Research programming is a major component of intellectual life at Bard Graduate Center. Weekly seminars and lectures are curated by faculty and bring into our midst scholarly conversations on relevant subject matter or methodological debate, broadening our curricular vision and helping to further the institution’s goal of promoting research in the areas of decorative arts, design history, and material culture—what we call the “cultural history of the material world.” Advance registration is strongly encouraged. Please click through for full descriptions and to register.

Lectures and Seminars

Tuesday, October 23, 6–7:30 pm

Gina Suuda Tl’l Xasii ~ Came To Tell Something: Documenting Convergence, Divergence, and Co-existence through Haida Art and Narrative

Jisgang Nika Collison
Executive Director and Curator, Haida Gwaii Museum at Kay Llnagaay

Interactions with Indigenous Peoples have long been documented by Euro-Americans using written narratives and imagery fabricated from and for colonial purpose. These imaginings dominate and soften the popular understanding of history. Read more.

BGCTV This event will be livestreamed. A link to the video will be posted to the event listing the day of the talk.

Wednesday, October 24, 6–7:30 pm

“A Complete Technique of Living”: Raymond Duncan (1874–1966)

Alexandra Palmer
Nora E. Vaughan Senior Curator and Chair, Veronika Gevers Research Fellowship, Royal Ontario Museum

American Raymond Duncan was a fixture on the Paris art scene from 1900 until he died at age 92. He was a larger than life figure, a proponent of Hellenism draped in home-spun and hand-woven tunic and chlamys, with barefeet and home-made sandals, a weaver, artist, graphic designer, architect, poet, playwright, printer, publisher, dancer, philosopher, activist, pacifist, and vegetarian. Read more.

BGCTV This event will be livestreamed. A link to the video will be posted to the event listing the day of the talk.

Tuesday, October 30, 6–7:30 pm

Afterlives: The Living Signs of the Forensic Dead Body

Zoë Crossland
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University

Forensic investigation shares archaeology’s concern with reconstructing past events from physical clues and traces. In both disciplines the different life worlds that emerge after a person’s death may be mobilized by investigators in the search for a past that is only recoverable in this narrowly mediated form. Read more.

BGCTV This event will be livestreamed. A link to the video will be posted to the event listing the day of the talk.

Symposium—Conserving Active Matter: History

Thursday, November 1, 9:15 am–6:15 pm

The working group on “Active Matter and History” aims to contextualize the current interest in active matter. Probing the boundaries of dualistic thought, from Pre-Socratics to plastics, this workshop will help us understand exactly how we got to the point that the activity of organic matter had to be rediscovered at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Beyond genealogy, however, the recognition that conceptual scene-setting is itself an artifact raises new possibilities for rethinking activity along the arc of all those other victims of dualization, such as the subject/object, archaic/modern, living/non-living, human/non-human, and West/Eastern dichotomies. Read more.

BGCTV This event will be livestreamed. A link to the video will be posted to the event listing the day of the talk.

This event is part of our “Cultures of Conservation” initiative, supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Around the Center

Fellowship in Islamic Art and Material Culture

Bard Graduate Center invites applications for a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in Islamic art and material culture. Our ideal candidate is a scholar with a broad background in Islamic art, archaeology, and cultural history. Apply now.

Summer School: Conservation as a Human Science

Bard Graduate Center’s week-long summer school for students, early career conservators, and conservation scientists is designed to acquaint them with a variety of approaches to scholarship on, and interpretation of, material culture. Learn more and apply.

Open House, October 21

We invite prospective students to join us on Sunday, October 21, at 11 am, for a faculty conversation and introduction to our MA and PhD programs. Learn more and register.

2018 Horowitz Book Prize

We are now accepting submissions for the 2018 Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Book Prize, awarded annually to the best book on the decorative arts, design history, or material culture of the Americas. Learn more.

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Top Section: Maria Baranova. Middle Section: [Oct 24] Image of Raymond Duncan, c 1930. Courtesy Alexandra Palmer. [Nov 1] Lukas Einsele, “Procumbent Christ figure” (in German: “Christusfigur liegend”) 2008/2017 (CN Print, 180x224cm). Bottom Section: [Top Left] Maria Baranova. [Top Right] Francis Frith. The Great Pyramid and The Great Sphinx, 1958. Albumen silver print from glass negative. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gilman Collection, Purchase, William Talbott Hillman Foundation Gift, 2005. [Bottom Left] Maria Baranova. [Bottom Right] Maria Baranova.