Happy Summer Alumni,

A few weeks ago I watched Air–Ben Affleck’s object-based movie about Nike courting an ascendant Michael Jordan for a deal with Nike shoes in the 1980s. I moved to Chicago a couple years after the championship Bulls team had dispersed so this history was new to me, but I was particularly interested in the craft of the Air Jordan. I’ve since followed this history down a 10-hour rabbit hole with The Last Dance. While I was cueing up the documentary series, my eyes zeroed in on the invocation of “dance.” And I must say, I was not disappointed: the knifelike fluidity of Jordan’s movements on the court recalled for me the more recent phrases in Justin Peck’s Copland Dance Episodes. 

Summer is a time for rabbit holes, so I hope this message finds you getting lost. Nevertheless, it’s always a pleasure to hear from you! Please continue to send me your news either by email or through the online form.

Best Wishes,
Rachael Schwabe (MA ‘20)
alumni@bgc.bard.edu

Alumni Spotlight

Ajiri Aki (MA ‘09) released her second book on April 18, 2023,  JOIE: A Parisian’s Guide to Celebrating the Good Life (available through Penguin/Random House and Amazon). Congratulations, Ajiri!

Hannah Wirta Kinney (MA ‘14) has recently published two articles! One with Alexandra Letvin, “Interpretation as Introspection: Transforming Narratives of American Art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum” for Panorama (Spring 2023 9.1) about an exhibition incoming MA student Lucy Haskell worked on. Another article, “The Fleshiness of Bronze” in The Matter of Mimesis (Brill, 2023) grew out of the ideas she first explored in her QP for BGC. Well done, Hannah!

Dare Turner (MA ‘17) has been appointed the Brooklyn Museum’s first-ever full-time curator of Indigenous art. Congratulations and best wishes, Dare!

Dylan Leah Brekka (MA ‘19) started a new position at Nicholas Hall Ltd. in New York as their Gallery Manager. Congratulations, Dylan!

Select Career Opportunities

Select Virtual and In-Person Events in the World

Roundtable: Talking Cloth
Brooklyn Museum
Saturday, July 1
5:30 pm ET (In Person)
Curators Ernestine White-Mifetu and Annissa Malvoisin guide us through the creative process of bringing Africa Fashion to the heart of Brooklyn. Fashion designer Oluwole Olosunde and textile artist Malaika Temba join them to discuss the intersections of fashion, textiles, culture, and identity.

Access Ecologies Design Conference
Lincoln Center for the Summer
Thursday, July 6
5:30 pm (In Person and Zoom) 
Access ecologies demand that public life finds harmony in our natural and social worlds. This mini-conference, led by accessibility-focused designers and organizers, will provide participants with the tools and language to reshape and rethink the spaces that hold us together. Topics will include a study of “access doula-ing,” the current state of plain language and easy read processes, and more late-breaking methods for designing access ecologies. Join us to advance your contributions to access, wherever you enter.

The Soul of Tengri Fashion Show
National Museum of Asian Art
Tuesday, July 11
7:30 pm ET (In Person)
Join the Smithsonian Artisan Initiative for a fashion show celebrating the close of the Soul of Tengri, a pop-up program showcasing Kazakh craft traditions at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Presented in the National Museum of Asian Art’s Meyer Auditorium, the fashion show will feature collections by three Kazakh artisans: Aizhan Bekkulova, Tilek Sultan, and Aizhan Sembiqaliyeva. It will highlight the unique textile and jewelry-making traditions of Kazakhstan.

Modern Fashion’s Secret Weapon: Dorothy Liebes’s Textiles for Fashion
Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum
Wednesday, July 12
3 pm ET (In Person)
Join modern textile and fashion historian Leigh Wishner and moderator Alexa Griffith Winton (MA ‘03) for this illustrated talk on the extensive and extraordinary contributions Dorothy Liebes made to midcentury fashion design. Wishner will provide an overview of Liebes’s work and pervasive influence on fashion, how her research on Liebes contributes to the history of American fashion design, and explore some ways in which Liebes’s influence is still felt in the fashion industry today.

Leafing Through Garden History
The Huntington Gardens and Library
Thursday, July 13
2:30 pm PT (In Person)
The plant collections at The Huntington are rooted in stories—sagas of inspired plant collectors, of agriculture and agronomy, of the deft manipulation of plant DNA over centuries, of strange and wondrous evolutionary adaptations, and plants employed as elements in time-honored landscape narratives. Complementing the living history that fills the gardens are scientific works from the Library collections that chronicle the evolution of botany and horticulture as well as the natural and cultural histories of the plants that surround us in The Huntington Gardens.

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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.