Dear Alumni,

I recently had the pleasure of visiting MoMA’s exhibition of Matisse’s Red Studio. I was delighted by a room that featured the same works pictured in Matisse’s famous rendering: his paintings, sculptures, and a decorative plate. The Red Studio always to mind the Seamless advertisement I’ve seen on the subway that similarly envelopes a room in red, as well as Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, written almost twenty years after Matisse’s painting. With Matisse, Woolf, and Seamless in mind, I hope you too find a room or studio of your own this summer.   

And in the meantime, please keep in touch with your news, either by email or the online form. It’s always a joy to hear from you!

With Care,
Rachael Schwabe (MA ‘20)
alumni@bgc.bard.edu

Alumni Spotlight

Alexis Romano (MA ’10) has written Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women: A Cultural Study of French Readymade Fashion, 1945-68, which situates the readymade in wider postwar discourses of gender, art, design, urbanism, technology and the everyday. As the first critical history of French readymade fashion, it examines an array of sources, including surviving garments, fashion magazines, film, photography and interviews, to weave together previous disparate historical narratives. There will be an online book launch on June 21st, organized by the Courtauld Institute of Art, free and open to all.

Cassandra Celestin (MA ’18) recently completed a short film entitled Water & Wall that will have its German premiere on May 29 at the Fracto Film Encounter following a world premiere at the London Short Film Festival earlier in the year. The film is a mosaic of material remains and landscapes of the Dutch settler town lying beneath Manhattan’s current financial district, an entanglement of things past and present. Congratulations, Cassandra!

Lauren Drapala (PhD candidate) received the Albert M. Greenfield fellowship at Historical Society of Pennsylvania, offered in partnership with Library Company of Philadelphia, to support a project she has titled, “Recovering the Decorative in American Modernisms: The Wanamaker’s Art Gallery and the Promotion of Artist-Decorated Interiors in 1920s New York City.” Congratulations, Lauren! 

Laura Mogulescu (MA ‘22), the curator of the New-York Historical Society’s women’s history collection, has an exhibition, Title IX: Activism On and Off the Field, that was recently featured in the New York Times. Well done, Laura!

I myself have recently had an article published in Hyperallergic, titled “The Tender Art of Visible Mending”!

Select Career Opportunities

Select Events at BGC

Library Artists in Residence Exhibition Opening
Thursday, May 19
4–6 pm (In Person)
Please join us to celebrate the opening of this year’s Bard Graduate Center Library Artists-in-Residence exhibition. Embedded in the library are installations created by artists Jazmine Catasús and Lissy Mineo-Gonzalez, that reflect the research they have engaged in over the past year. We invite you to walk through our library and see what happens when artists engage with our collection.

Objects Speak!: A Virtual Verbal Description Tour for Participants with Low or Impaired Vision
Friday, May 20
6 pm
Deborah Lutz describes details of the form, materiality, and aesthetic nature of objects in Richard Tuttle: What Is The Object? for the enjoyment of visitors with low vision and blindness. Group discussion takes place throughout. 

Film Night: Conservation and Repair Shorts
Saturday, May 28
8 pm (In Person)
An evening of short films that explore care and repair in everyday life—materially, socially, ecologically—hosted by Dr. Joshua Bell, curator of globalization at the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History. Short selections include Jáaji Approx (2015), Kapaemahu (2020), and Mobile Goroka (2018).

Select Virtual and In-Person Events Out in The World

AIANY Climate Tour: Resiliency, Sustainable Architecture and the Future of NYC
Friday, May 20
2:30–5:15 pm ET
This 2-hour-and-45-minute cruise focuses on key developments and sites related to climate change and environmental justice in New York City. Led by an expert AIANY guide, participants will learn about how interdisciplinary teams of urban planners, architects, landscape architects, developers, and community groups are addressing storm surges, intense rains, and hotter temperatures. Learn how climate change is affecting our city and people, as well as the actions NYC is taking to reduce its carbon footprint and mitigate threats.

Objects of Inquiry: New Perspectives on American Folk Art
Sunday, May 22
1–5 pm ET
What comprises the field and study of “American folk art”? In the early twentieth century, scholars, curators, artists, and dealers developed the concept of folk art as an expansive and sometimes contradictory framework to characterize a vast array of works from paintings and sculptures to samplers, quilts, and furniture. This virtual symposium will present new research exploring the many perspectives through which the study of folk art is currently approached, looking in particular at historically overlooked or understudied relationships between themes of identity, nationalism, and American folk art.

Artisans Gallery: Meet the Founders of Brahma Tirta Sari Studio
Thursday, May 26
11 am–3 pm ET (In Person)
Join the George Washington University Textile Museum in person for a special opportunity to meet the founders of Brahma Tirta Sari Studio, two artisans currently featured in the museum’s Artisans Gallery. Enjoy a day of shopping and informal discussion about the art of batik and Indonesian textile traditions. The artisans will bring one-of-a-kind batiks exclusive to this trunk show for purchase. For one day only, enjoy 20% off their cotton and silk batik merchandise.

Artist Talk: Wendy Red Star
Thursday, May 2
6 pm PT
Join SFMoMA for this online event with collection artist Wendy Red Star in conversation with Shana Lopes, assistant curator of photography at SFMoMA. Red Star will speak about her experience as an artist as well as her series Four Seasons, which is on view through August 21, 2022, in the exhibition Constellations: Photographs in Dialogue.

Fashioning The Self: I Am My Own Property
Thursday, May 26
6–8 pm ET (In Person)
Poster House’s exhibition Ethel Reed: I Am My Own Property highlights the artist’s masterful use of fashion and her appearance to control her own narrative and that of her work. Of course, Reed wasn’t the only person of her time to leverage fashion to her advantage. How were Black people–whether free, freed, or enslaved–leveraging sartorial freedoms to construct and project new narratives? Join fashion historians Jonathan Michal Square and Elizabeth Way for an evening exploring the turn-of-the-century fashions of African Americans. Questions strongly encouraged!

Cultural Capital: Philanthropy in the Arts and Humanities Today
Thursday, June 2–Friday, June 3
Various Times ET
At a time when the global pandemic and longstanding social problems are driving cultural organizations to reimagine their work, audiences, and impact, this conference on cultural philanthropy is both timely and urgent. Philanthropy plays an unusually important role in the provision of public goods in the United States, where it funds museums, operas, and symphonies alongside educational initiatives and grassroots organizations. Yet cultural philanthropy has received comparatively little attention. The conference brings together thought leaders who share their insights about the role, impact, and critique of philanthropy in the cultural sphere.

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.