Hello Alumni,

Well, summer is nearly upon us. I know because I spent this past weekend treading the sidewalks of Manhattan and Brooklyn in search of my next apartment. The streets were sunny, glorious, and…warm. I’m already looking forward to any opportunity to dip into the cool of a movie theater in the coming months.  I don’t know about you, but I am eagerly awaiting the premiere of Barbie (premiering July 21 if anyone asks), which looks like a material culture-oriented movie if there ever was one! 

I hope you too are excited about some small pleasures this summer! And in the meantime, please feel free to send me your news either by email or through the online form. 

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

Alumni Spotlight

Genevieve Ward Swenson (MA ‘05) recently joined the Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation as the assistant to the Executive Director. Congratulations, Genevieve!

The Threads of Power team–whose members include Emma Cormack (MA ‘18), Michele Majer, Laura Grey, Kat Atkins, and Alexis Mucha (MA ‘07)–have won an Award of Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators. Well done, all! 

Juliana Fagua Arias’s (MA ‘21) first exhibition as an independent curator opened on May 5 at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City and will be on view through August. Hilando rituales: Diez Años Bi Yuu explores the textiles produced by Bi Yuu, an atelier based in Mexico City that values experimentation and social innovation. Congratulations, Juliana!

Select Career Opportunities

Select BGC Events

Weaving Worlds
Wednesday, May 24
6 pm 
In this compelling and intimate portrait of economic and cultural survival through art, Navajo filmmaker Bennie Klain takes viewers into the world of contemporary Navajo weavers and their struggles for self-sufficiency. Highlighting untold stories and colorful characters involved in the making and selling of Navajo rugs, Weaving Worlds explores the lives of Diné artisans and their unique—and often controversial—relationship with reservation traders. The film artfully relates the Diné concepts of kinship and reciprocity with the human and cultural connections to sheep, wool, water and the land, showing how Indigenous artisans strive for cultural vitality and environmental sustainability in the face of globalization by “reweaving the world.”

Select Virtual and In-Person Events in the World

Designing Gender Inclusive Spaces
Cooper Hewitt
Wednesday, May 24
6:15 pm ET (In Person)
How does design impact gendered experience? Or rather, how does gendered experience impact design? Historically, design has neglected the needs of women, girls, transgender people, and gender minorities. In recent years, designers have worked to change gender-biased systems in their practice. Join us for a conversation with architects and urban designers as they consider the role that design plays in creating safe and inclusive spaces for all genders.

Socrates x Noguchi Field Guide: Suminagashi (Floating Ink)
Socrates Sculpture Park
Saturday, May 27
11 am ET (In Person)
Connect with nature through art making in a series of hands-on workshops led by Noguchi Educators at nearby Socrates Sculpture Park. These workshops are open to all ages and any skill level. Children under the age of 18 must be accompanied by an adult. All participants will be given a free pass to visit The Noguchi Museum after the program. On Saturday, May 27, join Noguchi Educator Harumi Ori in a workshop to explore the creative possibilities of water with suminagashi, a Japanese technique of floating ink on the surface of water to produce swirling and marbling patterns. 

The Borghese collection at Villa Mondragone in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth- Century
The Society for the History of Collecting
Monday, May 29
7 pm CEST 
Flavia De Nicola’s lecture for the Society for the History of Collecting will present an analysis of the collection of paintings and sculptures that the Borghese family displayed at Villa Mondragone on the Tusculan hills, in Rome countryside, in the 17th and 18th Centuries. It will explore how the variable contents and set-up of the art collection reflected the family’s intentions of self-representation of their power.

Speaking Through My Hands
Studio Art Quilt Associates
Wednesday, May 31
2 pm CT
Diana Baumbach will share artwork that tells the story of her childhood, experience of motherhood, and life as a single parent living abroad. Her interest in personal narrative is rooted in the belief that shared experiences foster empathy and connectedness through our common humanity. In her art, Diana uses materials such as paper made from her children’s worn clothing, fragments of her mother’s wedding dress, and flax gathered and processed with her children. She is fascinated by transforming materials and the rich histories embedded in fibers. Her work relies on slow, repetitive processes. These processes can calm the nervous system and self-soothe.

Slave Trading in the Spanish and British Atlantic Worlds
The Huntington
Friday, June 2—Saturday, June 3
Various Times PT (In Person)
Since an English privateer’s seizure of African captives on a Portuguese vessel bound for Spanish America redirected “20 and odd negroes” to British North America in 1619, Spain and Britain forged a complex and shifting relationship over the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In the last decade, demographic and statistical innovations generated by Slave Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (and its new companion, the Intra-American Slave Trade Database) have dramatically reinvigorated and altered the study of the Atlantic slave trade, highlighting the centrality of the British and Spanish Atlantic worlds therein. With generous support from the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, this two-day conference will bring together a diverse group of leading scholars of the slave trade in the Spanish and British Empires, all of whom are based in the United States and the United Kingdom, to provoke further conversation, collaboration, and innovation.

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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.