD candidate Martina D’Amato, associate curator for BGC exhibitions Emma Cormack (MA ’18), and professor emerita Michele Majer.

The BGC connections continued when Winton gave a special exhibition tour to incoming MA students last August. She said, “It was such an honor to share the exhibition with the students, and to show them how exciting and rewarding studies of the decorative arts, design, and material culture can be. I loved learning how to use archives and other primary research resources as a student at BGC, and the exhibition is the end result of that passion.”

BGC students will continue to have opportunities to closely examine Liebes’s work, thanks to a recent addition to the Study Collection: a ca. 1950 white woven Lurex cocktail napkin made of fabric that Liebes designed, generously donated by gallerist, educator, curator, collector, and BGC board member Helen W. Drutt.

Horowitz Book Prize

Photo by Brayden Heath.

In fall 2023, Bard Graduate Center awarded the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Book Prize for the best book on the decorative arts, design history, or material culture of the Americas to Image Encounters: Moche Murals and Archaeo Art History by Lisa Trever (University of Texas Press, 2022).

Moche murals of northern Peru represent one of the great, yet still largely unknown, artistic traditions of the ancient Americas. Created in an era without written scripts, these murals are key to understandings of Moche history, society, and culture. In this first comprehensive study on the subject, Lisa Trever develops an interdisciplinary methodology of “archaeo art history” to examine how ancient histories of art can be written without texts, boldly inverting the typical relationship of art to archaeology.

Trever argues that early coastal artistic traditions cannot be reduced uncritically to interpretations based in much later Inca histories of the Andean highlands. Instead, the author seeks the origins of Moche mural art, and its emphasis on figuration, in the deep past of the Pacific coast of South America. Image Encounters shows how formal transformations in Moche mural art, before and after the seventh century, were part of broader changes to the work that images were made to perform at Huacas de Moche, El Brujo, Pañamarca, and elsewhere in an increasingly complex social and political world. In doing so, this book reveals alternative evidentiary foundations for histories of art and visual experience.

In awarding the Horowitz Book Prize, the selection committee wrote, “Coastal Moche culture is familiar to many through remarkable representational ceramic stirrup bottles. But Moche mural art is scarcely known, in part owing to its extreme fragility that has often led to losses soon after archaeological discovery. The committee especially commends Trever for drawing readers’ attention to this remarkable body of material using a transdisciplinary method, combining the procedures of archaeology with those of art history, notably iconology. The result is a fascinating insight into aspects of Moche ritual and social culture as it developed over centuries at temple sites.”

Lisa Trever is the Lisa and Bernard Selz Associate Professor in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology at Columbia University. She is the author of The Archaeology of Mural Painting at Pañamarca, Peru, and coeditor of El arte antes de la historia: Para una historia del arte andino antiguo.

Public Humanities + Research

Photo by Hemamset Angaza.

The Department of Public Humanities + Research shares Bard Graduate Center’s research with faculty, students, scholars, artists, and the public through tours, events, and interactive media projects that enhance our exhibitions; evening lectures, conversations, performances, and demonstrations; informal research forums that introduce new scholarship; larger-scale symposia that are organized around exhibitions or special research topics; engagement with visiting fellows; and weekly lunchtime talks by faculty, fellows, curators, and scholars that introduce our community to works-in-progress.

Maaza Mengiste in conversation with dean of graduate studies Christian Ayne Crouch.

Photo by Hemamset Angaza.

Jenny Tiramani, Cofounder of London’s School

of Historical

Dress, Visits BGC

In early February, Jenny Tiramani, a principal and founding member of London’s famed School of Historical Dress, spent a week at Bard Graduate Center engaging with students, faculty, and the public. Tiramani has published extensively in the school’s Patterns of Fashion series and for the Victoria and Albert Museum on the subject of seventeenth-century dress. Her Olivier and Tony Award-winning costume designs have been seen in the West End, at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, on Broadway, and at the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera House. Her visit, organized by BGC’s Department of Public Humanities + Research, brought costume, fashion, and textiles scholars and designers to BGC, but its most significant impact was felt within the BGC community.

One part of Tiramani’s residency included a daylong workshop for BGC students who specialize in the history of fashion and textiles, many of whom

L to R: Angela Crenshaw (MA ’24), Jenny Tiramani, assistant professor Mei Mei Rado (PhD ’18), Vega Shah (MA ’25). Photo by Da Ping Luo.

are also makers. According to associate curator Emma Cormack (MA ’18), Tiramani began by introducing four important lenses through which to approach the study of clothing worn by people in the past: content, cut, construction, and context. Then the group worked together to create a half-scale paper version of the circa 1705–06 dressing gown that Princess Louise Dorothea of Prussia (1680–1705) was buried in. Cormack said, “Working from the 1:8 scale pattern in the School of Historical Dress’s newly released Patterns of Fashion 6, two groups of students traced, cut, and shaped the two halves of the flat-cut garment, ‘sewing’ the pieces of printed paper together with tape. Throughout the day, the work of transforming a two-dimensional shape into a garment suitable for a three-dimensional body sparked conversations about textile conservation practices, eighteenth-century loom lengths, the importance of sleeve gussets, and how practice-led research can help us better understand the objects we study. It was a pleasure to witness the paper dressing gown come to life and to watch the students learn from Tiramani’s expertise and experience.”

PhD candidate Kate Sekules. Photo by Da Ping Luo.

Wednesdays@BGC

September 6, 2023

The Invention of Connoisseurship

A lecture by Peter Burke (Emmanuel College Cambridge)

September 13, 2023

Making Mondrian’s Dress

A lecture by Ann Marguerite Tartsinis (Stanford University; BGC MA ’11) and Nancy J. Troy (Stanford University; National Gallery of Art)

September 20, 2023

Boucher and the Decorative Arts: Promoting and Maintaining His Fame

A Françoise and Georges Selz

Lecture on Eighteenthand Nineteenth-Century French Decorative Arts and Culture by Pascal Bertrand (Université Bordeaux Montaigne)

October 4, 2023

Material Culture and the Blockchain

A lecture by Charlotte Kent (Montclair State University), with an introduction by Michael Assis (BGC)

October 11, 2023

Sightline: Jessica Lynne

A special event in conjunction with the BGC exhibition SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa

October 18, 2023

Coming to Washington: Tracing the History of Visitors in the Nation’s Capital

A lecture by M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska (American University)

JJJJJerome Ellis. Photo by Fresco Arts Team.

October 25, 2023

Textures of Play

A lecture by board game designer

Cole Wehrle

November 1, 2023

Sightline: Maaza Mengiste

A special event in conjunction with the BGC exhibition SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa

November 8, 2023

Sightline: JJJJJerome Ellis

A special event in conjunction with the BGC exhibition SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa

November 29, 2023

Constantinopoliad

An interactive installation by Sister Sylvester and Nadah El Shazly

December 6, 2023

“The Finest of its Kind”: Percival Griffiths’s Collection of Early English Needlework

A lecture by William DeGregorio (Metropolitan Museum of Art; BGC MA ’12, PhD ’21)

December 13, 2023

Sightline: Okwui Okpokwasili

A special event in conjunction with the BGC exhibition SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa

January 17, 2024

Survivance in Federal Indian Boarding Schools

A lecture duet by Nicholas Laluk (University of California, Berkeley) and Davina Two Bears (Arizona State University)

January 24, 2024

Fashion’s Hard Borders

A lecture by Emanuele Lugli (Stanford University)

January 31, 2024

Fragile Materiality

A Paul and Irene Hollister Lecture on Glass by Daniel Clayman (Artist)

February 7, 2024

Two Thousand Years of Flat-Cut Garments

A lecture by Jenny Tiramani (The School of Historical Dress)

February 14, 2024

Of Buddhas and Bowls

A lecture by Nachiket Chanchani (University of Michigan)

February 28, 2024

Cardboard and Dada: Sonia Delaunay’s Costume Design

A lecture by Sydney Maresca (BGC MA ’24; Williams College)

March 13, 2024

At Home in the Philippine Village

@bardgradcenter You can watch recordings of many of these events on BGC’s YouTube channel.

A lecture by Janna Añonuevo Langholz (Philippine Village Historical Site)

March 20, 2024

From Kid Click to Snapshot Susie: Child Photographer Heroes and Heroines in British and US Comics

A lecture by Annebella Pollen (University of Brighton)

March 27, 2024

Poetry of Colors

An exhibition tour of Sonia Delaunay: Living Art with poetry activations by Modesto “Flako” Jimenez (¡Oye! Group)

April 3, 2024

Eighteenth-Century Fashion and the Decisive Museological Action of French Historicizing Painters

A Françoise and George Selz Lecture on Eighteenth- and NineteenthCentury French Decorative Arts and Culture by Pascale Gorguet Ballesteros (Sorbonne Université)

April 10, 2024

Everyone Says I Look Like My Mother

A pop-up installation and conversation with Meghann O’Brien / Jaad Kuujus (Northwest Coast weaver), Andy Everson (Northwest Coast artist), Kate Hennessy (School of Interactive Arts and Technology), Hannah Turner (University of British Columbia, Vancouver), Doenja Oogjes (Eindhoven University of Technology), and Laura Allen (MA ’20; Montclair Art Museum)

April 17, 2024

The Golem: How He Came into the World

A Lee B. Anderson Memorial Foundation film screening and talk by Maya Barzilai (University of Michigan)

May 1, 2024

Sonia Delaunay: Sparking Joy Laird Borrelli-Persson (Vogue)

Constantinopoliad. Photo by Fresco Arts Team.

At Home in the Philippine Village

By Angela Hermano Crenshaw (MA ’24)

This past year, I planned one of the first student-proposed Wednesdays@BGC events (see page 60) thanks to a new initiative in BGC’s Department of Public Humanities + Research (PHR) designed to support engagement with scholars and practitioners in underrepresented areas of study. My event, At Home in the Philippine Village, created space for discussions about Philippine-American history, one of my areas of research. I invited the artist Janna Añonuevo Langholz to discuss her work commemorating the lives of the people who lived and died in the Philippine Village at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.

Planning this event was very meaningful for me. I attended elementary school in Clayton, just a short walk from the site of the fair, and it was the subject of a class assignment. As a young Filipina American, I was excited to research my heritage and give a presentation about the Philippine Village. The stories of Filipinos, colonial subjects of the United States, who were displayed in human exhibitions for the entertainment of Americans, stuck with me for years.

In October 2022, I saw an Instagram post by Langholz announcing that the process of ofcially commemorating the Philippine Village Historical Site had begun. I immediately remembered my childhood project and wanted to know more. I proposed Langholz as a speaker for a Wednesday event and was ecstatic when my application was accepted. I planned the event with the help of the entire PHR team; welcomed Langholz when she arrived; and introduced her and explained my connection to the subject of her talk. At the event, she shared how her Filipina mother and American father of German ancestry met and moved to St. Louis; that she was born at the former site of the World’s Fair; that her ancestors contributed to its displays; and that in the past few years, she has begun giving walking tours of the Philippine Village locations. She has gotten the city of Clayton to recognize the site and erect a permanent historical marker.

Angela Crenshaw (MA ’24) and Janna Añonuevo Langholz. Photo courtesy of Angela Hermano Crenshaw.

One of the most impressive aspects of Langholz’s work is her quest to identify the names of all 1,200 people brought to the Philippine Village. She has discovered the final resting places of several people who died at the fair and uncovered the horrible truth that some of their remains were improperly disposed of by the Smithsonian Institution. Now, she works with communities in the Philippines and the US to properly memorialize the Philippine Village and those who inhabited it.

I led the question and answer portion of the event and connected Langholz’s work to the interests of the BGC community, such as her creation of an archive of materials about the Philippine Village and the presence of Philippine material culture and craft at the World’s Fair. Seeing so many people resonate with her work gave me great hope for interest in Philippine American history, which is very important, as many people are unaware that the Philippines was an American colony from 1898 until 1946. This is not just the history of Filipinos or Filipino Americans, this is American history.

I worried that Langholz’s talk might not be well attended, because BGC doesn’t regularly engage with Philippine and Philippine American history. However, the lecture hall was full that night. I should have known that the Filipino community always shows up! The fact that many of the attendees were first-time visitors to BGC made the event even more rewarding.

Engaging with Langholz and her research practice was very helpful as I completed my qualifying paper, which explored the reception of Philippine textiles in the US. I will continue this research as I begin my PhD at BGC this fall and through a book chapter I am writing. I am considering displays of people as alternative, colonialist sites for display of clothing and material culture outside of traditional museum institutions. I hope to work with Langholz to identify objects from the World’s Fair which have been dispersed to various museum collections across the US, like those at the RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island, where I am at work on an exhibition.

At Home in the Philippine Village was a single event, but its resonance continues to grow. I look forward to many more events proposed by BGC students. It’s a chance to engage with new communities of scholars and gain experience in public programming. I am so grateful to have had this opportunity as I begin my PhD journey at BGC.

Tuesday Lunches

September 5, 2023

Maria Lúcia Pallares-Burke (Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge)

September 12, 2023

Nancy J. Troy (Stanford University; National Gallery of Art)

September 19, 2023

Pascal Bertrand (Université Bordeaux Montaigne)

September 26, 2023

Lynda Klich (BGC Visiting Fellow)

October 3, 2023

Charlotte Kent (Montclair State University)

October 10, 2023

Namita Gupta Wiggers (BGC Paul J. Smith Fields of the Future Fellow)

October 17, 2023

Azra Dawood (BGC Visiting Fellow)

October 24, 2023

Cole Wehrle (Board Game Designer)

October 31, 2023

Christian Ayne Crouch (Bard College)

November 7, 2023

JJJJJerome Ellis (Composer)

November 14, 2023

Nima Valibeig (BGC Visiting Fellow)

November 21, 2023

Ben Garcia (The American LGBTQ+ Museum)

January 16, 2024

Nicholas Laluk (UC Berkeley)

January 23, 2024

Emanuele Lugli (Stanford University)

January 30, 2024

Jessica Glasscock (The New School, Parsons School of Design)

February 6, 2024

Jenny Tiramani (The School of Historical Dress)

February 13, 2024

Nachiket Chanchani (University of Michigan)

February 20, 2024

Deborah Lutz (Museum Educator)

February 27, 2024

Patricia Orpilla (BGC Visiting Fellow)

March 12, 2024

Helen Persson Swain (BGC Visiting Fellow)

March 19, 2024

Annebella Pollen (University of Brighton)

March 26, 2024

Giovanni Acerbis (BGC Visiting Fellow)

April 2, 2024

Pascale Gorguet Ballesteros (Sorbonne Université)

Special Events

October 2 and 9, 2023

Portable Tombs of Memory: The Ringelblum Archive as a Collection of Objects The Leon Levy Foundation Lectures in Jewish Material Culture

Bożena Shallcross (University of Chicago)

February 3, 2024

Historical Garments Workshop

Jenny Tiramani

February 23, 2024

Objects Speak! A Verbal Description Tour for Participants with Low or Impaired Vision

Deborah Lutz

April 5, 2024

Micromosaics: A Closer Look

Jeffrey L. Collins (BGC)

April 9, 2024

Meghann O’Brien (Jaad Kuujus) and Andy Everson (Artists)

April 16, 2024

Kitty Maryatt (Artist)

April 23, 2024

Ulinka Rublack (University of Cambridge)

February 24, March 23, and April 20, 2024

Simultaneous Saturdays

Read-alouds for kids, pochoir demonstrations, gallery educator tours

June 4–6, 2024

Encounters of Text and Material Culture in Ancient Judea The Leon Levy Foundation Lectures in Jewish Material Culture

Jonathan Ben-Dov (Tel Aviv University)

June 11–12, 2024

Tours for People with Dementia and Their Caregivers

Arts & Minds at BGC

@bardgradcenter You can watch recordings of many of these events on BGC’s YouTube channel.

Research Forums

September 29, 2023

Eve Barlow (Artist)

October 9, 2023

Tony Chavarria (Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, Santa Fe)

October 27, 2023

Lesley E. Miller (University of Glasgow)

January 18, 2024

Davina Two Bears (Arizona State University)

March 22, 2024

Bri Foster (Artist)

March 29, 2024

Erin Gingrich and Earl Atchak (Artists)

April 11, 2024

Doenja Oogjes (Eindhoven University of Technology)

April 30, 2024

Hedley Swain (CEO Brighton & Hove Museums)

Symposia and Other Convenings

October 19–20, 2023

Exhibiting Africa: State of the Field in African Art and the Diaspora

A research symposium presented in collaboration with the Brooklyn Museum

December 7–8, 2023

Religiosity, Spirituality, Material Culture in Korea

Devotional Objects and Contemporary Variations

December 14–15, 2023

Global Legacies of Arts and Crafts

April 19, 2024

Collaboration and Camaraderie Pioneering Women in the Circle of Sonia Delaunay

@bardgradcenter

You can watch recordings of many of these events on BGC’s YouTube channel.

Fellowships

The fellowship programs for researchers and artists at Bard Graduate Center are designed to promote research in the areas of decorative arts, design history, and material culture. Fields of the Future Fellowships promote diversity and inclusion in the advanced study of the material world. These fellowships for scholars and artists reflect BGC’s commitment to explore and expand the sources, techniques, voices, and questions of interdisciplinary humanities scholarship from different perspectives. Visiting Fellowships provide scholars from university, museum, and independent backgrounds who have already secured funding with non-stipendiary support, including workspace, research collections access, and the opportunity to join dynamic, intellectual, and scholarly community at BGC and in New York City.

Photo by Fresco Arts Team.

2023–24 Fellows

Giovanni Acerbis Visiting Fellow University of Southern Denmark

Azra Dawood Visiting Fellow

Namita Gupta Wiggers

Paul J. Smith Fields of the Future Fellow

Lynda Klich

Visiting Fellow

Hunter College, City University of New York

Lynda Nead Fields of the Future Fellow Birkbeck, University of London

Patricia Orpilla Fields of the Future Fellow Artist

Helen Persson Swain Visiting Fellow University of Glasgow

Nima Valibeig Visiting Fellow

Art University of Isfahan

Collections Research Advances

Patricia

Orpilla’s Art

Each year, Bard Graduate Center awards several Fields of the Future Fellowships to scholars and artists whose creative projects and research will thrive in BGC’s dynamic academic community and will benefit from the opportunity to conduct collections-based research at BGC or elsewhere in New York City. BGC created the Fields of the Future Fellowships to promote research that expands the sources, techniques, voices, and questions of interdisciplinary humanities scholarship in the decorative arts, design history, and material culture. The fellowship allows recipients to produce work related to their specific research interests while immersing themselves in the Bard Graduate Center community. Fellows attend lectures, work closely with librarians, and interact with faculty and students.

Patricia Orpilla, an interdisciplinary Filipino American artist who explores connections between the material histories of weaving and language, was awarded a Fields of the Future Fellowship for spring 2024. She focused on expanding a series of prints she made during a 2021 fellowship at Yale’s Beinecke Library that engaged with the history of pre-Christian spirituality in the Philippines and the subsequent spread of Christianity through colonialism and printmaking. Orpilla’s religious upbringing in the Midwest

Photo by Heather Topcik.

led to her interest in how ideologies and religions are circulated through visuals or texts, and she often expresses this in her work.

Early in her residency, Orpilla spoke to the BGC community about her research interests and her artistic practice. Following the lecture, collection development librarian Abigail Walker recommended Orpilla read Weaving Cultures: The Invention of Colonial Art and Culture in the Philippines, 1565 to 1850 by René Javellana, S.J. Appreciative of Walker’s direct feedback, Orpilla honed in on Javellana’s discussion of the Banton cloth—a 400-year-old warp ikat textile (a fabric made with resist-dyed yarns) found inside a cofn in the Philippines. She was particularly interested in the decorative patterns woven into the burial cloth, which include diamond shapes that are often identified as birth symbols.

Orpilla began researching this particular symbol, referring to The Birth Symbol in Traditional Women’s Art from Eurasia and the Western Pacific by Max Allen. Inspired by these readings and other texts from the BGC Library such as Dynamis of the Image: Moving Images in a Global World (edited by Emmanuel Alloa and Chiara Cappelletti) and How Textile Communicates: From Codes to Cosmotechnics by Ganaele Langlois, she created three new prints to be displayed in an alcove on the library’s second floor. To make the triptych, she used a collagraph printmaking technique in which she attached a weaving she embroidered with the birth symbol to a plate and used it to create prints evoking a woven texture. Entitled Kapag hindi pinangalanan ang Diyos (When God Went Unnamed), Orpilla sees this work as an open-ended interpretation of pre-Christian spirituality in the Philippines. As the birth symbol refers to reproduction, Orpilla was interested in thinking about it as a symbol that could be read in the same way as the Christian symbol of the cross.

The prints were hung in the BGC Library and Orpilla was given the opportunity to put her research on display by filling nearby shelves with a selection of books that informed her work. Orpilla approached this as a curatorial project, choosing titles that represented a combination of techniques, theories, and visuals that inspired her. Carefully arranging these books based on their content and aesthetics, she opened some of them to pages that would create a meaningful dialogue with the art on the wall and elaborate on the prints’ message.

Orpilla used the BGC Library’s collection to further all facets of her practice, and she began working on a group of paintings inspired by basket weaving that she will continue to develop. She hopes that the two projects— her prints incorporating weaving techniques and the basket weaving paintings—will work in conversation with each other as an exploration of the idea of entanglement.

Department of Research Collections

Photo by Brayden Heath.

Bard Graduate Center’s Department of Research Collections comprises its library, object study collection, and institutional archive. Together they represent a comprehensive range of diverse research resources across a range of media that support the advanced scholarly study of material culture. By bringing these three entities together, the institution aligns its collection with its approach to research, which challenges traditional boundaries, centers the object, and emphasizes interdisciplinarity.

The library supports the dynamic research interests and needs of the BGC community with a noncirculating collection that includes more than 60,000 books, roughly 400 print periodicals, a wide range of databases, special collections comprising rare books and periodicals, and more. The Bard Graduate Center Study Collection supports pedagogy by providing students, faculty, and staf with the opportunity for hands-on, close-up examination of objects. The collection numbers more than 3,000 objects in a variety of media that include artifacts of glass, metal, ceramic, wood, plastic, textiles, and paper. Although many pieces come from Europe and the Americas and date from the eighteenth century to the present, there are also significant holdings from Asia and the Pacific Islands. Areas of strength within the collection include modern ceramics, Indian and Southeast Asian textiles, silver, silver-plated flatware, jewelry, toys, and costume accessories, and almost two hundred French and European textile samples dating from the late seventeenth century. It also includes a selection of ancient objects and examples of industrial design and studio craft.

The Bard Graduate Center Archive serves as the repository for the institution’s history. It collects, preserves, and provides access to materials that document BGC’s exhibitions and its academic and public programs. It also provides services to students, faculty, and staf including guidance in digital preservation and best practices for organizing departmental files. Collections in the archive include past exhibition records, institutional graphics, faculty papers, and digital publications.

Paul J. Smith’s Lasting Impact

By Matteson Quint

When Paul J. Smith, director emeritus of New York’s Museum of Arts and Design (formerly the American Craft Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Crafts) passed away, he bequeathed some sixty objects and his personal library of nearly two thousand volumes to Bard Graduate Center. Smith played a leading role in the craft movement throughout his life and built community through every aspect of his work, as a curator, mentor, educator, artist, and friend. According to Kathleen Mangan, his close friend and the executor of his estate, “He was 88 when he left this world, but he had at least ten years of projects lined up.” Smith requested that his vast collection be dispersed to a range of institutions, including BGC, the Fuller Craft Museum, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, and the UC Davis Design Museum, among many others.

Susan Weber, director and founder of BGC, said, “We are deeply honored to be a recipient of objects from the collection of Paul J. Smith. He was a towering figure in our field, and I’m so pleased that, through this bequest, the next generation of scholars and curators studying at BGC will deepen their understanding of who he was, what he collected, and the important role he played in advancing the studio craft movement.”

Paul J. Smith next to Madonna of the Golden Rags by Claude Horan and Floor Vase by Rudy Autio. © American Craft Council.

Smith had a special interest in preserving history, especially when it came to the studio craft movement, as demonstrated by his extensive library. Unsurprisingly, it focused on studio craft and included an excellent array of small exhibition catalogues and unique pamphlets. Students have already started working with the collection and are excited by the range of materials.

According to Mangan, “[Smith] had files on top of files on top of files.” So it seems. Ninety boxes of Smith’s personal papers went to the Archives of American Art, totaling seventy-five linear feet. His collection was so extensive that the estate appraisal was seven hundred pages long. “He just wanted students and historians to get it right,” Mangan continued, “and he felt like BGC students were good at that.”

Smith also bequeathed about sixty objects in clay, fiber, metal, and wood originating from all over the globe to BGC’s Study Collection. According to Barb Elam, the digital collections metadata librarian and Study Collection manager, the Study Collection ofers a unique opportunity for BGC students. After undergoing Elam’s handling tutorial, students can observe the objects closely, and touch, smell, and listen to them.

BGC staf and faculty teamed up to select pieces from Smith’s collection that reflect techniques and cultures not yet represented in the Study Collection. Some of the objects include a bobbin lace figure of a girl and a bird, attributed to the Czech lacemaker Luba Krejci; one set of four napkin rings by Chunghi Choo; a large North African terra-cotta jar from the late nineteenth / early twentieth century; and several examples of Huichol beadwork from Mexico. The objects demonstrate the wide range of Smith’s collection.

Catherine Whalen and Ivan Gaskell, BGC faculty members who will co-teach Approaches to the Object this fall, are looking forward to having new objects and opportunities for students to do this close study. “Most of the faculty members incorporate a Study Collection assignment into their courses. Students choose something and write about it,” according to Emma Cormack (MA ’18), the collection’s curator.

Many objects in the Study Collection are gifted from people who are known to and are a part of the BGC community, including faculty, board members, and former fellows. “A huge part of what BGC teaches is investing in the biography of an object,” Elam said. “In this case, it is really interesting that Paul J. Smith, the renowned scholar, collected these things. It is an important aspect of the objects’ lives.”

In addition to the donation of his library and the Study Collection objects, Smith bequeathed funds for processing the gift. “I have to say, in my

twenty-five years of doing this work, I’ve rarely seen a collection donation that comes with financial support,” said Heather Topcik, the dean and director of libraries at Bard College and Bard Graduate Center. “It makes a big diference in the life of a collection and keeping it active.” The financial donation allowed BGC to bring in a specialized fellow and a project cataloguer for the collection.

Namita Gupta Wiggers was selected as the Paul J. Smith Fields of the Future Fellow for fall 2023. During her fellowship, she curated a tribute to the scholar, using books, ephemera, and objects from his estate. “Namita is a great educator and wants to capture this aspect of craft history,” Whalen said. “She did a really nice job showcasing not only Paul’s work as a curator but his artistic output. What she chose to include were things I consider very signature about Paul.”

In tandem with the tribute, Barb Elam created a companion display in BGC’s Object Lab highlighting Gupta Wiggers’s observations about pieces in the collection. Reflecting on the layers of Smith’s gift to Bard Graduate Center, Mangan said, “It feels like a perfect encapsulation of that long relationship. All these gifts—the library, the papers, Paul’s photographs— will intersect as research continues in the future. I think that they will be enormously helpful to students and people writing about the studio craft movement as time goes on.”

If you are interested in supporting BGC through a bequest or donation to the Study Collection please contact Lindsay Smilow, chief advancement officer, at lindsay.smilow@bgc.bard.edu.

Set of Four Napkin Holders. 1987. Chunghi Choo (American). Raised and formed silver. Bard Graduate Center Study Collection, gift of the Estate of Paul J. Smith.

Fundraising and Special Events

Bard Graduate Center acknowledges the generous support of our donors, whose contributions sustain our institution’s programming, research, publications, exhibitions, and student activities.

Between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, BGC received $873,149 in contributions from more than 200 public and private sources. Resources provided by these individuals, corporations, foundations, and government agencies were combined with income from endowed funds and other revenue streams. This support not only ensured the institution’s stability but also enabled the delivery of vital programs highlighted in this publication.

Iris Foundation 2024 Award Honoree Marilyn Friedland. Photo by Rod Morata.

Bard Graduate Center board member Michele Beiny Harkins. Photo by Rod Morata.

Students Give Thanks for Scholarships and Financial Aid

Since its founding, Bard Graduate Center has offered scholarships and fellowship packages to its students. Thanks to the generous support from a dedicated community of individuals, foundations, and corporations, Bard Graduate Center was able to support 38 master’s students and 20 PhD students with more than $1.8 million in tuition assistance, stipends, and awards. The true value of these scholarships is reflected in the words of the students themselves.

I found a home for my many passions at Bard Graduate Center. I was thrilled to find a place that encourages interdisciplinary thought and fosters the ability to find new angles to consider how objects are shaped and how they shape the world around us. Since arriving at BGC, I have researched the role nineteenth-century illustrated magazines played in building bridges between art, literature, and industrial production. With the skills I learn and the connections I make at BGC, I hope to pursue a PhD in art history. I am incredibly grateful to the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Foundation for this generous gift. The fellowship has allowed me to begin my academic career in the exciting city of New York and to confidently follow where my research leads.

Lauryn Bolz, Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Fellowship

Bard Graduate Center’s unique focus on objects themselves, partnerships with cultural institutions across the city and globe, and small, supportive community are key to my ability to do this work. I have valued and benefited from conversations with my fellow Bard students, professors, and our many distinguished guests, as well as the opportunities to put my research into practice with gallery exhibitions like Shaped by the Loom and SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa. I thank you again for your support of my own research and initiatives like these at Bard Graduate Center.

David Gassett, Marilyn M. Simpson Endowed Scholarship

I have decided to specialize in twentieth-century glass history. My current project, which will likely become my qualifying paper, is about the complex gendered and racialized labor roles of early nineteenth-century American glass blowing factories and how the medium operates both within and outside of craft traditions. I am honored and grateful to have been chosen for this fellowship. The Windgate Fellowship in Craft has alleviated the financial burden of obtaining a master’s degree and has allowed me to pursue my studies with more intense determination.

RJ Maupin, Windgate Fellowship in Craft

I am writing to express my deepest gratitude to the Lee B. Anderson Memorial Foundation for awarding me the fellowship that has supported my journey in pursuing education in the fascinating field of decorative arts. Your generous support has been instrumental in enabling me to immerse myself in the world of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century decorative arts, particularly focusing on Chinese export wares and the American and European imitations and collections. With your help, I have been able to lay a strong foundation in decorative arts and material culture at BGC, engaging in interdisciplinary courses and enriching intellectual conversations.

Luli Zou, Lee B. Anderson Memorial Foundation Fellowship

Welcome Lindsay Smilow, Chief Advancement Officer

In March, Bard Graduate Center welcomed its new chief advancement ofcer, Lindsay Smilow. She arrived at BGC with an extensive background in both fundraising and the arts. Most recently, she served as director of development at the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), where she secured a groundbreaking multi-year support opportunity.

Prior to her tenure at NYFA, Smilow was the executive director of the Brooklyn chapter of the American Institute of Architects. She has significant experience working in both development and external afairs at diverse institutions, ranging from small nonprofits to large organizations. Early in her career, Smilow worked in arts education at the Guggenheim and the Queens Museum. She holds a bachelor’s degree in art history and sculpture from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in art history from Brooklyn College.

Smilow said, “Bard Graduate Center is a thrilling crucible where scholars, students, and exhibition makers forge new paths in the decorative arts, design history, and material culture. I feel fortunate to work alongside its passionate stewards and supporters and contribute to its ongoing growth.”

Susan Weber, founder and director of Bard Graduate Center, said, “Lindsay is an excellent addition to our team. She brings a fresh approach and a collaborative spirit, and I know she will do great things here.”

Photo by Brayden Heath.

2024 Iris Foundation Awards

Celebrate Excellence in the Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture

The Iris Foundation Awards were created in 1997 to recognize scholars, patrons, and professionals who have made outstanding contributions to the study and appreciation of the decorative arts and thereby help to sustain the cultural heritage of our world. The awards are named for Bard Graduate Center founder and director Susan Weber’s mother, Iris Weber. Proceeds from the Iris Foundation Awards Luncheon help support scholarships and tuition assistance programs for BGC students.

The 27th annual Iris Foundation Awards ceremony was held on April 3, 2024, at the Cosmopolitan Club. The event recognized Marilyn Friedland (outstanding patron), Diana Scarisbrick (outstanding lifetime achievement), Wayne Modest (outstanding mid-career scholar), and Eli Wilner (outstanding dealer), and it raised more than $215,000 to support BGC student scholarships.

L to R: Iris Foundation 2024 Award guests Daniel Ryniec, Benjamin Zucker, Jeffrey Munger, and Helen Drutt English. Photo by Rathkopf Photography.

About the Recipients

Marilyn Friedland Outstanding Patron

Marilyn J. Friedland is a collector and patron of the arts. She is a member of the Wrightsman Fellows and Visiting Committee of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as a member of the Friends of Asian Art at the Met. She is a director of the Wallace Collection in America, a sustaining fellow at the Frick Collection, a member of the Association of Fellows at the Morgan Library and Museum, a benefactor of the American Ceramic Circle, a patron of the Metropolitan Opera, a supporter of the American Associates of the National Theatre, Lincoln Center, Asia Society, the American Friends of the Shanghai Museum, and a former long-term member of the Museum Council at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University, where she endowed the Friedland Family Acquisitions Fund and the Rare Book Room in the music department at Lincoln Hall. She has supported the publication of European Porcelain: In The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Jefrey Munger and Elizabeth Sullivan, Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts by Wolf Burchard, Sir Richard Wallace: Connoisseur, Collector & Philanthropist by Suzanne Higgott and David Lindo, Everyday Rococo: Madame de Pompadour and Sèvres Porcelain by Rosalind Savill, and Rubens: The Two Great Landscapes by Lucy Davis. Friedland received her BA from Cornell University and her MEd from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

L to R: Iris Foundation 2024 Award Honorees Eli Wilner, Marilyn Friedland, and Wayne Modest with Dr. Susan Weber. Photo by Rathkopf Photography.

Diana Scarisbrick

Outstanding Lifetime Achievement

Diana Scarisbrick is a renowned jewelry historian who has published more than twenty books and catalogues on jewelry from many ages around the world. Her academically acclaimed titles include The Art of the Ring: Highlights from the Grifn Collection, Diamond Rings: 700 Years of Glory and Glamour, Portrait Jewels: Opulence and Intimacy from the Medici to the Romanovs, and Rings: Jewelry of Power, Love, and Loyalty.

In 1950, Scarisbrick finished her education at Oxford University and began her career as a historian to explain the cultural, social, and political significance of jewelry and engraved gems. She is known for bringing to light great gems otherwise hidden within aristocratic collections. Scarisbrick has collaborated with many leading scholars and collectors to catalogue celebrated gem collections like the Beverley Collection at Alnwick Castle, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and those of the Dukes of Devonshire, Marlborough, and Northumberland. In 2013 she was appointed as research associate at the University of Oxford’s Classical Art Research Centre. She is a fellow of the prestigious Society of Antiquaries of London.

Wayne Modest Outstanding Mid-Career Scholar

Wayne Modest is professor of material culture and critical heritage studies in the Faculty of Humanities at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, and the director of content at Wereldmuseum, the National Museum of World Cultures in the Netherlands, with locations in Amsterdam, Leiden, and Rotterdam, and the Research Center for Material Culture. He has held visiting academic positions at the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and Yale University. A cultural studies scholar by training, Modest’s work is driven by a concern for more historically contingent ways of understanding the present, especially in relation to material culture/ museum collections. He has been researching heritage and citizenship in Europe and coedited Matters of Belonging: Ethnographic Museums in A Changing Europe (2018) and Victorian Jamaica (2019). Modest has also (co-) curated several exhibitions including What We Forget (2019) with artists Alana Jelinek, Rajkamal Kahlon, Servet Kocyigit, and Randa Maroufi, which explores the art making and the memory of colonialism in current discussions about European citizenship, its pasts, present, and futures. Modest is currently working on several forthcoming publication projects including Museum Temporalities and Curating the Colonial.

Eli Wilner

Outstanding Dealer

Eli Wilner has pioneered the creation and restoration of the perfect frame to house invaluable paintings. For the past forty years, he has been chosen to perform frame restorations for the most prestigious public and private art collections worldwide. One such project was the re-creation of the mammoth, eagle-crowned, gilded frame for Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851).

After completing his BA and MA in fine art, Wilner was a Bryant Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1995 until 1999. He has been a member of the Director’s Circle of the Smithsonian American Art Museum since 1997, and in 1998, he served on the board of trustees for the New York Academy of Art. In 1983, he founded Eli Wilner & Company, an institution of expert carvers, gilders, and mold-makers who make the world’s finest resource for antique American and European frames.

Photo by Rathkopf Photography.

In Memoriam: Mindy Papp

The leadership of Bard Graduate Center remembers with afection and gratitude our friend and supporter, Melinda Florian Papp, who passed away earlier this year. Papp was codirector of Florian Papp, one of the oldest antiques galleries in the US. Its focus was English and European furniture and fine art from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. She published catalogues on English Aesthetic furniture, antique boxes, and watercolor drawings of architecture, gardens, and interiors.

From her early involvement on various benefit committees and sponsorship of the annual Iris Awards, to her steadfast advocacy for the BGC scholarship fund, Papp exemplified unwavering commitment to and passion for our mission. Her eventual role as a member and then cochair of BGC’s board of trustees further underscores her profound impact on our institution.

Mindy will be deeply missed. We extend our sympathies to her family and many friends.

In honor of Mindy’s devotion to BGC, we have established the Mindy Papp Prize for Travel and Research. This fund will empower Bard Graduate Center students to explore new horizons in the decorative arts and design, fostering their academic and professional growth. To contribute to this fund visit bgc.bard.edu/donate-mindypapp.

Photo provided by BGC.

Honor Roll of Donors

Bard Graduate Center deeply appreciates the generosity of the donors who have helped to sustain the institution in 2023–24. Their contributions and grants support exhibitions, publications, and a wide range of programs and events. Most importantly, they allow us to support our MA and PhD students with scholarships and fellowships, for which we are deeply grateful.

Endowed Funds

American Members of CINOA Award

Sybil Brenner Bernstein Scholarship

Bonnie Cashin Fund for Study Abroad

English Professional Development Award

Paul and Irene Hollister Lectures on Glass

Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz

Foundation Institute for the Arts of the Americas

Iris Foundation

Eugenie Prendergast Fund

Françoise and Georges Selz Lectures on Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century

French Decorative Arts and Culture

Peter Jay Sharp Scholarship

Marilyn M. Simpson Scholarship

Lenore G. Tawney Foundation

Scholarship

Trehan Fund for Islamic Art and Material Culture

$50,000 and Above

Anonymous

Iris Foundation

David Mann and Fritz Karch

MR Architecture + Decor

The National Endowment for the Humanities

$10,000-49,000

Lee B. Anderson Memorial Foundation

Michele Beiny Harkins

Andrew J. Bernstein Foundation

The Estate of Ruth L. Cohen

Hélène David-Weill

The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation

Nancy Druckman

The Edgemer Foundation, Inc.

Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards

Charitable Foundation

Marilyn Friedland*

Carol Grossman

Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown

Leon Levy Foundation

Vera Mayer

Peter A. Nadosy

Barbara Nessim and Jules Demchick

Peco Foundation

Anne Pyne (MA ’07)

The Richardson Foundation

The Scully Peretsman Foundation

The Selz Foundation

Deedee and Barrie Wigmore

Windgate Foundation

Hon. Kimba Wood and Frank E. Richardson, III

Deborah Miller Zabel

Galerie Zlotowski

$1,000-$9,999

Anonymous

Jan and Warren Adelson

Louise Arias

Susan Baker

Kathleen Baum

Karen Bedrosian Richardson

David Berg Foundation

Noreen and Ken Buckfire

Constance Caplan

Edward Lee Cave

Classical American Homes

Preservation Trust

Cowles Charitable Trust

Brandy Culp (MA ’04)

Lucy and Michael Danziger

Dr. Arnold J. Davis

Gus N. Davis

Benoist F. Drut

Elizabeth English*

Tom and Tania Evans

Geraldine Fabrikant Metz

Tobias Forster

David Frankel and Elizabeth Caffry

Frankel (MA ’01)

Agnes Gund

Rochelle and David A. Hirsch

J.M. Kaplan Fund

Elbrun and Peter Kimmelman

Dr. Wolfram Koeppe

Steven and Carol Kosann

Kroll Family Trust

Martin P. Levy

Reeva and Ezra P. Mager

Jeffrey Munger

Liliane A. Peck

Patricia Pei

Susan T Rodriguez | Architecture · Design

Linda H. Roth

The Ruddock Foundation for the Arts

Constantine Sidamon-Eristoff (MA ’21)

The Estate of Philip Siebert

Judy Steinhardt

Ellen and William S. Taubman*

The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation

Barbara Tober

Cynthia Volk (MA ’21)

Shelby White

Eli Wilner

Mitchell Wolfson

Barbara and Benjamin Zucker

Additional Donors

Anonymous (3)

Helen C. and Stephen E. Adler

Sara M. Ansari (MA ’10)

Dr. Annette Blaugrund

Jay E. Cantor

Leigh L. Carleton

Amy M. Coes (MA ’00)

Mariana Cook

Louise A. Cort

Toby Crystal

Helen W. Drutt English

Joscelyn Ergas

Heidi S. Fiske*

Martha Friedricks-Glass

Lynn Gernert*

Cristina Grajales

Lewis I. Haber and Carmen Dubroc

Vivian Haime Barg

Titi Halle

Dr. Evelyn J. Harden

Dennis Harrington

Dr. Morrison H. Heckscher

Herring Finn Foundation

Dr. Arnold L. Lehman

Lisa Lippman

Helen R. Litt

Shelley Mintz*

Janet Ozarchuk

Amy O. Parsons*

Christina Prescott-Walker

Esther and Stephen Rotella*

Jane F. Safer*

Dennis and Regina Santella

Paul Schaffer

Emma Scully (MA ’14)

Molly F. Stockley (MA ’96)

Stephanie Stokes

Elizabeth S. Tunick

Ruth Underberg

Dr. Stefanie Walker*

Dr. Ian Wardropper

Hadassah R. Weiner

Contibutors

Anonymous

Rebecca Allan*

Naomi Antonakos*

Joan Barenholtz*

Lucas Bavaro*

Niki Berg*

Andrea Bigelisen*

Scott Bodenner*

Marilyn Braiterman*

Elizabeth A. Brown*

Jill Chalsty*

Rachael Clarke*

Leah Decker

Lois Denmark*

Susan W. Doelp*

Ellen Dubreuil*

Valarie Ebeier Bennett*

Anne E. Eschapasse (MA ’00)

Justin Ferate*

Elizabeth Kerr-Fish (MA ’97)

Linda Greenbaum*

Judith A. Hartmann*

Susan Hilferty*

Emily Isakson (MA ’21)

Rachel Kaminsky

Wendy T. Kaplan*

Roksolana Karmazyn*

Barbara A. Kaslow*

Debbie Kesselman*

Janet Koplos

Lynn K. Kroll*

Katherine Kurs*

Charles LeDray*

Will Leland*

Istvan Leovits

Melissa Cohn Lindbeck* (MA ’03)

Jane Lytle*

Susan Marx

Lucille Mastriaco*

Jerry B. Moss*

Gloria Newton*

Caroline O'Connell (MA ’16)

Pallavi M. Patke

CS Piel*

David Poll*

Anne Riker Powell

Wendy Redfield

Rena and Sheldon Rice*

Drs. Irwin and M. Susan Richman

Shax Riegler (MA ’07)

Terry A. Rosen*

Carole Routman*

Cathy Ryerson*

Barbara Saidel*

Claude A. Saucier*

Lorraine Schneider*

Seth Shulman*

Vera Silverman*

Christine A. Smith*

Stephanie Stern

Drake Stutesman*

Linda Sylling

Peter-Ayers Tarantino*

Kristin Trautman

Tucker Viemeister

Donna and James Viola

William M. Voelkle*

Walsh Associates, Ltd.

Lanzhen Wang

Sylvia Weber*

Beth C. Wees*

Roberta Weiner*

Steven Whitesell (MA ’07)

Namita G. Wiggers*

Daniel J. Zimmer

Gift-In-Kind

Anonymous

Amitabha and Isha Bhattacharyya

Kathleen Hannah Bond

Claudia DeMonte

Helen Williams Drutt Family Collection

Museum of the Grand Prairie

Lewis I. Haber and Carmen Dubroc

Titi Halle

Helena Hernmarck

Fritz Karch

Dr. Wolfram Koeppe

Carmel and Dr. Eugene Krauss

Martin P. Levy

Josh Massey (MA ’23)

James Oles

Ruth-Ginsberg Place and Lila Place

Philip and Lorna Sarrel Collection

Claude A. Saucier*

The Estate of Paul J. Smith

Anne Swift

Susan M. Yecies

Benjamin Zucker

Gifts were made in honor of the following:

Elizabeth Caffry

Nancy Druckman

Marilyn Friedland

Ted Hallman

Elena Rålamb Hernmarck

Mary Kahlenberg

Dr. Minna Lee

Daniel Ryniec

Freya van Saun (MA ’00)

Walter E. Stait

Dr. Susan Weber

Deborah Miller Zabel

*BGC Members

L to R: Janelle Williams (MA ’25), manager of public research & education Mary Adeogun (MA ’22), David Gassett (PhD Student), Robert Hewis (MA ’24), director of public humanities + research Andrew Kircher, Angela Crenshaw (MA ’24, PhD Student), Rachel Salem-Wiseman (MA ’24).

Photo by Fresco Arts Team.

Credits

Editor in Chief

Amy Estes

Managing Editor

Delia Cruz Kelly

Art Director

Laura Grey

Designer Bella Bennett

Photo Editor Maggie Walter

Contributors

Angela Crenshaw (MA ’24)

Nishtha Dani (MA ’25)

Allison Donoghue (MA ’24)

Amy Estes

Mackensie Griffin (MA ’24)

Vy Nguyen

Rachel Salem-Wiseman (MA ’24)

Cover (Front): (TOP) Sonia Delaunay for Bielefelder Spielkarten, deck of Simultané playing cards, 1964. Printed paper. Private collection. Photograph: Bruce M. White. © Pracusa. (MIDDLE) Pierre Dariel (attr.), table painted by Sonia Delaunay for Marie-Jacques Perrier’s bedroom, 1930. Wood, paint, and varnish. Perrier Family Archive. Photograph: Dirk Rose / Kunstmuseen Krefeld. © Pracusa. (BOTTOM) Sharif Bey, Louie Bones, 2020. Earthenware, vitreous china, mixed media. Courtesy the artist and albertz benda, New York and Los Angeles. Installation view of Sharif Bey, Louie Bones, in the 2021 exhibition Sharif Bey: Excavations, Carnegie Museum of Art; photo: Bryan Conley.

Cover (Back): (TOP) Pair of Dolls. 20th century. Probably Panamanian. Carved wood and fabric. Bard Graduate Center Study Collection, Gift of the Estate of Paul J. Smith. (MIDDLE) Abigail Lucien, A Slow Burning Incandescence, 2022. Enamel, vinyl, and acrylic on steel. Courtesy the artist and Deli Gallery, New York, Mexico City. (BOTTOM) Toy Bicycle Made from Recycled Materials. Malian. Wire, tape and recycled materials. Bard Graduate Center Study Collection, Gift of the Estate of Paul J. Smith.