Bard Graduate Center Logo
  Banner Image
 

Dear Alumni,

It’s hard to believe we are nearing the end of November. In the U.S., the Thanksgiving holiday is just one week away, and as the year draws to a close, we want to say thanks. Thank you for all you do to support BGC and the fields of decorative arts, design history, and material culture.  As you think about how you might give to others, we hope you’ll consider making a gift to BGC. Support from alums like you helps deliver BGC’s valuable core programs year after year. We couldn’t do it without you!

If you are in New York, take a look at the many upcoming holiday events BGC has going on, including a holiday book sale, free shipping on holiday gifts, and free days at the gallery. There’s also a list of new opportunities and exciting events out in the world below. 

Anything to share? You can always reach us at alumni@bgc.bard.edu, or connect with BGC communities in the Facebook or LinkedIn groups.

Wishing you a happy Thanksgiving!
Grace Reff (MA ‘17)
alumni@bgc.bard.edu


Alumni Spotlight

Mei Mei Rado (PhD ’18) will take the position of associate curator in the Department of Costumes and Textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, starting February 2020. Congratulations, Mei Mei!

Congratulations also to Ana Matisse Donefer-Hickie (MA ’17), research associate in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, whose exhibition, Making Marvels: Science and Splendor at the Courts of Europe, opens to the public on November 25.


Select Career Opportunities

The American Philosophical Society Library & Museum in Philadelphia invites applications for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship. The aim of this two-year fellowship is to introduce recent PhDs to museum curation and give them hands-on experience as a curator of exhibitions at the APS Museum. Read more. 

The Century Association is seeking a full-time curator to catalog its American art collection and assist with exhibitions and installation. Read more.

The Victoria and Albert Museum is looking for an exhibition research assistant for the upcoming exhibition, Fashioning Masculinities. Read more. 

The Preservation Society of Newport County is seeking proposals from emerging scholars for its 2020 Newport Symposium, held April 16–18, 2020 in Newport, RI. The twenty-eighth annual Newport Symposium will investigate the women that introduced, shaped, and redefined American art and culture. Read more.

The Ruth Funk Center for Textile Arts at the Florida Institute of Technology is searching for an assistant collections manager to assist with the preservation and care of the permanent collection of over 1,500 textile objects. Read more.   

The Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library has an opening for assistant registrar, Museum Collections Management System. Read more.

The Cincinnati Art Museum is looking for a Decorative Arts and Design curatorial assistant to assist with the care, research, documentation, exhibition, preservation, and presentation of works of art in the permanent collection. Read more.

For more job listings: please visit the BGC job board here.
username: career.services@bgc.bard.edu
password: BGC-careers-2017

Select Events at BGC

Heidegger for Historians: History as Conservation
Tuesday, November 26
12–2 pm
A workshop devoted to Martin Heidegger’s thinking about history in the 1920s and specifically his 1926 summer seminar on Johann Gustav Droysen’s textbook on historical methodology (Grundriss der Historik). Read more. 

Gottfried Semper: Architecture, Textile, and Memory
Tuesday, December 3
6 pm
Isabelle Kalinowki will explore Semper’s theory of material memory and explicate the role of figuration and abstract ornamental décor in this process as well as the function of Stoffwechsel (metabolism) or migration from one material technique to another in its discontinuity and nomadic history. Read more.

BGC Holiday Book Party
Thursday, December 5
6 pm
Enjoy music, refreshments, and an abundance of holiday spirit as you peruse a selection of BGC’s highly acclaimed publications. Read more.

BGC Late: Jazz & Conversation in the Gallery
Thursday, December 5
Jazz at 6 pm
Conversation at 7 pm
During the Holiday Book Party, enjoy live jazz from Gene Perla and his musicians, followed by a conversation on fashion, war, displacement, and immigration with fashion scholar Nancy Green. Read more. 

Fashion, Anxiety, and Society: Subversion
Thursday, December 12
6:30 pm
The final conversation in the series curated by Kristen Owens and organized in conjunction with BGC’s fall exhibition. Join Lucia Cuba, Fawn Krieger, and Otto von Busch for this evening event. Read more.


Select Events out in the World

NYC Jewelry Week
Through November 24
New York City Jewelry Week promotes and celebrates the world of jewelry through exhibitions, panel discussions, workshop visits, heritage-house tours, retail collaborations, and other educational programming across the city. Read more.

Dorothy Liebes: Unorthodox Textiles
Thursday, December 5, 2019
11–1:30 pm
An afternoon at Cooper Hewitt exploring the experimental materials, novelty textures, and “vibrating” color palette in textiles generated by designer and entrepreneur Dorothy Wright Liebes (1897–1972), nationally recognized in her own time as America’s “First Lady of the looms.” Read more. 

“Striking the Balance: Access vs. Preservation in Museums” Conference
Thursday, December 5 & Friday, December 6
The Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts is hosting this conference at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, PA. Topics include ADA considerations in house museums, digitization for accessibility, touch programs with preservation handling, and more. Read more. 

Discovering Duncanson and African American Material Culture
Friday, December 6
10 am–4 pm
Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library is hosting a study day focused on Robert S. Duncanson, the foremost African American landscape painter of the 19th century. Read more.

Museum of the Streets: On the Work of Camilo José Vergara
Wednesday, December 11
7 pm
Looking at the photographic archive compiled over 40 years by Camilo José Vergara, panelists will consider the scope and meaning of religious visions, public memorials, political effigies, historical tableaux and commercial signage found in the Black and Latinx neighborhoods of America. Read more.

COPY AND PASTE CODE BELOW TO MAILCHIMP