September 12, 2025

Dear Alumni,

What a beautiful start to the fall semester at BGC. New students completed the orientation programs, and classes began this week. I, too, have returned to my campus and am preparing for my prospectus defense (if anyone wants to talk nineteenth-century American albums, let me know)!

With the start of a new year comes the continuation of BGC’s public programming—I invite you to view the events calendar and check out the BGC Events section below. The BGC Gallery exhibition Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today has also opened and will remain on view through November 16.

BGC is planning another exciting Autumn Alumni Event, this time at Museum of Art & Design (MAD) for a private tour of alumna Amber Winick’s celebrated exhibition, Designing Motherhood, followed by a champagne reception. Please put Thursday evening, November 13, on your calendar and stay tuned for more details!

Keith Condon and Julia Cullen in BGC admissions will soon begin campus visits to recruit the next class of MA students. They are often asked what alumni are doing now. Please share your updates, especially those of you who graduated recently, to help them answer this question. You can share your latest news through this online form. I look forward to hearing from you!

All best,

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

Alumni Spotlight

Sarah Rogers Morris (MA ’13) recently published an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Want to Save Democracy? Teach Art History.” Well done, Sarah!

Select Career Opportunities

The Textile Museum invites applications for a curatorial fellow to support the quality, vitality, and diversity of research in textile studies, and strengthen the curators’ intellectual care of the textile collection. This includes conducting independent collections research and interpretation of the textile collection for exhibitions, publications, and other ways of knowledge dissemination, alongside building academic and popular interest in textile studies. The fellow undertakes primary and secondary collections-based research at The Textile Museum Collection and is typically an advanced doctoral student or post-doctoral researcher who received their PhD within the past two years, and whose research interest corresponds to the Textile Museum Collection and its current research goals.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art seeks a Carol B. Grossman Curatorial Scholar in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. Under the guidance and mentorship of the ESDA curatorial team, the scholar will be trained in all duties related to the study and care of the permanent collection of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. Collaborating closely with the curatorial team, the scholar will be responsible for making the collection more accessible to the public by cataloguing the permanent collection and entering information into TMS, departmental files, and the museum’s website.

The Morgan Library & Museum will offer a daylong seminar for graduate students titled On Quality in Drawings, 1400–1900. This seminar aims to engage participants with the tools for evaluating the quality of a drawing, with attributed and unattributed examples by Italian, Northern European, French, and British artists of the fifteenth through nineteenth century. Participants will explore how our perception of quality impacts our understanding of the artist as well as the market. Through lively discussion, group work, and focused case studies, participants will emerge with a better sense of how to evaluate the quality of a drawing and the importance of such judgments in scholarship and curatorial work. Applicants are invited to submit a one paragraph statement which should include their name and email, academic institution, class year, field of study, and interest in drawings and relevance of the seminar to their research by September 30. Applications should be submitted electronically with the subject header “Quality in Drawings Seminar” to: drawinginstitute@themorgan.org.

For more job listings please visit the BGC job board.
username: career.services@bgc.bard.edu
**Note updated password: CareersBGC2025-26*=*

Select Internal Events

From Carved Emeralds to Plique-à-jour Enamels: The Fin de Siècle Jewelry of Marcus & Co.
Wednesday, September 24, 6 pm

The New York firm Marcus & Co. (1892–1942) created exceptional jewelry for an art-loving, wealthy elite. Travels throughout India in 1895 inspired their first distinctive body of design, featuring elaborate gold and colored stone jewels. In the following years, annual visits to the Paris Salons and encounters with the work of Lalique, Colonna, and Vever resulted in an original response to the Art Nouveau style. In this talk, Sheila Barron Smithie and Beth Carver Wees—coauthors of the new book Marcus & Co.: Three Generations of New York Jewelers—will focus on their turn-of-the-century work, produced under the leadership of the family’s second generation, highlighting the firm’s body of extraordinary plique-à-jour enamel jewelry. Surviving objects and archival drawings from two sources reveal new aspects of the firm’s history.

Open Houses for Prospective Students
October 19, November 9 (on Zoom), and November 16
11 am

If you know any prospective students, I encourage you to share information about BGC’s Open Houses. These events give prospective students the opportunity to learn about BGC’s MA and PhD programs. Participants hear from faculty about their research and teaching and meet current students. In-person open houses also include a tour of the academic building and gallery.

Select External Events

Fashioning the Body: Dress in New England 1600–1900
Historic Deerfield and Zoom
Friday, September 12 and Saturday, September 13

Interest in recent decades and research into the history of clothing has yielded new insights into culturally embedded ideas around self-styling and the body. Yet, few studies have explored New England’s relationship with styling the body and fashionable dress. Organized in conjunction with the current exhibition, Body by Design: Fashionable Silhouettes from the Ideal to the Real on view in the Flynt Center, Historic Deerfield’s 2025 Fall Forum Fashioning the Body: Dress in New England 1600–1900 will convene a group of experts in the field to explore the rich history of dressing the body and self-presentation in this region.

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.

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.