Alumni Spotlight

This month marks the opening of Nadia Myre: Analog/ues, an exhibition at Montclair Art Museum curated by Laura Allen (MA ’20). The show is the first expansive solo exhibition in the U.S. for celebrated Canadian Indigenous artist Nadia Myre. On Friday, September 18, the museum will host a Public Art Party, to which the BGC community is invited. Well done, Laura!

Sarah Pickman (MA ’15) contributed the chapter “Antarctic Materialities” to a new edited volume on the material culture of Antarctica. She also published an article in the April 2026 issue of Art History titled “‘You will find it at the North Pole when you get there’: Travels in Polar Exploration Ephemera.” Congratulations, Sarah!

Director of Interpretation, Collection, and Archives for the Rosen House at Caramoor Center for Music & the Arts Jessa J. Krick (MA ’03) curated the 2026 Rosen House Focus Tour Inside Lucie’s Wardrobe, which ran from May 15 to September 5. The Focus Tour included eighteen mannequins placed throughout the first floor rooms of the Rosen House and highlighted new research into Lucie Rosen’s unique personal style informed by the Rosen House archive. The exhibition was the first to identify and credit Lucie’s favorite dress designer, the enigmatic Alan Kramer, also known as Prince Vladimir Tirtoff-Romanoff. Well done, Jessa!

Amber Winick (MA ’13) recently published “Naked Lady Park,” an essay in Docomomo. Congratulations, Amber!

Select Career Opportunities

Fort Ticonderoga welcome applications to the role of Assistant Curator at the Thompson-Pell Research Center. The Assistant Curator will work directly with Fort Ticonderoga’s unparalleled historical resources to research and interpret the museum’s collections, Ticonderoga’s rich history, and the broader military experience of the early modern world for guests, students, scholars, viewers, and other stakeholders. This role will report to the Curator but will work alongside our Collections, Education, and Public History teams to generate new scholarship into the 18th-century military world and share that work through a range of public platforms and experiences. The ideal candidate will combine extensive experience with the military history of the 18th century, material culture research and methods, and public programming practice to meet the needs and interests of diverse audiences.

The Museum of Modern Art is currently accepting applications for a curatorial assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture.  The Museum of Modern Art is the repository of the world’s largest and most inclusive collection of modern painting and sculpture, comprising some 4,000 works dating from the late nineteenth century to the present day. The Painting and Sculpture Department produces a rigorous and innovative program of acquisitions, exhibitions and scholarship. The curatorial assistant supports senior curators in all areas of responsibilities, including administrative work in the context of curatorial functions such as research for exhibitions and publications, loans, acquisitions, collections records, bibliographic and biographical records and files, and general curatorial inquiries.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art seeks applications to its The Slifka Foundation Interdisciplinary Fellowship. This is a unique opportunity for an early-career scholar to undertake art historical research that combines the scholarly and technical investigation of European manuscript illumination in The Robert Lehman Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Slifka Fellow will benefit from mentorship from both a curator and a conservator and potentially a research scientist. Candidacy will be strengthened by experience in technical art history and investigation.

The Morgan Drawing Institute welcomes applications to its graduate seminar “Rembrandt on Paper: Connoisseurship Past and Present,” to be held on October 26, 2026. Rembrandt van Rijn’s works on paper have for centuries been the focus of rigorous connoisseurship. The results of such study are apparent in a large body of literature that continues to inform our understanding of his art. Building upon these efforts, this seminar will further contemplate the ends and means of Rembrandt connoisseurship. Through in-person examination of the artist’s drawings and prints, including a private tour of the exhibition Rembrandt’s Lions: Art and Exile in the Dutch Republic, participants will consider how close study of Rembrandt’s works on paper can yield new, timely interpretations of his oeuvre. Lively discussion will be driven by students’ broad array of research interests and methodological approaches. Participants will learn about the fundamentals of Rembrandt connoisseurship while also reconsidering the foregoing applications and possibilities of object-based study in museums and classrooms. Applications are due on September 30. Applicants are kindly invited to submit a one paragraph statement which should include the following: name and email, academic institution, class year, field of study, and interest in drawings and relevance of the seminar to your research. Emails should have the subject line “Rembrandt Graduate Seminar” to and be sent to drawinginstitute@themorgan.org.

For more job listings please visit the BGC job board.
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Select BGC Events

Fashion Shows on Film: An Evening of Silent Serials
Wednesday, September 23, 6 pm
An annotated screening of three films, live scored by Makia Matsumura, with Goddesses in the Machine cocurator Michelle Finamore.

Serial dramas of the 1910s and 1920s offered important promotional opportunities for American fashion designers. Like contemporary runway shows, they brought the latest fashion trends to audiences every week. Goddesses in the Machine cocurator Michelle Finamore will screen selections from three such serial dramas—The Perils of Pauline (1914), The Whirl of Life (1915) and The Mysterious Airman (1928)—with live accompaniment by Makia Matsumura. Following the screenings, Finamore and Matsumura will discuss the relationship between style, materiality, and music in these episodic films.

Victorian Hairwork and Nineteenth-Century Mourning Practice
Wednesday, September 30, 6 pm
A lecture by Karen Bachmann (Fashion Institute of Technology, Pratt Institute)

Nineteenth-century England was rife with sentimental culture. Death rates were high due to numerous factors including disease, war, and high childhood mortality. Queen Victoria became an unlikely fashion icon when she submerged herself in mourning after the deaths of both her husband, Prince Albert, and her mother in 1861. Aside from her mostly black wardrobe, she was widely known for her love of mourning jewelry, which contained the hair of loved ones inside. Victorian hairwork became popular in both jewelry and shadowbox form, transcending the concept of a wearable human relic into a fashion statement of the period. This lecture will explore this connection between fashion and mourning and will highlight several pieces from the largest collection of ornamental hairwork in America—Leila’s Hair Museum—of which many pieces are now housed at the Morbid Anatomy Library in Brooklyn.

Open Houses for Prospective Students
October 18, November 8, and November 22 (Virtual)
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 and meet current students. In-person open houses also include a tour of the academic building and gallery. 

Select External Events

Environmental Cultures Consortium (ECCo) Information Session

Tuesday, September 22
3 pm
Online

ECCo is a doctoral partnership between the Natural History Museum and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, funded by UKRI, Arts and Humanities Research Council. The consortium aims to open up world-leading natural history collections to arts and humanities research, bringing cultural, historical, and creative perspectives into dialogue with environmental science and contemporary environmental challenges. The consortium has funding for fourteen collaborative doctoral studentships in disciplinary areas covered by the AHRC, to be awarded between 2027 and 2030. The consortium can work with any UK HEI partner to develop these fourteen individual projects. This is an exciting opportunity to set agendas in the area of environmental humanities and collections-based research. Collaborative postgraduate training through ECCo offers higher education colleagues an opportunity to gain a familiarity with one or both collections-institutions of potential value for facilitating your research and supporting its future impact. ECCo doctoral projects should involve one or more Kew/NHM collections (specimens, archives, artifacts, illustrations, etc.), align with relevant expertise at Kew or NHM for supervision purposes, and align with one or more ECCo research themes. Find more information at the above link.

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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.