Alumni Spotlight

Rebecca Sandler Perten (PhD ‘19) has been appointed by the Jewish Theological Seminary to the position of Assistant Dean, Kekst Graduate School and List College. 

The Montclair Art Museum has named Laura J. Allen (MA ‘20) Curator of Native American Art, a position funded by The Henry Luce Foundation. At the Museum, Laura will help build strong relationships with Native communities and revitalize exhibitions and presentations of Native North American arts.

This coming April, Irene Sunwoo (MA ’04) will join the Art Institute of Chicago as the John H. Bryan Chair and Curator, Architecture and Design. Irene will join the Art Institute from the Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she has been Curator of the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery and Director of Exhibitions since 2016.

Fashion, Society, and the First World War, a publication edited by Maude Bass-Krueger (PhD ’16), will be published in August of 2021 and is available through Bloomsbury for pre-order now. The book will offer a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the war on the ways that the fashion industry functioned in a global wartime economy, as well as on the ways that women and men negotiated this new world.

In November, Alice Winkler (MA ’19), joined Sotheby’s as a Registrar.

Select Career Opportunities

Select Virtual Events at BGC

Going Bananas: Mixed Methods Research on Musa sp. and Other Unspun Fibers in Mindanao and Okinawan Textiles
Tuesday, February 23
12:15pm ET
Using insights from fieldwork among the Bagobo and other Indigenous groups producing abaca ikat alongside collections research, this talk with Cherubim Quizon summarizes ethnographic, museological, and linguistic information relevant to this confluence of material attributes and relates it to Okinawan kasuri.

The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation Seminar in New York and American Material Culture
Wednesday, February 24
6pm ET
Brian Eugenio Herrera and Tavia Nyong’o will each present a short paper followed by a moderated conversation and Q&A session. Herrera will present “The Tawdry, Terrifying, but Totally True History of the Casting Couch” where he excavates the history of the “casting couch” as a cultural construct, and Nyong’o will present “Black Arts of the Archive,” on the afterlives in art, performance, and scholarship of Mary Jones, a nineteenth-century Black transgender sex worker.

Disentangling the First “Global” Standard of Ceramic Art in Early Postwar Japan
Thursday, February 25
12:15pm ET
Ceramics, when defined as an aesthetic object or meditated on through its related cultural practices, arguably has involved inherent dual and contrasting propensities throughout its history: being extensively global in its omnipresent production and circulation on one hand and highly localized in its contextualization and standards of evaluation on the other. Ceramics, in this regard, highlights a question concerning world art studies on the issue of the attainability of “universal” artistic criteria applicable across geo-cultural and political boundaries. This presentation with Yasuko Tsuchikane will interrogate an historical example where the validity of considering such historization was tested as an experimental project through one form of public display, an international exhibition of contemporary ceramics, by focusing on a case in 1964 in Tokyo: Japan’s first attempt to present a global community of ceramics in its modern art museums.

Symposium—Refresh-Reset-Reformat: Giving Voice to the Past in the Digital Age
Friday, February 26
1 pm ET
As we increasingly rely on digital technologies for memory and preservation, these tools can also help us to recover, redefine, and reimagine the past, particularly through the exploration of lost and marginalized voices and cultures. This seminar highlights digital projects that draw attention to these forgotten and overlooked histories, illuminating their importance and encouraging dialogue that has the ability to shape how we understand their legacy and impact.

Virtual Events out in The World

Louis Kahn, 120 Celebration
Saturday, February 20
1pm ET
Join Scandinavia House for an online celebration of the American architect Louis Kahn, born 120 years ago on this day in Estonia. In this program, see a discussion with some of the people closest to Kahn: distinguished landscape architect Harriet Pattison; her son, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn; and William Whitaker, Curator of Architectural Archives at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design.

The Duster Coat: An Icon of American Women’s Fashion with Rebecca Jumper Matheson
Friday, February 19
1pm ET
Duster coats have become an icon of American fashion. Hear about how they originated and evolved in the Decorative Arts Trust’s February virtual dialogue featuring Rebecca Jumper Matheson (current BGC PhD candidate). Rebecca will share her fascinating research on the transformative power of women’s fashion in the 19th and early 20th centuries. After her talk, she will be joined in conversation with Michele Majer, Assistant Professor at BGC. The program will close with a Q&A where Rebecca will be ready to answer all of your 19th-century fashion questions.

The Textile Museum Journal: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Asian Textiles in Portuguese Collections
Wednesday, February 24
12pm ET
In this interview, The Textile Museum Journal guest editor Mary Dusenbury and contributing authors Raquel Santos, Jessica Hallett, Blythe McCarthy, Maria João Ferreira and Ana Claro will discuss the issues surrounding textiles made or found in Portugal and dating from the early modern period. They will focus on their  interdisciplinary research on textiles found in Portuguese collections, published in the articles “Chinese Textiles for the Portuguese Market: Rethinking Their History Through Dye Analysis” and “Color Power: Contributions of Science and Technology to the Study of 16th- and 17th-century ‘Vine-Scroll’ Carpets.”

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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.