Hello Alumni,

I don’t know about you but I can smell spring while I write this note. Although daylight savings threw me for a loop this year (anyone else?), I have enjoyed emerging from the office into an extra hour of daylight—a perfect sliver of time to take a stroll to the farther subway station. To me this time of year also means slowly turning away from hearty, cheese-based casseroles and towards some lighter fare. I am currently eyeing a recipe for pea, mint, and feta fritters that seems like an end-of-March treat. 

I hope you too are taking pleasure in spring-ish meals and walks as we transition from March to April. Please continue reaching out with your news, either by email or through the online form. 

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

Alumni Spotlight

Anne Eschapasse (MA ‘99) has been appointed president and chief executive officer of Montreal’s McCord Stewart Museum. Congratulations Anne!

I will be leading a series of seminars for lifelong learners at the Museum of Arts and Design around topics in craft history, including studio crafts, subversive craft, and sloppy craft. Please feel free to share the What is Craft History? module descriptions with any learners in your life!

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Settings and Sounds
Wednesday, March 29
6 pm ET
When is asparagus not asparagus? When it is ice cream, of course! In this three-course foodless dinner party, Ivan Day explores culinary slapstick, the changing role of dining utensils, and other subjects from early modern dining. These mini-lectures are interwoven with interludes of music played on period instruments by Sonnambula.

Tour for People with Dementia and Their Caregivers
Thursday, March 30
2–3 pm ET
We invite people with memory loss or dementia and their care partners to join Arts & Minds at Bard Graduate Center for an interactive tour of Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest. This exhibition invites you to explore the world of Navajo weaving. Historic blankets, garments, and rugs from the American Museum of Natural History are situated alongside contemporary works by Diné weavers and visual artists.

Instruments of Dining: A Research Symposium
Friday, March 31
1:30–4:45 pm 
Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Staging the Table in Europe 1500–1800, this symposium brings together historians of food, culture, and print to further explore the themes of performance on and around the table. Talks will consider English coronation feasts, German court carvers, musical accompaniments to dining, and more. Evelyn Lincoln will join exhibition curator Deborah L. Krohn and the speakers for a discussion following the presentations. For those unable to join us in person, this event will be live-streamed. The video will be available on this page the morning of the symposium. Registration not required to view the livestream.

Select Virtual and In-Person Events in the World

Bringing Water to Light: An Artist Workshop Series for Flushing Creek
Sunday, March 26
1–4 pm ET (In Person)
Please join the Queens Museum for a series of artist-led workshops that will visualize the possibility of daylighting Flushing Creek. Flushing Creek was artificially forced underground at sections into pipes for the construction of the 1939 World’s Fair grounds and now runs beneath and through the center of Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Daylighting, or restoring underground portions of a waterway into above ground habitats, has immense benefits for social-ecological health and climate resilience. Organized by Guardians of Flushing Bay together with artist and educator Julia Norton, each of the four workshops in this series will be led by a different Queens-based artist.

The Sassoons: Art Collectors, Patrons, and Civic Leaders
Tuesday, March 28
10:30–11:45 am ET 
Join Jewish Museum senior curator Claudia J. Nahson and discover the remarkable history of the Sassoon family and their pioneering role in trade, art collecting, architectural patronage, and civic engagement from the early nineteenth-century through World War II. Examine paintings, decorative arts, illuminated manuscripts, and Judaica, that explore themes such as discrimination, diaspora, colonialism, global trade, and war. Nahson will highlight works amassed by four generations of family members, including lavishly decorated Hebrew manuscripts; Chinese art and ivory carvings; and rare Jewish ceremonial art. The impressive collection also features Western masterpieces, like paintings by Thomas Gainsborough and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and portraits by John Singer Sargent of various Sassoon family members.

We Act As If It Is Possible: Black Feminist Aesthetics for Black Power
Wednesday, March 29
6–7 pm ET 
In honor of Women’s History Month, Poster House is pleased to welcome Eesha Pandit and Robin Boylorn of the Crunk Feminist Collective to discuss the long-standing impact of a Black feminist aesthetic on the art of the movements that build Black Power. Taking images from Poster House’s permanent collection and current exhibition Black Power to Black People, this wide-ranging conversation will explore images and ephemera created by and of Black cis and trans women that forge a visual style in service of radically transforming the world. Questions strongly encouraged!

Books-in-Books: From Idea to Image in Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts
Thursday, March 30
6–8:30 pm ET (In Person)
Lucy Freeman Sandler, Helen Gould Sheppard professor of art history Emerita, New York University, will speak at the American Trust for the British Library’s 12th Annual Breslauer Lecture. The lecture and Q&A will take place at the Grolier Club in New York and will be followed by a reception. 

Making Space, Making Place: Marking the Americas
Thursday, March 30–Friday, March 31 (In Person)
Various Times
The Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, Columbia University in the City of New York, and the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) are pleased to announce the seventh annual symposium of Latin American Art Making Space, Making Place: Marking the Americas taking place at the Institute of Fine Arts. The Symposium considers how marking practices interact with place and space-making strategies broadly construed—maps, cartographic renditions of place, earth and land art, urban planning, architecture and landscape, and more. By prioritizing space, place, and geography, the Symposium invites engagement with and critique of how marking practices have shaped our understanding of the Americas.

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