Hello Alumni,

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been enjoying this sustained period of 50-60 degree weather in NYC! And with most of the semester’s grading behind me, I think it’s about time I take my rollerblades (and knee, elbow, and wrist guards) down to Riverbank State Park. I hope you, too, are making the most of this period of springtime renewal!

As always, please keep me posted with your news, either by email or the online form. And Happy Mother’s Day to the mothers among us! 

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

Alumni Spotlight

Jessa Krick (MA ‘03) has become the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts Director of Interpretation, Collections and Archives, the Rosen House. Congratulations, Jessa!

Anna Mikaela Ekstrand (MA ‘15) and Alexis Mucha (MA ‘07) invite BGC alumni to a casual meet-up on Thursday, May 12, from 6:30–8:30 pm in New York City. Cocktails and convos will be held at 85 Stanton St, apartment 4A (code: 0011). RSVPs and questions can be directed to annamikaela.ekstrand@gmail.com. Come one, come all!

Select Career Opportunities

The Decorative Arts Trust is accepting applications for Dewey Lee Curtis Scholarships to attend their Fall Symposium in Richmond, VA, on September 22–25, 2022. Graduate students and young professionals who are within five years of a degree are invited to apply by August 10.

Select Events at BGC

Symposium–Conservation Thinking in Japan 
Friday, May 6 
9 am–5 pm 
Conservation Thinking in Japan brings together scholars from Japan and the United States to explore the history of conserving in Japan. Among the topics to be discussed are the role of replicas in a culture of conservation, the relationship between traditional materials and conservation practices, the conservation of wooden sculptures and Buddhist sculptures, the transition from antiquarianism to cultural heritage, the history of heritage legislation, and the relationship between conservation and museums. The afternoon presentations on paintings will constitute a symposium within the symposium, with presentations offering a microhistory of a single painting’s conservation history, a discussion of conservation of Buddhist paintings, and a roundtable discussion with paintings conservators focusing on the way the mounting of paintings—and the different ways conservators are trained to think about mounts—shapes the practice of conservation.

Symposium–Conservation Thinking in India
Saturday, May 7
9 am–5:45 pm 
Conservation Thinking in India convenes scholars from India and the United States to explore different approaches to conserving Indian cultural heritage. Topics will include historical practices of conservation and their combination with those of Western and other cultures, the conservation of historic buildings, the complexities of conserving historic cities, archaeological reconstructions at the Taj Mahal and questions of authenticity, the idea of the traditional craftsman in the context of Himalayan Buddhist art conservation, people in South India who conserve monuments to restore them to worship and the tensions this creates with conservation ideas, how ecologists and geologists think about the past differently from historians, and microhistories of conservation across Indian Southeast Asia.

Evening for Educators
Tuesday, May 10
4–6 pm (In Person)
Join us for an evening workshop that centers object-based learning. Participate in a guided tour of Bard Graduate Center’s spring exhibition, Conserving Active Matter, which delves into the human effort to conserve things. See objects that span five continents and range in time from the Paleolithic to the present. Think about how the work of conservation is essential for the lives of the things that sustain us. Build activities which help your students think about how they care for the objects in their lives.

Reading with Objects: Seeking Synthesis of Eye, Mind, and Heart
Wednesday, May 11
6 pm (In Person)
Poet, author, and educator Anselm Berrigan has curated a reading list for Richard Tuttle: What Is the Object?, including poetry, prose, and cross-genre writing that meditates on our idiosyncratic experiences with objects. Join us for any (or all) of these reading group evenings, when we will engage with work by Renée Gladman, Francis Ponge, Clark Coolidge, and Tuttle himself, as well as read and listen to a selection of poems by artists that work in and from objects.

Symposium–Richard Tuttle
Friday, May 13
2–5 pm
This symposium is organized in conjunction with the exhibition Richard Tuttle: What Is the Object? (March 25–July 10, 2022). If the exhibition on view is Richard Tuttle’s way of answering the question he posed in its title, in this symposium each of the five speakers will offer an answer from their own personal, artistic, professional, and disciplinary perspectives. The round of presentations will be followed by a panel discussion that will also include the artist.

Plants as Artifacts
Saturday, May 14
12–3:30 pm (In Person)
Connect with the plant behind the commodity! Join New York-based education platform and artist collective Herban Cura for knowledge-shares about sugar and coffee—active matter often consumed as fuel for productivity. As two of the most globally commodified plants, sugar and coffee have been taken out of their original ecologies, often in ways that perpetuate violence against the plants as well as their human stewards, the many peoples who have been impacted by colonization across the globe. Even as colonial violence persists, many living practices that depend on plant-people relations continue to exist and evolve.

Select Virtual and In-Person Events Out in The World

Craft Research Talks: Joinery, Joists, and Gender Presented by Center for Craft
Friday, May 6
2–3:30 pm ET (In Person)
Join the Center for Craft for their second Craft Research Talks program, featuring a dynamic discussion with author, curator, educator, visual artist, woodworker and Craft Research Fund recipient Deirdre Visser about her latest book, Joinery, Joists and Gender: A History of Woodworking for the 21st Century (Routledge, 2022). Visser will be in conversation with artist, educator, and woodworker Alison Croney Moses, woodworker and furniture maker Katie Hudnall, and artist, educator, writer, and organizer Folayemi Wilson. All of whom are profiled in the book as they bring history into the present, allowing it to inform and foster wood shops that are vibrant, inclusive, relevant, and exploratory. The panel will be joined by Center for Craft Grant Program Manager and craft researcher Mellanee Goodman as the program moderator. Followed by an audience Q&A.

Landscapes in the Making Symposium
Friday, May 6–Saturday, May 7
Various Times ET
How might historians narrate landscape design within broader human stories? How might alternative histories of landscape creation read, of its manifold makings and meanings in various periods and places focused on the people who imagine and shape the land? This symposium seeks to identify research that looks beyond canonical histories of design and architecture to include the people, particularly socially marginalized communities, who are involved day-to-day in its making and meaning, including commemorating its past and planning its future. It engages projects that generate counternarratives that reveal how alternative views of the past shape visions of the present and the future.

Art Outside: Celebrate Eid
Saturday, May 7
2–4:30 pm ET (In Person)
Join the Freer Gallery of Art for a festive afternoon of music, food, and art to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan. Watch master calligraphers at work, make your own calligraphy-inspired art, enjoy henna designs and music by Syrian Music Preservation Initiative and the Zaynab Ensemble, and view art in the galleries, including the exhibitions Engaging the Senses and Fashioning an Empire: Safavid Textiles from the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha. Food from local favorite Fava Pot will be available for purchase.

Carlo Mollino: Architect and Storyteller
Monday, May 9
6–8 pm ET 
Join AIA New York for a presentation of the newly published book, Carlo Mollino: Architect and Storyteller (Park Books, 2021), by co-authors Napoleone Ferrari and Michelangelo Sabatino. The authors offer the first carefully researched and comprehensive study of Mollino’s architectural work. Drawing on rich archival materials, as well as Mollino’s own writings, they argue persuasively that, while Mollino realized relatively few architectural projects, his contributions to the field—and, in particular, the modernist movement—are significant and distinctive.

Store Stories: Exploring The History and Design of Retail
Saturday, May 14 
3–4:30 pm ET (In Person)
The 19th-century department store and its successor, the modern mall, have continually evolved to attract and keep consumer attention for decades. Join us as critic Alexandra Lange and Cooper Hewitt curator Emily Orr examine design’s leading role in the development and cultural impact of some of America’s most impressive shopping complexes. Sharing stories from their recent books on retail, Lange and Orr will highlight how aspects from architecture and display to urban planning and community building have shaped our shopping experiences.

The Object of Jewish Literature–A Material History
Monday, May 16
6–8 pm ET
With the rise of digital media, the “death of the book” has been widely discussed. But the physical object of the book persists. Here, through the lens of materiality and objects, Barbara E. Mann tells a history of modern Jewish literature, from novels and poetry to graphic novels and artists’ books. Bringing contemporary work on secularism and design in conversation with literary history, she offers a new and distinctive frame for understanding how literary genres emerge.

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.

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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.