Dear Alumni,

As the weather cools and my reading chair beckons, I’m greatly looking forward to paging through Prudence Peiffer’s The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever about a collection of artists with diverse practices who were united by their experience living in the Coenties Slip in Manhattan. This group included Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Delphine Seyrig, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman. I’m particularly interested in this slice of Tawney’s life, and thoroughly intrigued by the premise of a place’s impact on material output—an argument similarly articulated by Mary Gabriel’s popular Ninth Street Women. To entice you further, Prue also wrote an excruciatingly lovely piece about writing (more generally and this book in particular) and living. 

Hope there’s a fall book you’re looking forward to curling up with yourself! Please feel free to get in touch with your news (or literary recommendations!) via the online form, or by emailing the alumni gmail account. 

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

Select Career Opportunities

Select BGC Events

Material Culture and the Blockchain
Wednesday, October 4
6 pm ET
The blockchain idealizes decentralized and distributed knowledge, presenting ties to intersectional feminist theories and historical craft practices. Unfortunately, media attention around blockchain-based art reproduces certain biases in art discourse, focusing on North American and European production—predominantly male artists—and an economic rationality. In this talk, Charlotte Kent presents the problems and possibilities inherent in this emergent technology and suggests a material culture approach to the study of blockchain-based contemporary art. Bard Graduate Center (BGC) PhD candidate Michael Assis introduces Kent, explains how blockchain technologies have been utilized in artistic production, and places blockchain-based artistic practices in the greater history of art and material culture.

Select Virtual and In-Person Events in the World

Ambient Faith: Live Readings and Conversation
Museum of the City of New York
Friday, September 22
6 pm ET (In Person)
How can art and creative nonfiction help us think about complex issues of religion in New York (and beyond)? Join poet Divya Victor and writer and perfumer Tanaïs to consider this question at the final public program for the Museum’s current exhibition City of Faith: Religion, Activism, and Urban Space (on view through October 22), which explores religion, race, and public space in the city, with a special focus on South Asian communities. This event has been organized by BGC’s Visiting Fellow, Azra Dawood. 

Book Talk: Dress History of Korea
New York University 
Wednesday, September 27
2:00 pm ET (In Person)
To celebrate the publication of Dress History of Korea: Critical Perspectives on Primary Sources, NYU’s master’s program in Costume Studies is pleased to host a talk by the book’s editors: Kyunghee Pyun and Minjee Kim. Kindly RSVP by Tuesday, September 26.

Fashion’s Role in Black Protest, 1863-1963
Fashion Institute of Technology
Tuesday, October 3
5:30 pm ET (In Person)
Fashion historian and assistant professor at Parsons School of Design Jonathan Michael Square and MFIT associate curator Elizabeth Way will be in conversation about the significance of fashion and self-presentation for Black Civil Rights leaders from the nineteenth century to the present. This program is also a part of the 1863–1963–2023 Project: Civil Rights in FIT’s Neighborhood project.

The Violinmaker & The Virtuoso
American Craft Council
Thursday, October 5
1 pm CT (Virtual)
At its heart, craft is not a static endeavor. Whether you are working with a team of artists, as with glassblowing, or leaning into the “lone artist toiling in their studio” trope, craft lives and breathes, changes and grows between hands and spaces. When the object leaves the studio it takes on new life for someone else in a new place. For luthier Eric Benning of Benning Violins, craft lives through multiple generations of a family business that makes world-renowned stringed instruments for those just learning and those gracing some of the world’s greatest stages. When Benning completes a violin he doesn’t just hang it on the wall; it’s not decorative. He places that violin in the hands of someone like virtuoso violinist Vijay Gupta, who then uses it to direct his own creative force, his gift, his craft. This object that appears static and still, complete, continues its journey through Gupta’s playing.

Centering Disability in Design: A Conversation
The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Thursday, October 5
3 pm ET (Virtual)
What does it look like when disabled people are viewed not as edge cases or afterthoughts in the design process, but as the default users? What happens when, instead of flattening disability into an indistinguishable group of “all abilities,” we understand and design for the unique and varied experiences of disabled people? How can we prioritize, honor, and celebrate disability in our design practice? Join our panelists in conversation to answer these questions about designing FOR and WITH disability. 

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