Hello Alumni,

This past Saturday, I visited MoMA PS1 in order to catch the final performance of Rikrit Tiravanija’s untitled 1990 (pad thai). This was one of several stagings of interactive works in the artist’s retrospective A LOT OF PEOPLE, positioned alongside video works and relics of prior performances. Because this is New York, there was a sizable crowd gathered to watch Tiravanija’s former students prepare pad thai on crates, our hunger escalating (or maybe that was just me). The petite bowls of noodles were an act of generosity, as was the smell of pad thai drifting through the Museum’s second floor hallway.   

I hope feelings and acts of generosity are circulating freely wherever you are! Please keep in touch with your news through the online form, or by emailing the alumni gmail account. 

Warmly,
Rachael Schwabe (MA ’20)
alumni@bgc.bard.edu

Alumni Spotlight

This summer Ajiri Aki (MA ’09) published an article for CNBC, “I’ve lived in Paris for 12 years–here are 15 questions French people ask to make small talk more interesting.” Great work, Ajiri!  

Mei Mei Rado (PhD ’18) spoke about her forthcoming book at Harvard University on November 7 in a talk entitled, “European Tapestries at the Qing Court: Global Textiles and A Cross-Cultural Medium.” Well done, Mei Mei! 

Josh Massey (MA ’23) attended the Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) in Richmond, VA, to present “Thornton Dial’s Tributes: Assemblage as Historiography” on a panel about artistic friendships. He also shared “Lonnie Holley’s Wordsmithing: Finding Solidarity in Words and Objects,” at the American Studies Association conference in Montreal, Quebec. This paper builds on his work on Wordsmithing: The Spoken Art of Lonnie Holley, an in-progress collection of spoken performances by the artist co-edited by Josh and Bernie Herman (UNC-CH), and in partnership with Holley himself. Well done, Josh!

Select Career Opportunities

The Craft History Workshop, a project run by Antonia Behan (MA ’14, PhD ’20) and Colin Fanning (MA ’13, BGC PhD candidate), invites submissions to its third season, running from January to May 2024. Application materials are due by December 15. 

The Kitty King Powell Library and Study Center at the Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens invites applications for the William J. Hill Texas Artisans and Artists Archive Research Award. Application materials are due by January 15.

BGC is accepting applications for the 2024–25 Fields of Future Fellowships (due by January 15) and Visiting Fellowships (due by March 1).  

The Corning Museum of Glass seeks to hire a Curatorial and Library Administrative Services and Project Coordinator.  

Unfolding the Coromandel Screen: Visual Mobility, Inscribed Objecthood, and Global Lives, a symposium co-organized by Mei Mei Rado (PhD ’18) being held November 22–24, 2024 in Hong Kong is accepting proposals. Application materials are due by January 20. 

Friends of the Owens-Thomas House of Telfair Museums is accepting applications for a Research Fellowship. Application materials are due by January 31 to Dr. Elyse D. Gerstenecker (MA ’08).

The Department of Anthropology at the AMNH is hiring a full-time Assistant Archivist.

The Brooklyn Museum is seeking a Museum Instructor / Curatorial Assistant, Arts of the Americas and Europe. 

The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University has opened a search for an Executive Director. 

The Jewish Studies Program at Cornell University has issued a call for papers for its inaugural graduate student conference, MAKING SPACE: Peopling and Placing the Matter of Jewish Studies. Application materials are due by December 15. 

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Müchen invites applications for a doctoral position in a project, “Beyond the Nature/Culture Divide: Reimagining Human-Environment Relations in Museums.” Application materials are due by November 30.

The Lise Meitner Research Group “Decay, Loss and Conservation in Art History” led by Francesca Borgo at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome seeks to appoint a Postdoctoral Fellow. Application materials are due by January 15.

For more job listings please visit the BGC job board.

Username: career.services@bgc.bard.edu
Password: CareersBGC2023*=*

Select BGC Events

Open House for Prospective Students
Sunday, November 19
11 am ET (In Person)
Bard Graduate Center Open Houses give prospective students the opportunity to learn much more about the MA and PhD programs. Prospective applicants hear from faculty about their research and teaching, have the chance to meet current students, get answers to questions about admissions and financial aid, and tour 38 West and the gallery. The November event will be hosted by Deborah Krohn, chair of academic programs, and will include faculty members Aaron Glass, François Louis, Jennifer Mass, Ittai Weinryb, and Catherine Whalen.

Constantinopoliad
Wednesday, November 29
6 pm ET (In Person)
In this interactive installation by Sister Sylvester and Nadah El Shazly, audiences will read together from handmade books, enveloped in El Shazly’s live score. The work is inspired by the blank and torn out pages of a journal (that the teenaged C. P. Cavafy began when he and his family fled Alexandria); by lost and missing archives through time; and by the ghosts, both erotic and historical, that visit the older Cavafy in his poems.

Select Virtual and In-Person Events in the World

In Conversation: Woven Histories
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Thursday, November 16
7 pm PT (In Person)
In conjunction with Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, LACMA presents the exhibition’s curator Lynne Cooke, Senior Curator of Special Projects in Modern Art at the National Gallery of Art, in conversation with Spanish sculptor Cristina Iglesias. Cooke and Iglesias will discuss early modes of interlace used in shelter and basketry in relation to Iglesias’s varied use of weaving technologies on a monumental scale in the pavilions and suspended corridors she has made over a career spanning some 35 years.

Sustaining Traditions of Block Printing with Padmini Govind
Fabric Workshop and Museum
Friday, November 17 
6 pm ET (In Person)
Padmini Govind’s mother established Tharangini, the oldest and last remaining hand block printing studio in Bangalore, India in 1977. Padmini has upheld this beautiful craft tradition as well as the ethical, organic, and sustainable practices that her mother heralded. Learn about the practices of hand block printing, block carving, natural dye techniques, embroidery, community outreach, and sustainable practices at Tharangini and enjoy an exclusive trunk show featuring block printed items crafted by the artisans of Tharangini Studios.

Tactile conversations: No Word for Art in our Language*
Queens Museum
Saturday, November 18
2 pm ET (In Person)
The Queens Museum is pleased to announce Tactile conversations: No Word for Art in our Language*, a workshop series that investigates practices of tactile making as ways of knowing and being in local Native and diasporic Indigenous practices. During each workshop of this series, two artists from different Indigenous backgrounds will be invited to lead concurrent drop-in artmaking activities where the materials and methods of making are in dialogue with one another. The public is invited to participate and experience a range of techniques for working by hand, while fostering informal conversation and exchange across Indigenous practices, languages, and forms of knowledge.

Versailles ’73: American Runway Revolution 50th Anniversary
The New School
Tuesday, November 28
6 pm ET (In Person)
On the evening of November 28th, 1973, the global elite gathered in the majestic Théâtre Gabriel at the Palace of Versailles where the grand Battle of Versailles (Grand Divertissement à Versailles) unfolded. Under the visionary leadership of American fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert and Versailles curator Gerald Van der Kemp, ten titans of fashion faced off in a clash of glamor and style. American pret-a-porter designers included Bill Blass, Stephen Burrows, Oscar de la Renta, Halston, and Anne Klein; French couturiers included Marc Bohan for Christian Dior, Pierre Cardin, Hubert de Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, and Emanuel Ungaro, . Please join us for a 50th Anniversary celebration, a Director’s Cut Screening of Versailles ’73: American Runway Revolution + Q&A with Director Deborah Draper and Special Guests, Versailles ’73 Supermodels Alva Chinn and Charlene Dash!

From Olmsted to the High Line and Back: The Evolution of Urban Open Space
Dumbarton Oaks
Thursday, November 30
6 pm ET (In Person)
When you walk in New York’s Central Park in the morning, visit the High Line in the afternoon, and then drop by Wave Hill for a summer concert in the evening, you are experiencing different versions of urban spaces and how they are used. In this conversation, after considering Frederick Law Olmsted’s vision for urban spaces and how to care for them, we will consider the High Line. We’ll explore what inspired Robert Hammond and Josh David to create this most remarkable example of urban infrastructure reuse; how garden designer Piet Oudolf chose the planting pallet for the park; how the park has evolved; and the challenges the park faces with an ever-shifting cityscape. Then we’ll touch on how it feels to sit in Marco Polo Stuffano’s personal garden. how he approached planting Wave Hill, in the Bronx, New York, over 50 years ago, and what his expectations are today. We’ll also consider how the pandemic changed the perception of urban open space globally and has impacted public gardens like Wave Hill. Finally, we’ll look at what the future holds for urban open spaces: What can we gain from lessons learned? How will urban open spaces look going forward, especially given climate change? How can we creatively look at new parameters for defining open space opportunities in densely populated areas?

Designs for Modern Living
The Jewish Museum
Thursday, November 30
6:30 pm ET (In Person)
Join us for a conversation on the impact of three women-led fashion companies in the development of modern dress, positioning Chloé within the global fashion context as an innovator of womenswear in the postwar period. Each brand, Chloé, Marimekko, and Claire McCardell, in their own way developed an approach to dressing that freed a woman’s body and made designs meant for active modern living.

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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.