February 19, 2025

Dear Alumni,

I recently enjoyed a night at the museum with Samuel Snodgrass (MA ’22), who invited me to join him for the opening of Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture at the Frick Collection, where he has worked since 2022, currently as the administrative assistant for education. We reminisced about the paintings we studied at BGC in Michele Majer’s seminar on eighteenth-century fashion and then visited the museum shop to see some very exciting new offerings: five hats designed and made by Samuel, inspired by portraits on view in the exhibition. If you find yourself at the Frick in the coming months, I encourage you to check out Samuel’s hats, which beautifully blend his study of fashion history and his practice as an artist. Well done, Samuel!

I’ve learned that BGC’s current students are looking forward to hosting a graduate student symposium in May, with submissions due this Friday. See below for more details.

As always, please share your latest updates via the online form!

All best,

Julia Carabatsos (MA ’22)
alumni@bgc.bard.edu

Alumni Spotlight

Rachael Schwabe (MA ’20) oversees online courses at MoMA and is excited to share that she recently launched a refreshed version of Fashion as Design as a three-course specialization on Coursera. Congratulations, Rachael!

After serving for almost two years as associate editor, Sarah Pickman (MA ’15) has recently accepted the role of co-editor-in-chief of Endeavour, a journal for the history of science. Sarah would be glad to hear from any BGC alumni whose work touches on the history of science or scientific objects, and who are interested in pitching traditional full-length research articles, book or exhibition reviews, or short articles, including studies of interesting objects or archival finds, for the journal’s “In Vivo” section. Recent work Endeavour has featured includes a study of Vesalian skeletal imagery in an early modern Indian cemetery; the use of X-ray machines to police the bodies of South African diamond miners; and a special issue on gendered histories of botany and agriculture. Reach out to Sarah at pickman.endeavour@gmail.com. Well done, Sarah!

Select Career Opportunities

The Textile Arts Center Artists in Residence is a nine-month program that combines studio access with a rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum and regular critical dialogue, providing residents an opportunity to learn and explore the textile medium, and an alternative to traditional higher education programs. The residency culminates in a group exhibition produced and hosted by TAC.

Nearly a quarter of the sessions at the upcoming Theoretical Architecture Group conference are organized by BGC alumni, students, and faculty members! Session titles include “Resisting Master Narratives in Museums;” “Coming to Our Senses: Interpreting the Multisensory Experiences of Past People;” “Disappearing Acts: Presence and Absence in the Archaeological Record;” “Material Resistances, Resistant Materials;” “Recalcitrant Things: Material Culture Perspectives on Discard and Reuse;” “’CTRL + Z’ : Resisting Permanence through the Digital;” and “Archaeology in New York City: Past, Present, and Future.” Individual paper submissions are due on March 13.

The Oral History Center at UC Berkeley is hosting a two-week Summer Institute in Art History program from June 8 to June 21. The program is for scholars and professionals studying art history and visual culture to foster an in-depth understanding of oral history. This program will be held on UC Berkeley’s campus and participants must have the ability to commit to a two-week stay. The OHC is accepting applications until March 1. 

The Burlington Magazine is pleased to announce its ninth annual scholarship to provide funding to those engaged in the study of French eighteenth-century fine and decorative art. Applicants must be studying, or intending to study, for an MA, PhD, post-doctoral or independent research within the 12-month period the funding is given. Applications are open to scholars from any country. A grant of £12,000 will be awarded to the successful applicant. Applications are due on March 31.

The J. Paul Getty Museum seeks a qualified assistant curator with expertise in European Decorative Arts to join the department of sculpture and decorative arts. Reporting directly to the senior curator of sculpture and decorative arts, the assistant curator will assist in developing, displaying, maintaining, and managing the decorative arts collection within their area of expertise, working collaboratively with colleagues and under the guidance of senior curators. This is a full-time position within the curatorial team responsible for the Getty’s collection of European sculpture and decorative arts from the Middle Ages through 1900. The successful candidate will have a strong academic background and an established record of publications in European decorative arts of these periods. Ideally, the candidate would be a specialist in French or Italian decorative arts dating from 1650–1800. 

Call for Papers for Graduate Symposium @ BGC
Students at BGC are organizing a graduate symposium later this spring. Titled Sensing Matters: Bodies, Experiences, and Objects, this symposium invites papers from area graduate students that explore how material things become animated through sensory engagement and how attention to the sensorium alters our understanding of them. This half-day graduate symposium will take place in person on Friday, May 1, 2026, at Bard Graduate Center in New York City. Those interested in submitting papers for consideration should email graduate.symposium@bgc.bard.edu. The deadline for submissions is Friday, February 27, 2026. Accepted speakers will be notified in early March.

Master Drawings is accepting submissions for the ninth annual Ricciardi Prize, an award of $5,000 given for the best new and unpublished article on a drawing topic (of any period) by a scholar under the age of 40. The winning submission will be published in a 2027 issue of Master Drawings. In addition to the prize money, the winner and runner up are invited as our guests to present their respective research at the Master Drawings annual symposium in New York. The journal provides airfare and three nights of accommodation. The deadline is November 15, 2026.

For more job listings please visit the BGC job board.

username: career.services@bgc.bard.edu
password: CareersBGC2025-6*=*

Select BGC Events

Viollet-le-Duc Drawing Worlds
On view in the BGC Gallery through May 24, 2026

Blue Willow in the Clouds: The Architectural Reuse of British Transferware in Nineteenth-Century India
A lecture by Heeryoon Shin (Bard College)
Wednesday, March 4, 6 pm

In nineteenth-century India, the popular Willow pattern transferware from Staffordshire found a new life as affixed ornamentations in palace interiors. Set into walls in original form, or broken into flat, rectilinear pieces to meticulously cover walls, niches, and balconies, Blue Willow plates and their luminous blue and white surfaces effectively framed gods and kings and created a multisensory experience of space. Taking two late nineteenth-century sites, Juna Mahal in Dungarpur and Junagadh Fort in Bikaner, as points of departure, Heeryoon Shin explores how the design and materiality of Willow ware, as well as its display, acquired new meaning and purpose in Indian palace spaces. Evoking the tradition of tiled ornamentation and the display of ceramics in the chini khana (“China room”) in India, while also referencing European porcelain rooms, the transferware-covered walls reveal the complex cultural negotiations and material and political aspirations of nineteenth-century India. By examining the Indian reuse of British transferware, this talk complicates the conventional narrative of West looking East and highlights the nonlinear and multidirectional flows of ceramic culture.

Select External Events

Mapping the Hidden Threads of “Made in Italy”: Fashion Museums, Material Culture, and Cultural Heritage as Drivers of Value
The Italian Academy, Columbia University
Friday, February 27, 2:30–4:30 pm

This event is part of the Academy’s International Observatory for Cultural Heritage (IOCH), established in 2016 by Executive Director Barbara Faedda. IOCH is dedicated to the preservation, conservation, and study of cultural heritage, with fashion as one of its key areas of focus. In 2019, the Academy organized the conference Cultural Heritage Practices & Critical Fashion Theory to explore fashion’s interpretation of cultural heritage, alongside the exhibition “Full of Enthusiasm”: American Buyers Captured by Italian Fashion in the 1950s, which examined the emergence of Italian fashion designers in the American market. To mark the 10th anniversary of the IOCH, Barbara Faedda invited Romana Andò to present her groundbreaking research project at Columbia University’s Italian Academy. Professor Andò leads a research initiative in Rome that maps, connects, and enhances Italian fashion-related collections preserved in museums, foundations, and archives across Italy. She uses a multidisciplinary and technology-driven approach, and in this gathering she will talk about her progress and converse with other experts in the field. 

Shop the BGC Store!

Visit our online store at store.bgc.bard.edu for 40% off all items. Enter code ALUMNI at checkout to receive the discount.

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Gaggle.mail is an opt-in list-serv that serves as a place to share job openings, conference attendance, published books/articles, and exhibition openings directly with fellow alums. It’s a communication forum for alumni, by alumni. To circulate your news in the Gaggle group, send an email to bgcalumni@gaggle.email.