Dear Alumni,

Two Sundays ago, before an episode of biblical rain, I visited the recently opened Grand Central Madison. I descended deep underground below the concourse alongside the folks dashing to catch their LIRR trains, to pay my respects to Kiki Smith’s mosaics. They were stunning! One featured a lone deer, another fittingly pictured a series of rain clouds over a stormy sea, while another showed a peaceful cluster of turkeys. They all shimmered and rippled under the gentle light of the station, not unlike the San Vitale mosaics. The newness of Grand Central Madison emboldened me to give the rain cloud mosaic a brush of my hand–which would not have been permitted in Ravenna. 

Springtime tends to open my eyes to new and old architectural discoveries! I hope this season offers you the same. As always, please feel free to send me your news either by email or through the online form. 

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

Farewell Toast for Dean Peter N. Miller

A community-wide toast for Peter N. Miller will take place in Penthouse North at BGC on Thursday, May 18 at 4pm.

RSVP here by May 14 to attend the event.

Alumni Spotlight

Samuel Snodgrass (MA ‘22) gave a lecture to the Emeritus Institute at Saddleback College on April 14 as part of their Dorothy Marie Lowry Distinguished Guest Lecture Series. His presentation covered global approaches to fashion history, focusing on two case studies in cultural authentication. The first case study looked at pelete bite textiles, cut-thread cloth, made by the Kalabari Ijo people; the second examined the dress of King Ibrahim Njoya (1860-1933) of the Bamum Kingdom. Well done, Samuel!

Pim Supavarasuwat (MA ‘22) has been promoted to Director of Donald Heald Rare Books. Congratulations, Pim! 

Billy DeGregorio (MA ‘12, PhD ‘21) contributed to the recent Cora Ginsberg catalogue for seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century fashion and textiles. Well done, Billy!

Brian Gallagher (MA ‘98, MPhil ‘00) was the Keynote Speaker for the Potteries of Trenton Society on April 22. Well done, Brian!

Select Career Opportunities

Select BGC Events

The Way It Was: Paris Restaurants in the 1970s
Wednesday, May 17
6 pm 
In the early 1970s, art historian and curator Stephen Scher turned a camera on the complex and exquisite ecosystem of Parisian dining. This collage of footage remained perfectly preserved in the can for 50 years; but now, as the filmmaker assembles it into a documentary, we can behold the end of a culinary era. Following a preview screening of the in-process film, THE WAY IT WAS: PARIS RESTAURANTS IN THE 1970’S, Dr. Scher will converse with Deborah L. Krohn—curator of Staging the Table in Europe 1500-1800—about the ever-changing art of dining.

Select Virtual and In-Person Events in the World

Online Conference: The Exhibition as Interior
Kingston University London
Tuesday, May 9
10 am–5 pm BST
This conference addresses histories, theories, and practices of exhibitions as interiors in a wide range of settings. They could include examples in purpose-built exhibition halls, pavilions, museums, and galleries, or others which temporarily occupy pre-existing structures such as hotels, department stores, transport spaces, heritage sites or private houses. It welcomes papers which consider the whole interior of the exhibition, from the building, the part of a building, or the temporary enclosure in which it is set, to the navigation within it. It embraces research on the spatial, material, and virtual qualities of exhibitions, the sensorial and the performative, as well as the political, social, ecological, and educational. It will also explore the roles and experiences of figures including the exhibition designer, curator, programmer, and exhibition visitor.

W.E.B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: A Conversation with Whitney Battle-Baptiste and Britt Rusert
Cooper Hewpitt
Tuesday, May 9
5:30 pm ET 
In W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America (Princeton Architectural Press, 2018), editors Whitney Battle-Baptiste and Britt Rusert brought together the first complete publication of Du Bois’s groundbreaking charts, graphs, and maps presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition. A selection of Du Bois’ pioneering data visualizations are currently on display at Cooper Hewitt in the exhibition Deconstructing Power: W. E. B. Du Bois at the 1900 World’s Fair. Join us for an evening with the editors as they discuss these data portraits through the lens of Du Bois’s life, work, and scholarship. An audience Q + A will follow.  

The Geometries of Afro Asia
MoMA
Friday, May 12
6:30 pm ET (In Person)
How might we think about art and its histories from the perspective of a “global majority”? Spanning North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, Joan Kee looks at the relationships that formed between Black and Asian artists at critical historical junctures—from civil rights struggles in the United States and the development of South Korea amid US military occupation in the 1960s and 1970s to debates over multiculturalism and critiques of globalization in the 1990s and 2010s. Through geometry, a language of magnitudes and alignments, the idea of an “Afro Asia” opens up new ways of seeing how artworks shape our cultural, social, and political lives.

Threads of Knowledge: The Intricacies of Hawaiian Textiles
American Folk Art Museum
Wednesday, May 17
6 pm ET 
What that Quilt Knows About Me features quilts whose textiles and styles reflect global histories of conflict of the 18th and 19th centuries. One quilt in the exhibition is Ku’u Hae Aloha (“My Beloved Flag”), a rare 19th-century Hawaiian flag quilt that carries powerful political meaning in opposition to the United States’ military-backed illegal overthrow in 1893. The program “Threads of Knowledge: The Intricacies of Hawaiian Textiles” invites us to examine the ways in which vibrant Hawaiian cloth culture speaks to a complex system of material exchange, ongoing U.S. occupation, and long-standing Indigenous-led efforts to resist, reclaim, and revitalize.  

Dreams and Other Structures with Iván Martínez
Center for Book Arts
Thursday, May 18
12 pm ET
Please join the Center for Book Arts on May 18 at 12pm for an online event via Zoom in conjunction with the exhibition I Couldn’t Read What I Dreamt of. In this conversation, Danny van den Dungen (Experimental Jetset) and Iván Martínez will reflect on how cities, music, and typography might be present in dreams, how frequently these constructions appear while sleeping, and how they might affect language processes and behaviors.

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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.