Happy New Year, Alumni!

I hope this message finds you enjoying the first full week of the new year! I also hope that you have been able to luxuriate in some rest in the dusk of 2021. I myself will continue to relish some leisure time in the weeks leading up to the spring semester. A personal project on my list is to work on one of my Christmas gifts: a kit for a clock made out of an embroidery hoop.  

While I toil away at my stitching, please continue to feel free sending me your news, either by email or through the online form. 

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2022!

Warmly,

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

Alumni Spotlight

Colin Fanning (MA ‘13, PhD candidate) has begun an appointment as Assistant Curator in the Department of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a role that has responsibility for historic material as well as modern and contemporary design. Congratulations, Colin!

Though the Majolica Mania exhibition closed on January 2, the digital exhibition lives on! I would like to highlight the content of the “Craft, Camp, and Color: Majolica in Drag” page that I worked on between 2020–21 with a cohort of alumni from BGC’s Teen Thinkers program. The page recently went live and I am very proud of the work the teens are putting out into the digital world. This project would not have been possible without the assistance of Maggie Walter, Amy Estes, Nadia Rivers, Emily Reilly, and Madeline Porsella (MA candidate), as well as BGC alumni Alexis Mucha (MA ’07) and Emma Cormack (MA ’18)–kudos to you all! 

Select Career Opportunities

Select Events at BGC

Craft, Embodied Knowledge, and Learning Through the Hands
Thursday, January 20
12:15–1:15 pm ET
We learn textile skills through subtle and manipulative actions of our hands, whether sewing, weaving, embroidery or basketry, so studying textiles can only be enriched through hands-on practice of these skills. In her talk, Dr. Stephanie Bunn will present a brief account of her 30 years of anthropological research into textiles through practice, asking the question: “What are we learning alongside the skills themselves?” She answers this by expanding on two recent basketry projects, Woven Communities and Forces in Translation. Woven Communities uses basketry as a “way in” to understanding Scottish social history, developing into a study of basketry as therapy and rehabilitation. Forces in Translation explores the convergence between basketry hand-skills and geometric and spatial cognition. She will also discuss the possibility that hand-skills provide an important and essential complement to other forms of learning.

Select Virtual and In-Person Events Out in The World

Paul Rudolph First Friday Open House
Friday, January 7
6 pm–9 pm ET (In Person)
Experience the only Paul Rudolph-designed interior open to the public in New York City. The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation hosts our monthly open house at the Rudolph-designed Duplex within the Modulightor Building–a set of spaces which show Rudolph’s mastery of architectural interiors.

Cultural Organizing for Community Change
Saturday, January 8
11 am–6 pm ET
Arts & Democracy and Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts NY (NOCD-NY) present Cultural Organizing for Community Change, a virtual event on January 8. Join fellow organizers, artists, media makers, and policy makers to learn effective ways to deepen your work and engage your creativity in organizing for community change.

Freer’s Photographs, Diaries, and Objects: Networking a National Collection
Tuesday, January 11
12 pm ET
In 1906, pioneering collector Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919) bequeathed his collection of American, Asian, ancient Near Eastern, and Islamic art to the Smithsonian. This gift established the Smithsonian’s first art museum and formed the foundational collection of today’s National Museum of Asian Art. Representing ongoing research utilizing network analysis tools, this talk explores Freer’s efforts to collect ancient Near Eastern and Islamic art from 1907 to 1909. Data compiled from Freer’s diaries and from museum records as well as photographic materials and contextual research allow for the visualization of Freer’s interconnected world. Project team members will focus on the initial findings about the complex relationships between Freer and the artists, business associates, collectors, dealers, and scholars he interacted with in the United States, Europe, and the Near East.

West Side Story: The Evolution of Lincoln Center
Wednesday, January 12
6 pm ET
Marked for demolition as a slum which inspired the 1957 play “West Side Story”, the Lincoln Center-area provided a backdrop when filming scenes for the 1961 movie. At that time, however, the district was giving way to a glittering performing arts center and a new high rise neighborhood. The real story includes ethnic and racial tensions, urban renewal, and the Cold War. Architectural and political rivalries played out in this neighborhood as the consensus of the 1950s gave way to the tumult of the 1960s. Join architectural historian and AIA member John Kriskiewicz as he explores the dramatic story that brought this iconic but controversial center into being in the middle of the 20th century—and how it is being re-imagined in the 21st century.

Inca Textiles Under Colonial Rule
Thursday, January 13
5 pm CT
Inca textiles—especially tapestry-woven tunics—are some of the finest cloth ever created in the ancient Andes of South America. However, the violent conquest of the Inca Empire by Spanish forces dramatically changed Inca society, their artistic traditions, and the clothes that they wore. Two enigmatic fragments of an Inca tunic in the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection illustrate this history. Join Andrew Hamilton, associate curator of Arts of the Americas, in an exploration of these unique works, on view at the museum through spring 2022.

Illuminated Hebrew Manuscripts: From Ashkenaz to America
Thursday, January 13
5:30 pm ET (In Person)
In conjunction with the Morgan Library & Museum’s exhibition, Imperial Splendor: The Art of the Book in the Holy Roman Empire, 800–1500, Sharon Liberman Mintz, Curator of Jewish Art at The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary, and Adam S. Cohen, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Toronto, will consider the production, use, decoration, and meaning of Hebrew illuminated books made in Central Europe between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Numerous examples drawn from American collections, many hardly known even to specialists, provide a fresh lens for viewing the works in the Morgan exhibition by demonstrating how these Hebrew works were related to broader European trends even as they were particular to the Jewish medieval experience. The lecture will also briefly explore the circumstances that brought these books into their current collections and what this reveals about patterns in American cultural patronage.

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.