November 6, 2024

Dear Alumni,

Today, I’d like to highlight BGC’s digital companion to the exhibition Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today. The gallery is currently closed for maintenance, but you can still explore the show virtually, with exciting opportunities to zoom into details and compare design drawings with ceramic objects. I especially loved looking at the array of mid-eighteenth-century porcelain flowers on the digital exhibition’s “Women at Sèvres” page.

Have you been involved in an exhibition that’s open through the end of the year? Let us know—we’d love to share it on BGC’s newsletter that goes out to 19K subscribers weekly. Submit it here.

As always, you can share updates through the online form.

All best,

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

Alumni Spotlight

Emily Banas (MA ’15) curated the exhibition The Art of French Wallpaper Design, which opens on November 16 at the RISD Museum. The show explores the vibrant, surprising designs that adorned walls in the 1700s and 1800s. Featuring more than one hundred rare samples of salvaged wallpapers, borders, fragments, and design drawings, the exhibition reveals the creative process and showcases the extraordinary technical skills involved in producing these works, presenting an invaluable resource for artists and enthusiasts alike. Well done, Emily!

Anna Mikaela Ekstrand (MA ’17) organized the show Clairvoyant, which closed last month at Ceysson & Bénétière. You can learn more about Anna Mikaela’s work and view installation photos at the above link.

Select Career Opportunities

The Hong Kong Palace Museum seeks a curator of textile and decorative art. See the link for more information.

The Corning Museum of Glass is hiring a curatorial assistant for a three-year position reporting to the curator of ancient glass. As a member of the curatorial team, the curatorial assistant supports all areas of curatorial responsibility including acquisitions, exhibitions, cataloging, and research of the Corning Museum of Glass collections from ancient through contemporary.

The Textile Arts Center welcomes application for its Work in Progress (TAC WIP) program. For one month, WIP residents develop and showcase their work and practice in TAC’s Brooklyn studio, located in Gowanus, a neighborhood with a thriving arts community. Residents receive a personal studio space and twenty-four-hour  access to the Brooklyn studio, on top of a 30% adult classes discount, while being part of a community space inspired by a love and dedication for textiles. As part of the program, WIP residents host events, lectures, and workshops that relate to their practice for the community. Applications are due on November 15.

For more job listings please visit the BGC job board.

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

BGC Events

Bauhaus Designers, Nazi Persecution, and the Missing Archive: Alice Glaser, Lotte Rothschild, and Richard Grune
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
6 pm

Histories of Germany’s Bauhaus art, architecture, and design school (1919–33) usually position it exclusively as a movement in exile after the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933. Yet the vast majority of the Bauhaus’s more than 1,400 members remained in Germany and either embraced Nazism, survived it, or became its victims. In this talk, Elizabeth Otto excavates traces of the work and lives of three Bauhaus members who, because of their persecution by the Nazi government, have been lost to history. Using previously untapped archival sources—often scant materials preserved by family members and friends, including documents, photographs, and private memoirs—she reconstructs aspects of these artists’ work and lives to consider what this movement looks like when we include the art histories that violence has taken from us.

Thresholds of Contact and Conflict: Material Culture and Jewish History from Early Modern Times to the Fin de Siècle
Thursday, November 14, 2024
6 pm

In these three lectures, historian Daniel Jütte explores dynamics of contact and conflict in Jewish-Christian relations by focusing on one overarching theme: thresholds. Understanding thresholds in both a literal and figurative sense, his talks span a wide chronological arc from early modern times to the fin de siècle. The first lecture probes how shared objects, customs, and memories crossed thresholds between Christians and Jews in early modern Europe. The second talk homes in on the complex role that liminal spaces played in encounters between both religious communities in Renaissance cities. The final lecture examines how, in modern times, artistic representations of the Jewish condition—especially the little-known trope of “threshold dwellers”—influenced visions of the Jewish past and future.

BGC Open House
Sunday, November 17, 2024
11 am

If you know any prospective students, I encourage you to share information about BGC’s Open Houses. These events give prospective students the opportunity to learn about BGC’s MA and PhD programs. Participants hear from faculty about their research and teaching, meet current students, and tour the library and building. This session will be repeated on Sunday, December 8 on Zoom, also beginning at 11 am. Prospective students can register here.

From Something Left Behind: The Process of Archaeological Illustration
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
6 pm

Archaeologists rely on visualization to record excavation data, interpret their findings, build narratives, and provide specialist and public audiences with richer visions of the past. Archaeological illustrators, in turn, must draw on often fragmented and incomplete material culture to visualize this archaeological research. In this talk, illustrator Kathryn Killackey discusses the process of creating an archaeological reconstruction. This iterative process provides researchers and illustrators a space in which to explore and test hypotheses, helping to flesh out ideas, uncover contradictions, and identify gaps in knowledge. At the same time, the illustration process is one of elimination, the whittling down of alternative hypotheses, and making concrete one of many options. With examples from her fifteen years of experience, Killackey shows how drawing can lead to greater understanding of particular objects and places and how fragmentary objects can illuminate past lives.

Objects: USA 2024
A Tour for BGC Alums
Thursday, December 12
6–8 pm

BGC alums and friends are invited to an exclusive tour of Objects: USA 2024, a groundbreaking exhibition featuring nearly one hundred works by fifty-five visionary American artists and designers. Curated by Kellie Riggs and Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy (MA ’16), the exhibition explores the dynamic intersections between fine art, craft, and design, featuring works that bridge the gap between sculpture and functional objects. RSVP here by Monday, December 9. Guests are welcome.

Select External Events

Branner Forum for Medieval Art: Professor Ivan Drpić
Columbia University
Thursday, November 14, 2024
6:15 pm

The Branner Forum, a student-run symposium open to the public, memorializes former professor of medieval art Robert Branner. The Forum originated as a series of visiting lectures organized by Branner’s graduate students immediately after his death during the academic year as a way of continuing his courses. To honor Robert Branner’s legacy, the forum continues to invite scholars of medieval art and architecture to Columbia’s campus and serves to connect the medievalist community within and beyond the university. This session will feature Ivan Drpić, who specializes in the art, architecture, and material culture of Byzantium and Southeastern Europe. Attendees must register in advance at this link.

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.