Did you know that BGC has an annual international study trip? Each summer, the Bard Travel Program takes MA students on a ten day trip at the end of the spring semester trip. This past May, I went with classmates and Prof. Jeffrey Collins to Paris, which served as an incredible summary and extension of my first-year coursework at the BGC. In our lectures at the École du Louvre and subsequent day trip to Versailles, we spoke extensively about materials and making, object agency, and collectors and collecting, tying together themes our class had explored throughout our year-long course, Objects in Context. Because of the BGC’s ties abroad, we were taken to places many visitors to Paris are not normally capable of seeing, including a now-privately-owned townhouse on the Champs-Élysées, the former home of nineteenth-century courtesan known as “La Païva.” The trip also enabled me to see Napoleon Bonaparte and Joséphine de Beauharnais’ country retreat at Malmaison, which I had written a paper about for Professor Freyja Hartzell’s Spring course on design and utopia.

After the Paris trip ended, three of my classmates and I were able to travel with Professor Caspar Meyer to participate in an archaeological excavation on a small Greek island called Despotiko. There, I was able to further my studies of marble for another two weeks, extending material questions about eighteenth-century Paris to the ancient Cyclades. Funding from Bard helped cover the costs for this experience too. You can learn more about international opportunities at Bard Gradaute Center at an Open House this fall.

—Maddy Warner, MA Class of 2020
Admissions Ambassador
madeline.warner@bgc.bard.edu