MARK YOUR CALENDARS

On Tuesday, February 24 at noon EST, Maeve Diepenbrock and Ana Orobio Pinzon (both in this year’s graduating MA class) will showcase research projects that they worked on last summer for the Furniture History Society and British and Irish Furniture Makers Online. The free online seminar will present insights from recent research projects which examined particular aspects of the furniture and interiors at three important English estates: Raby Castle, Chatsworth House, and the Buccleuch Estate. Please join in to learn more about Maeve and Ana’s work!

ALL THE NEWS

Today’s Wall Street Journal includes a wonderful review of Viollet-le-Duc Drawing Worlds by architecture critic Michael J. Lewis. Amidst his praise for the drawings, Lewis also commends the “exceptionally well-written” wall labels! Bravi to the curators; to everyone in exhibitions, publications and interpretation, and design; to all the students who worked on the show and will be leading gallery tours in the coming months; to the DH/DX and PH+R teams; and to everyone who has played a role in bringing the show to life! More reviews and feature stories are on the exhibition’s BGC webpage.

Last night, BGC research curator Laura Microulis (MA ’96, PhD ’16) and accepted the Alfred Barr Award for Sonia Delaunay: Living Art at the College Art Association conference. Laura coedited the catalogue with Waleria Dorogova. The award recognizes “an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, published in English by a museum, library, or collection.” Laura, you are a star!

On Tuesday, the Studio Museum in Harlem announced that Annissa Malvoisin (affiliated faculty) is one of eight curators selected from institutions across the country to participate in its Arts Leadership Praxis. The annual program provides professional development and cohort-building opportunities to mid-career museum professionals of color and those deeply invested in Black cultural production. The 2026 participants are the first cohort to convene in the Museum’s new home. Congratulations Annissa!

Professor Jeffrey Collins has certainly had a busy and productive fall-into-winter! Between September and December, he gave a series of four lectures at the New York Society Library, sponsored by the American Friends of Les Arts Florissants. The titles were, in sequence, “Serata Barocca: Defining a Style”; “Soirée Baroque: From Italy to France”; “Barockabend: Northern Europe”; and “Noche Barocca: Spain and Beyond.” Jeffrey’s review of Pamela Bianchi’s book The Origins of the Exhibition Space (1450-1750), published by Amsterdam University Press, appeared in the September issue of Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. In December he delivered a paper on “The Social Life of Statues” at the international conference “The Future of the Antique: Interpreting the Sculptural Canon,” held at the Institute of Classical Studies and the Warburg Institute, University of London. And finally, his review of Caricatures, Campagna, and Connoisseurs: Thomas Patch and the British Grand Tour in Eighteenth-Century Italy, an exhibition held at the Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut, appeared in the December issue of The Burlington Magazine. Bravo Jeffrey!

Angela Crenshaw (PhD candidate) presented her paper “Mrs. Funston in Filipino Costume: Philippine Textiles, American Fashion, and American Imperialism in the Philippines” at the annual American Studies Association conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The theme was “Late-Stage American Empire,” and she presented on a panel organized by the Material Culture Caucus entitled “Crafting Empire: Material Culture Perspectives on Objects of Colonial Relation.” Angela also wrote an article entitled “Embroidered Recuerdo: Memories of People and Places in Philippine Piña Textiles” which was published in the winter 2025 issue of the embroidery magazine Piecework. Way to go Angela!

Professor Ivan Gaskell organized, with Martin van Gelderen, the exhibition Weihnachten mit Rembrandt at the Göttinger Verlag der Kunst, Göttingen, Germany, on view from last November through February 12. He and van Gelderen also coedited the accompanying book, Rembrandt radiert sich Selbst, seine Stadt, seine Zeit (Göttingen: Verlag der Kunst, 2025), to which Ivan also contributed the chapter, “Angesicht zu Angesicht mit Rembrandt” (pp. 43–60). Wunderbar!

The Bloomsbury Dress and Costume Library now includes a short article about PhD candidate Kenna Libes‘s work patterning plus-sized antique garments. Go Kenna!

Professor Caspar Meyer has been appointed editor of the Annual of the British School at Athens, one of the foremost journals in Mediterranean archaeology and history. He holds this position jointly with the director of the school, Rebecca Sweetman. Congratulations Caspar!

Deputy director and chief curator Dr. Julia Siemon published, with Selena Anders, “Eighteenth-Century Architectural Examinations at the Accademia di San Luca: New Evidence for the Concorsi Clementini” in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 84, no. 3 (September 2025), 347–367. She also published a Catalogue of Drawings by Johannes Stradanus at Cooper Hewitt (New York: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2025) as a digital publication available at cooperhewitt.org/the-stradanus-project/catalogue/. Finally, Julia gave the keynote lecture, “Stradanus: Word and Image,” for the symposium entitled “Stradanus at Cooper Hewitt,” held at Bard Graduate Center November 6–7, 2025. Brilliant, Julia!

SPREAD THE WORD
Kudos to the students planning BGC’s first Graduate Student Symposium in twelve years! One of the goals of this year’s symposium is to encourage cross-disciplinary research between NYC-based graduate students and scholars, so please spread the word among colleagues at other institutions. The deadline for submissions is February 27 and the symposium will be held May 1.

BGC is accepting applications for its fellowship programs. Visiting Fellowship applications are due March 1 and Fields of the Future Fellowship applications are due April 15. Please share with colleagues at other institutions who might be interested!

Call for Submissions: Rachel Pickman (MA ’15) has recently been promoted to co-editor-in-chief of Endeavour, a journal dedicated to the history and philosophy of science. She welcomes pitches from members of the BGC community whose work touches on the history of science or scientific objects for full-length research articles, book or exhibition reviews, or short articles (including studies of interesting objects or archival finds) for Endeavour’s “In Vivo” section. Recently the journal has featured pieces on Vesalian skeletal imagery in an early modern Indian cemetery; the use of X-ray machines to police the bodies of South African diamond miners; and gendered histories of botany and agriculture.