February 20, 2024

Dear Alumni,

I hope this newsletter finds you well. Last week at the College Art Association conference, I had the pleasure of connecting with several of you—a highlight amid its otherwise hectic rush of activity. If you have any further conference presentations coming up, please use the link below to let me know so I can share your news with our community!

As always, the online form is open for your latest news, whether presentation-related or otherwise!

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

Alumni Spotlight

Angela Hermano Crenshaw (MA ’24, current PhD student) curated the exhibition From Pineapple to Pañuelo: Philippine Textiles for the RISD Museum. Well done, Angela!

Via professor emeritus Paul Stirton comes news of Nadia Westenburg (MA ’17). She has published an article on National Park Service posters in a special issue of Art Journal. The essay draws on research that Nadia began as a BGC student for her qualifying paper. Nadia currently serves as park archivist for Yosemite National Park. Congratulations!

Rebecca Klassen (MA ’11) curated New York Historical’s current exhibition on Flaco, the Central Park Zoo’s escaped Eurasian eagle-owl. The Year of Flaco opened on February 7 and will remain on view until July 6. Well done, Rebecca!

Daria Murphy (MA ’21) guest edited the fall/winter issue of Ornamentum Magazine. The issue, titled “Activating the Senses,” explores the decorative arts beyond their static façade, as dynamic objects that intervene with human senses and the environment. Congratulations, Daria!

It was wonderful to see those of you who were able to make it to BGC for the Slavery and the Invention of Dutch Art event and the reception after. And bravi to all the alumni and students who made presentations at CAA:

Julia Carabatsos (MA ’22): Ocean Gems: Marine Botany and Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Seaweed Albums

Colin Fanning (MA ’13, PhD candidate):  Creativity, Consumption, and Spectacle: Interrogating “Collectible” Design

Maeve Hogan (MA ’14): Craft and Fiber Art of the 1950s and 1960s in the Collection of Helen Louise Allen

Monica Obniski (MA ’06): Past, Present, and Future: Public Art in Atlanta

Allie Steilau (MA ’09): Beuys vs. the Goldsmiths: Symbolic Meltdown and the Kronschmelzaktion (1982)

Amanda Thompson (MA ’16, PhD candidate): Appropriations ’76: Florida Native Seminole Patchwork in the Quilting World

Select Career Opportunities

Bard Graduate Center invites scholars from university, museum, and independent backgrounds with a PhD or equivalent professional experience to apply for non-stipendiary Visiting Fellowships to take place during the 2025–26 academic year. Bard Graduate Center Visiting Fellowships, which are intended for scholars who have already secured means of funding, provide scholars with workspace in the Bard Graduate Center Research Center and enable them to join our dynamic, intellectual, and scholarly community in New York City. Visiting Fellowships represent our commitment to conversation and scholarly communication. We are happy to welcome scholars who similarly seek a serious but informal intellectual environment in which to pursue their work in decorative arts, design history, and material culture. Please note that we prioritize applicants who have not yet held a BGC fellowship with us before. Visiting Fellows are invited for four months in the fall or spring semester, though we may consider exceptions under unique circumstances. We do not reimburse fellows for travel, relocation, housing, or visa-related costs in connection with this fellowship award. Applications are due on March 3, 2025.

The Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation seeks applicants to the William L. Thompson Fellowship for emerging museum and house museum professionals. The session will take place May 4–9, 2025, at Millford, the Jenrette Foundation’s property in Sumter County, South Carolina. Find more information here.

The Art Jewelry Forum seeks a membership and programs coordinator. The coordinator will report to the executive director and work collaboratively with AJF’s editor and its dedicated board members and volunteers. Find more information here.

For more opportunities please visit the BGC job board.

username: career.services@bgc.bard.edu
password: CareersBGC2024-5*=*

Select Events at BGC

The Timeless Thobe: Documenting Land, Heritage & Culture in Palestinian Dress: A Lecture by Wafa Ghnaim
Wednesday, February 26, at 6 pm

The thobe, a traditional hand embroidered dress made and worn by Palestinian women for centuries, is the bedrock of Palestinian identity through heritage, culture, and land. For millennia, women in the eastern Mediterranean have showcased their skillful stitchery on their traditional dress, displaying unique motifs, colors, and styles across the various villages of old Palestine. After 1948, over 750,000 Palestinians were forced into exile, carrying their dressmaking and embroidery traditions with them into refugee camps around the world. As the diaspora spread across the globe, the largest and longest-standing population of displaced people in the world, the thobe evolved into a symbol of national and cultural identity beyond borders. Palestinian dress historian and educator Wafa Ghnaim will discuss the evolution of the thobe and the language of Palestinian embroidery as it was used on traditional dress throughout time.

Spring Information Session
TONIGHT!
Thursday, February 20 at 6 pm

If you know any prospective students, please spread the word about tonight’s Spring Information Session. Attendees will learn more about BGC’s MA and PhD programs in decorative arts, design history, and material culture. Deborah Krohn, Professor and Chair of Academic Programs, and Keith Condon, Director of Admissions, will be in conversation about research and teaching at BGC, admissions, student life, and more.

Select External Events

Nancy’s Clothing and Bedding: Sartorial Precarity on the Eve of the Civil War
Columbia Center for Archaeology
Friday, February 21 at 6:10 pm

This presentation draws on the second chapter of Ayana Flewellen’s current book project The Will to Adorn. The talk explores what can be learned by studying the dress and adornment practices of Black women as practices of navigating the precarity of Black life post-enslavement. Starting at the twilight of the antebellum era in Tennessee, the chapter opens with the story of Nancy, an enslaved woman at Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage Plantation, who in 1863 walked away from the estate with all her clothing and bedding. Focusing on Nancy’s choice to abscond the Hermitage Plantation with her clothing in hand, Flewellen explores the sartorial choices engaged by African American women in the southern United States at the precipice of emancipation. This chapter asks questions about what women carried and what they left behind—both in their lives, and in the archive—at the dawn of “Surrender.” It threads together documentary sources detailing what formerly enslaved African Americans brought with them into Union controlled contraband camps, with the material culture recovered from excavations of the enslaved quarters at the plantation. Bringing these archives together, the chapter illuminates the quiet objects women kept and abandoned and how their choices ultimately demonstrated a skill in ascertaining and predicting their needs amidst social instability.

Feathers: A Transcultural Art History
Yale University
Friday, February 28, 9 am to 5 pm

The aim of this workshop is to address the art history of the feather across time and place, bringing studies on the role of feathers within particular artistic traditions into conversation with one another. Ranging from the Americas to Europe, Asia, and the Pacific, the goal is to stimulate an expanded, transcultural understanding of the feather’s affordances as a medium and of the commonalities and differences in the ways that feathers have inspired makers from antiquity to the present.

Dancing an Orphist “Egypt”: The Delaunays and Artistic Imperialism
Wednesday, February 26, 6:30 pm
Guggenheim New York

Join Guggenheim New York as Dr. Juliet Bellow, associate professor of art history at American University, presents a lecture in conjunction with current exhibition Harmony and Dissonance. Following the program, attendees are invited to an after-hours viewing of the exhibition.

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.

Sign up for Gaggle!

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.