Bard Graduate Center Logo
  Event Banner Image
 

Research programming is a major component of intellectual life at Bard Graduate Center. Organized by our faculty, the seminars, lectures, and symposia scheduled throughout the semester broaden our curricular vision and help further the institution’s goal of promoting research in the areas of decorative arts, design history, and material culture—what we call the “cultural history of the material world.” Advance registration is strongly encouraged. Please click through for full descriptions and to register.
 

Fashioning Race Through Metalwork in French Sugar Casters

Sarah R. Cohen
Professor of Art History, University at Albany, SUNY

Three extant pairs of French sugar casters, all fashioned through various forms of luxury metalwork, present numerous problems of interpretation regarding questions of elite dining fashions, artisanal practices, and constructions of racial identity. All of the sets of casters feature figures bearing large bunches of sugar cane cast in silver; each bundle is fashioned so that highly refined, white powdered sugar can be sprinkled from holes punched through the tops of the individual stalks of cane. The figures themselves differ markedly in physiognomy, dress, and attitude: the earliest pair, fashioned in silver for Louis-Henri, duc de Bourbon, in the 1730s, feature an “African” man and woman dressed in “American” costumes inspired by travel literature. The two later sets, by contrast, feature “Chinese” boys cast in either bronze or silver and completely painted to create dark-skinned laborers in lavish Chinoiserie garments. How can we account for these eclectic and variable table ornaments? In this talk Cohen will examine their implications in light of changing conceptions of race in eighteenth-century France, in the context of global commerce, sugar production, and slavery.

Tuesday, March 17, 6–7:30 pm
38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall

Françoise and Georges Selz Lectures on Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century French Decorative Arts and Culture
Register Button
BGCTV Logo BGCTV This event will be livestreamed. A link to the video will be posted to the event listing the day of the talk.

Blackface Harlequins and Other Challenges of New Museology

Sequoia Miller (BGC MA ’12)
Chief Curator, Gardiner Museum

How does a small museum specializing in historical European ceramics face the challenges of contemporary socially-engaged museology? The Gardiner Museum in Toronto opened in 1984 featuring historical European ceramics collected by its founders, George and Helen Gardiner. Since then, Toronto has become one of the most diverse, dynamic, and cosmopolitan cities in the world. How do small museums anchored in elite European culture transform to engage more diverse audiences? How do colonial institutions build inclusive practices while staying true to their specific collections? This talk will consider the Gardiner Museum as a case study for these and other questions and challenges of contemporary museology.

Wednesday, March 18, 6–7:30 pm 
38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall
Register Button

Book Launch—The Art of the Jewish Family

Author Laura Leibman in conversation with Jonathan Sarna and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, moderated by Dean Peter N. Miller, to celebrate the publication of The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects.

Monday, March 23, 6–7:30 pm 
38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall

This book was published with generous support from the Leon Levy Foundation, the David Berg Foundation, and donors to Bard Graduate Center.
Register Button

Do Baskets Speak? Creating Afterlives of an Archaeological Project at Neolithic Çatalhöyük

Ruth Tringham
Professor of the Graduate School (Anthropology), University of California, Berkeley

When we publish the final report of an archaeological project, we tend to think of it as the culmination of its life journey through time, but it seems to me “rather the point of departure from which a new journey begins”—an afterlife. By afterlives I am talking about the narratives that remediate or are drawn out of the primary content and documents of archaeological projects. In this presentation, I will discuss this concept through my own experience of creating afterlives of archaeological projects, starting in the completely born-analog context of archaeological excavations in southeast Europe. Analog documents (printed texts and photos, film, tapes etc.) have different challenges to their modification (remediation) and different sensorial affects from those created digitally. I was acutely aware of these differences during the BACH (Berkeley Archaeologists @ Çatalhöyük 1997–2004) project that covered the transition in the documentation (especially through audio-visual media) of archaeological fieldwork from predominantly born-analog to born-digital. It is not simply the technological audio-visual prowess, speed, and efficiency of digital documents; digital afterlives allow us to engage the audience in the transparency of the creative path from data to imagination, forefronting the ambiguity of the archaeological record. This presentation explores the many different forms that afterlives of archaeological projects can take (including some recent experiments), keeping long dead projects alive and sustained.

Tuesday, March 24, 6–7:30 pm
38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall
Register Button
BGCTV Logo BGCTV This event will be livestreamed. A link to the video will be posted to the event listing the day of the talk.
 
Facebook Icon Like us on Facebook
twitter-icon.png Follow us on Twitter
Instagram Icon Follow us on Instagram

Forward this email to a friend.
Unsubscribe from this email list. 		Bard Graduate Center
bgc.bard.edu


Bard Graduate Center Gallery: 18 West 86th Street, New York, NY 10024
Academic Programs and Library: 38 West 86th Street, New York, NY 10024
COPY AND PASTE CODE BELOW TO MAILCHIMP