Dear Alumni,

Greetings from sunny New York, where we’ve enjoyed a week of refreshing spring weather. In Central Park, the flowering trees are at their peak bloom, and I—along with all of Manhattan and lots of tourists, too—spent last weekend admiring the vibrant pink blossoms against blue skies.

On a more somber note, I would be remiss not to mention that today, May 2, marks the 203rd anniversary of the death of the eighteenth-century Welsh writer Hester Thrale Piozzi. She traveled to the Continent in the mid-1780s and was one of the few women who published an account of her journey. Hester’s self-fashioning as part-Welsh and part-Italian was the subject of my BGC Qualifying Paper, so I can’t think of a better forum in which to mention this notable date! Hester is buried in Tremeirchion in North Wales, and in March 2022, I visited her grave while working on QP research at her villa in the nearby countryside.

As always, I look forward to hearing your latest news, which you can submit via our online form.

All best,
Julia Carabatsos (MA ’22)
alumni@bgc.bard.edu

Alumni Spotlight

Rebecca Klassen (MA ’11) organized an exhibition, Beatrice Glow: When Our Rivers Meet, that opened on March 29 at the New-York Historical Society and will remain on view until August 18. The show features the work of the New-York Historical Society’s 2022–24 artist-in-residence Beatrice Glow and reckons with the 400th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam. Glow collaborated with nine culture bearers to envision an alternative commemoration, creating a series of VR-sculpted and 3D-printed maquettes for parade floats, among other works. Congratulations, Rebecca!

Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births, an exhibition co-organized by Amber Winick (MA ’13), will travel to Stockholm and open in September. The exhibition showcases nearly 300 items, both historical and contemporary, involved in the arc of human reproduction, ranging from menstrual cups, breast pumps, and baby monitors to medical tools and maternity clothing. It explores objects and processes through a variety of fields: art, photography, product design, posters, advertisements, fashion, and architecture, with a selection emerging from various cultural and geographical backgrounds. Read BGC’s story about the project here. Congratulations, Amber!

Louise Lui (MA ’23) curated an exhibition at the Peranakan Museum titled Fukusa: Japanese Gift Covers from the Chris Hall Collection. The exhibition presents a group of fukusa and related Japanese textiles from the renowned Chris Hall collection, explored through the themes of craft, trade, and exchange, and the act of gifting across cultures. It celebrates a major gift of Japanese art from Chris Hall to ACM. Well done, Louise!

Select Career Opportunities

The Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry will host a workshop titled Early Modern Indigenous Studies on Friday, November 1. The event, led by Michaela Kleber, offers scholars in early modern studies the opportunity to consider how their work could be productively informed through the lens of Indigenous Studies and by more carefully considering Indigenous perspectives. Apply by May 15 at the above link.

The Society for the History of Collecting, the National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian Archives of American Art are hosting a Provenance Research Workshop on Tools for Research in Archives and Libraries in Washington, DC. The event will take place on May 22 and 23. More information can be found here.

The Whitney Museum of American Art seeks Joan Tisch Teaching Fellows. The program offers graduate students pursuing advanced degrees in art and art history the opportunity to work directly with the Whitney Museum’s collection and audiences within a community of academic support.

For more job listings please visit the BGC job board.
username: career.services@bgc.bard.edu
password: CareersBGC2023*=*

BGC Events

Encounters of Text and Material Culture in Ancient Judea
Tuesday, June 4, Wednesday, June 5, and Thursday, June 6
6 pm
Encounters of Text and Material Culture in Ancient Judea is a three-evening, Leon Levy Foundation lecture series that engages with Judean and later Jewish material culture during the first millennium BCE, mostly at the latter third of this millennium during the Hellenistic-Roman period. This is not an archeological study surveying pottery assemblages and architectural plans. Instead, Jonathan Ben-Dov focuses on particular types of material objects that lend themselves to interaction with texts. The surveyed materials are widely variegated: from monumental rock reliefs that straddle the borders of nature and culture to handheld devices for time measurement. Special attention is dedicated to scrolls, which posit the text-and-matter encounter in a particularly poignant way, and where new paths are trodden today, in the digital age.

Save the Date! QP Symposium
Thursday, May 23
This year’s MA graduates will present their Qualifying Papers at the QP Symposium on Thursday, May 23. Stay tuned for more information on how to watch!

Select Virtual and In-Person Events in the World

Studio Tour with Atlason Organized by the Cooper Hewitt
New York
Friday, May 3
6:30 pm
Join the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum for a studio visit to Atlason, a New York City-based design firm and winner of the 2023 National Design Award for Product Design. Atlason is a strategic innovation and industrial design studio founded in 2004 by Hlynur Vagn Atlason. The studio designs consumer products, furniture, and packaging for a range of companies across sectors. Their recent designs include a completely compostable packaging system that ships plants safely, an award-winning indoor-outdoor rotomoulded lounge chair that is 100% recyclable, and a disruptive, ergonomic razor designed for womankind.

New York African Film Festival
Lincoln Center
May 18–14
Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) and African Film Festival, Inc. (AFF) will celebrate the 31st edition of the New York African Film Festival (NYAFF) from May 8 to May 14. Since its inception in 1993, the festival has been at the forefront of showcasing African and diaspora filmmakers’ unique storytelling through the moving image. This year’s theme, “Convergence of Time,” explores the intersection of historical and contemporary roles played by individuals representing Africa and its diaspora in art. With more than 50 films from more than 25 countries, the festival invites audiences to delve into the convergence of archival and modern experimentalism, transcending both space and time.

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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.