Greetings Alumni,

The BGC Gallery’s fall exhibition Threads of Power: Lace from the Textilmuseum St. Gallen opens on September 16! Curated by Assistant Professor Michele Majer, Emma Cormack (MA ‘18), and Ilona Kos of Textilmuseum St. Gallen, Threads of Power marks the first large-scale American exhibition in 40 years to trace the development of lace from its sixteenth-century origins to the present. The exhibition coincides with a lively slate of New York Textile Month programming.

And if you’re across the pond, join Susan for a cocktail in London! Susan will be hosting alumni for drinks at the Milestone Hotel (1-3 Kensington Ct., London W8 5DL) on October 3 from 5:30 – 7 pm. This is a drop-in event, so come when you can, and stay as long as you like. RSVP is required–please let Benjamin know if you plan to attend by Tuesday, September 20 (benjamin.krevolin@bgc.bard.edu).

As always, please feel free to share your news, either by email or through the online form.

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

Alumni Spotlight

Jessie Mordine Young (MA ‘21) has several works from her 100-day weaving project on view in Tectonic Threads, a group exhibition presented by the Monira Foundation at Mana Contemporary, in New Jersey. Congratulations, Jessie! 

Nicole Dee-Collins (MA ‘20) one of two keynote speakers at the Costume Society’s (UK) annual conference on October 22. Her paper is entitled “Depicting and Demystifying the Regency Dandy: an analysis of dandy caricatures and the masculinity ‘crisis’ post-Waterloo.” Her 2020 BGC QP is the major foundation of the paper with additional new research. Well done, Nikki!

Select Career Opportunities

Select BGC Events

From Wax to Paper: Antoine Benoist’s Portraits of Louis XIV
Wednesday, September 28
6 pm ET
Painter and sculptor Antoine Benoist is best known for a profile relief portrait of Louis XIV in polychrome wax. The striking verisimilitude of this work and his other wax creations readily evoke the popular wax statues at Madame Tussauds. In this lecture, Charles Kang, curator at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, explores the outer limits of royal portraiture at the time of Louis XIV, beyond oil paintings, marble busts, bronze statues, and medals. Kang also looks at two other works that Benoist produced towards the end of his career: a group of grisaille miniature portraits in elaborate gilt bronze frames and a manuscript biography of Louis XIV decorated with similar miniatures in gouache. Through these works, Benoist attempted to reposition himself as a chronicler of royal likeness rather than as a wax portraitist.

Select Virtual and In-Person Events in the World

Live Art: Mohammad Barrangi’s Marrangi’s Mantiq Al-Tayr
Friday, September 16
11 am PST (In Person)
Mohammad Barrangi will bring the message of the epic Persian poem Mantiq al-Tayr (Conference of the Birds) by Farid al-Din ‘Attar to life at LACMA through his art practice, employing his hallmark reverse print transfer process. Over the course of a weekend, audiences can watch him create and reveal a new, specially conceived work of art in person.

Designing For Your Future Self: A Lifetime of Style 
Tuesday, September 20
6:30 pm GMT (In Person)
What does it mean to dress your age and can you ever be too old for a miniskirt? In this session led by Design Age Institute, hear from a panel of experts including fashion & identity commentator Caryn Franklin, on designing fashion that suits everybody and every body, at every age.

Museums Today: Queering the Museum
Wednesday, September 21
6 pm ET
Join Nikki Sullivan and Craig Middleton for a discussion of their book. Queering the Museum develops a queer analysis of the ways in which museums construct themselves, their core business and their publics through the, often unconscious, use of inherited ways of knowing and doing.

Lecture with Quechua Weaver Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez, Founder of the Center of Traditional Textiles of Cusco
Thursday, September 22
7 pm ET
The story of the Centro de Textiles Tradicionales del Cusco began in the 1970s when Nilda along with a group of women started to gather in each other’s homes to spin and weave. These Quechua weavers from the village of Chinchero realized that Cusqueñan textile traditions were beginning to disappear.  Join this Zoom lecture to learn about her journey of founding this non-profit organization to revive Quechua textile traditions and empower weavers, especially women, of the Andean region of Cusco, Peru. 

In the Wilds of Brooklyn: A Jewish American Tale
Friday, September 23
3 pm ET (In Person)
Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered is the first retrospective of the artist in over seventy-five years. Join Hirshfield’s grandson Robert Dennis Rentzer and exhibition curator Richard Meyer for an hour of remembrances and stories. This intimate in-person walkthrough will celebrate the extraordinary life of a Jewish immigrant and artist who was propelled to fame in the 1930s by the New York avant-garde, after a forty-year career in the garment industry in Brooklyn.

Ashes to Artifact: Cultural Death, Repair, and Restitution of the Benin Bronzes
Monday, September 26
6 pm ET
Is it possible—or desirable—to ‘correct’ a relation of power between subjugated peoples and their colonizers if the originary imperial violence continues to be perpetuated in the present day? In 1897 during the height of the Scramble for Africa, the British colonial military invaded the Kingdom of Benin (modern day Nigeria) and looted 10,000 sacred ancestral artifacts from the royal palace. These pieces, often referred to as the Benin bronzes, largely remain scattered across North America and Western Europe in museums and galleries despite decades of calls for their restitution. Launching the Correction* Seminar Series, Cresa Pugh, Assistant Professor of Sociology at The New School for Social Research, explores what it means to attempt to overcome more than a century of imperial violence against this collection of artifacts and their descendants by their captors, Western governments, and the contemporary museum industrial complex. Pugh’s lecture is punctuated by poetry readings by Nigerian poet Inua Ellams. 

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