About
Upcoming Exhibitions
BGC Gallery will resume its exhibition programming this September with the return of Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today, originally slated for fall 2024.
Bard Graduate Center is an advanced graduate research institute in New York City dedicated to the cultural histories of the material world. Our MA and PhD degree programs, Gallery exhibitions, research initiatives, scholarly publications and public programs explore new ways of thinking about decorative arts, design history, and material culture.

About
28th Annual Iris Foundation Awards
Honoring Irene Roosevelt Aitken, Dr. Julius Bryant, Dr. Meredith Martin, and Katherine Purcell
Events
Wednesdays @ BGC
Join us this spring for weekly programming!





About

Bard Graduate Center is devoted to the study of decorative arts, design history, and material culture through research, advanced degrees, exhibitions, publications, and events.


Bard Graduate Center advances the study of decorative arts, design history, and material culture through its object-centered approach to teaching, research, exhibitions, publications, and events.

At BGC, we study the human past and present through their material expressions. We focus on objects and other material forms—from those valued for their aesthetic elements to the ordinary things used in everyday life.

Our accomplished interdisciplinary faculty inspires and prepares students in our MA and PhD programs for successful careers in academia, museums, and the private sector. We bring equal intellectual rigor to our acclaimed exhibitions, award-winning catalogues and scholarly publications, and innovative public programs, and we view all of these integrated elements as vital to our curriculum.

BGC’s campus comprises a state-of-the-art academic programs building at 38 West 86th Street, a gallery at 18 West 86th Street, and a residence hall at 410 West 58th Street. A new collection study center will open at 8 West 86th Street in 2026.

Founded by Dr. Susan Weber in 1993, Bard Graduate Center has become the preeminent institute for academic research and exhibition of decorative arts, design history, and material culture. BGC is an accredited unit of Bard College and a member of the Association of Research Institutes in Art History (ARIAH).


Elena Kanagy-Loux on CBS Sunday Morning.

Current PhD candidate and cofounder of Brooklyn Lace Guild, Elena Kanagy-Loux, held a talk on the art of lacemaking at Cranbrook Art Museum in January. She was also featured on CBS Sunday Morning last month for a special titled “Weaving a Fascination for Lace.”

Two BGC alumni contributed to the Decorative Arts Trust this semester. Starting in January, Juliana Fagua Arias (MA ’21) presented “Luster, Shimmer, and Polish: Transpacific Materialities in the Arts of Colonial Latin America” at the Decorative Arts Trust and the Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation’s Emerging Scholars Colloquium at the Park Avenue Armory. Jackie Mazzone (MA ’20), a William C. and Susan S. Mariner Fellow for Emerging Museum Professionals sponsored by the Decorative Arts Trust, headlined a posting by the Decorative Arts Trust, which focused on her research of early nineteenth-century needlework samplers. Mazzone worked on her research while a fellow at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts’ Summer Institute.

Several BGC alumni authored chapters in the book Fashion in American Life, edited by Hazel Clark and Lauren Downing Peters. Laura Allen (MA ’20) wrote “Sovereignty Every Day: Mobilizing Indigenous Fashion from the Northwest Coast,” Rebecca Jumper Matheson (PhD ’22) contributed “‘Smart Togs for Action’: Everyday Clothes for Rural Women in Texas in the 1950s,” and current PhD candidate Amanda Thompson (MA ’16) wrote “Playing Seminole Indian: The Cultural Appropriation of Seminole Men’s Fashion.” Congratulations to all for their contributions to fashion literature.


BGC alumni were also involved in another publication, A Dark, A Light, A Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes, which won the Decorative Arts Society’s 2023 Charles Montgomery Prize. Congratulations to Alexa Griffith Winton (MA ’03), coeditor and cocurator of the Cooper Hewitt exhibition of the same name, and contributors John Stuart Gordon (MA ’04) and Leigh Wishner (MA ’01).


Out this May, Annabel Keenan’s (MA ’15) Climate Action in the Art World: Towards a Greener Future urges the art world to practice sustainability and examines artists and art activists who have paved the way for a greener future in the face of climate change.


We applaud work by alums in the media and magazine sphere, such as the fall/winter issue of Ornamentum Magazine, titled “Activating the Senses,” guest edited by Daria Murphy (MA ’21). Murphy’s issue approached decorative objects as dynamic pieces with the potential to impact human senses and the environment. Madison Clyburn (MA ’21) contributed an article to the publication entitled “Unpacking a Cassone: Scented Home Goods in Early Modern Italy.” Murphy is currently pursuing her PhD at Queen’s University while Clyburn pursues hers at McGill.


In the podcast world, Skylar Smith (MA ’19), professor of liberal arts at Ringling College of Art and Design, was interviewed on The Illustration Department Podcast in February. On the podcast, Smith mentions artists such as Jules Feiffer, Norman Rockwell, and George Petty and talks about her course teachings.


Sarah Pickman (MA ‘15) contributed a chapter on the material culture of early twentieth-century mountaineering expeditions titled: “The Benefit of Chocolate and Cold Tea: Equipping Early British Everest Expeditions” in Other Everests: One Mountain, Many Worlds edited by Paul Gilchrist, Peter Hansen, and Jonathan Westaway and published in November 2024 by University of Manchester Press.


Madeline Porsella (MA ‘23) and Mabel Taylor (MA ‘24) recently published two new titles under their imprint, Mandylion Press, which prints lost literary gems from the long nineteenth century. The new titles include One or Two by Henrietta Dorothy Everett and The Morgesons by Elizabeth Drew Barstow Stoddard.


Nadia Westenburg (MA ’17), who currently serves as park archivist for Yosemite National Park, published an article on National Park Service posters in a special issue of Art Journal. The essay draws on research that Nadia began as a BGC student for her qualifying paper.


Amber Winick’s (MA ‘13) collaborative book project, Designing Motherhood: Things that Make and Break Our Births, won the 2025 W Awards Prize for Research in Gender and Architecture.


We’re proud to announce that Persephone Allen (MA ’17) started a new position as lecturer in theory and history of art at Rhode Island School of Design, where her courses interpret twentieth-century design and encourage close looking.


A big congratulations to Maude Bass-Krueger (PhD ’16) who recently earned tenure as associate professor in art history at Ghent University. Her current research focuses on the intersections between fashion and architecture from the eighteenth century until today, as well as on Belgian fashion before 1980.


First-year MA student, Brenna Gomez, was appointed an AIA–NYS 2024–2025 Scholar. Her research focuses on ancient jewelry and its production center in the Roman world.


Congratulations to Daniela Díaz Blancarte, a soon-to-be BGC MA graduate, who will start her PhD in the history of science at Harvard University in the fall.


BGC was well-represented at the NYU Institute of Fine Arts this year. J. Cabelle Ahn (MA ’15) served as a panelist for the “The Machine Gaze: AI in Art Conservation and Analysis.” Additionally, this February, the NYU Institute of Fine Arts also hosted the Robert Goldwater Roundtable on African Art History “Other Africas” Roundtable, which featured BGC faculty members Annissa Malvoisin and Drew Thompson in conversation with Antawan I. Byrd (Northwestern). The panel explored the critical stakes and future directions of Africanist art history in the twenty-first century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently awarded Thompson the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship in the History of Art and Visual Culture, and in that position, he will serve as the senior fellow in the Department of Photography. He was also awarded a fellowship by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.


This year’s CAA annual conference hosted many BGC alumni and faculty on its panels. Maeve Hogan (MA ’14) spoke on a panel titled “Collecting Her Thoughts: Women Art Collectors Across Time.” Her presentation was titled “Craft and Fiber Art of the 1950s and 1960s in the collection of Helen Louise Allen.” Also at CAA, BGC archivist Mike Satalof spoke on the role of installation photographs in scholarship in “Beyond Documentation: The Research Potential of Exhibition Photography.” Fellow alumnae Allison Stielau (MA ’09), whose talk was titled “Beuys vs. the Goldsmiths” contributed to CAA as well. And at CAA’s panel “Borderlands: Crafting Between Cultures,” Amanda Thompson (MA ’16, PhD ’25) presented “Appropriations ’76: Florida Native Seminole Patchwork in the Quilting World.”


With Purim this past March, we congratulate Gabriel Max Goldstein (MA ’11) for his talk at the Kaplan Museum of Judaica, “Fit for a Queen: Ceremonial Art for Purim.” The annual lecture was followed by a tour of the collection.


The inaugural State of American Decorative Arts, organized by the Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation, included two BGC scholars on its panel, John Stuart Gordon (MA ’04), who currently serves as the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery, and current BGC MA student Mya Bailey (MA ’25).

Bailey will continue her relationship with the foundation this summer; she and BGC alumna Grace Billingslea (MA ’22), currently a senior curatorial assistant at the Brooklyn Museum, have been awarded a William L. Thompson Collections Fellowship. This short-term residential fellowship, a program of the Jenrette Foundation, is designed for emerging museum professionals and graduate students with an interest in a career focusing on collections and material culture within historic house museums.

Professor and curator Deborah Krohn was recently elected to the board of the Association of Research Institutes in Art History. She was one of three historians who spoke at the New Amsterdam History Center program “African, Indigenous, and Dutch Foodways in 17th-Century New Amsterdam” and she will deliver the Agnes Rindge Claflin Lecture at Vassar College on April 29.


Current PhD candidate Kenna Libes and Sarah Scaturro (PhD ’25), the Eric and Jane Nord Chief Conservator at the Cleveland Museum of Art, spoke on a webinar for the Costume Society of America’s Dress Series—Reframing Fashion in the Museum.

Scaturro also recently won the Surridge Prize for best article published in the journal Victorian Review in the past year. Of her paper, “‘Penitential and Self-Mortifying’: Mourning Crape in Fashion,” the judges wrote, “Scaturro’s method is impressively wide-ranging, combining fashion and textile history with literary analysis, cultural history, and even chemical analysis. It will raise important questions for scholars across multiple fields. Even with this breadth, the essay never sacrifices depth, yielding strong insights about Victorian death culture, British and Continental fashion history, and their residues today. The exploration of a material object, mourning crape, opens out into new revelations about affect and women’s lived experience. Scaturro’s argument is also eminently transportable. It helps us to rethink mourning and gender in works we think we know well. Lastly, we admired how writerly this essay was in its narrative arc, moving from a knotty observation through to a whole world of consequence and even danger.” Scaturro noted, “I am grateful to have first explored the topic of mourning crape during my doctoral coursework in the fashion and literature class taught by professor emerita Michele Majer and associate professor Freyja Hartzell (MA ’04).”


Anna Riley (MA ’23) will be speaking on a panel at the Glass Art Society Conference titled “Life of Glass: Following Pathways of Connection, Rupture, and Alteration” in May 2025. And alumni Bridget Bartal (MA ‘22) and Andrew Gardner (MA ‘15) moderated a talk at the Art Students League in Manhattan on April 8, 2025, titled, “Building Blocks: Designers Shaped by the Art Students League.”


Bartal is currently the MillerKnoll Curatorial Fellow at the Cranbrook Art Museum in Detroit. She wrote, “For the past two and a half years, I’ve been conducting research for … Eventually Everything Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the US. Cocurating this show with director Andrew Satake Blauvelt has been a privilege, and we’re excited to honor the stories of under-recognized designers within the dense, weblike networks of mid-century design.” The exhibition opens on June 13.


Of course, BGC scholars go on to curate incredible shows such as current MA candidate, Alex Calloway, who curated their first photography show at Ziello Gallery in March 2025. The show featured seven artists whose work depicted silence in loud settings.


Angela Hermano Crenshaw (MA ’24, current PhD student) curated the exhibition From Pineapple to Pañuelo: Philippine Textiles at RISD Museum, which runs until August 24, 2025. Angela was interviewed in Lifestyle Inquirer about the exhibit and in a series about Southeast Asian creatives in Fashion and Market. Way to go, Angela!


Additionally, New York Historical’s current exhibition on Flaco, the Central Park Zoo’s escaped Eurasian eagle-owl, is curated by Rebecca Klassen (MA ’11). The Year of Flaco is on view until July 6, 2025.


Cynthia Kok (MA ’16) has been appointed Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts at LACMA.


Associate professor Meredith Linn, together with Samantha Fleischman (MA ’25) and Joshua Massey (PhD candidate and MA ’23) curated a digital exhibition titled In the Wilsons’ Kitchen: Discoveries from Seneca Village, which is featured on the NYC Archaeological Repository website and won the Digital / Interactive Map prize of the 52nd Annual Map Design Competition of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society. Linn also gave two talks related to the exhibit, “The People who Built Seneca Village” with John Reddick, director of community engagement projects at the Central Park Conservancy, at the 92nd Street Y and “Envisioning Seneca Village” for the Talking About Race Matters series at the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum.


BGC PhD candidate Nicholas De Godoy Lopes is joining the Corning Museum of Glass as a curatorial assistant for a three-year term.


Now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Recasting the Past: The Art of Chinese Bronzes, 1100–1900 was curated by Pengliang Lu (PhD ’23). The exhibition presents a comprehensive narrative of the significance of bronzes throughout China’s long history.


Rachael Schwabe (MA ’20) has launched Artful Practices for Well-Being, a free online MoMA course available on Coursera. The course uses the museum’s collection as a springboard for ideas, practices, and activities to support well-being.


On the international side, the new associate director of development at the American Academy in Rome is BGC’s very own Madeline Warner (MA ’20), who started the position in 2025.


Professor Aaron Glass published an article with Rainer Hatoum titled, “From British Columbia to Berlin and Back Again: Jacobsen’s Kwakwaka’wakw Collection Across Three Centuries” in Cathrine Baglo’s Trader of Traditions: Johan Adrian Jacobsen as Collector of People and Things (Scandinavian University Press, 2025). The article is available as an open-access publication and can be found here.


BGC associate professor Freyja Hartzell (MA ’04) will be presenting: “Dollatry: Designing Likeness” at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. The lecture explores her planned exhibition on dolls as designed objects and their unique power as purveyors of human likeness.


BGC’s Public Humanities and Research director, Andrew Kircher, cocreated The Gift, a multilingual art-science installation, as part of the Getty’s PST ART at the Los Angeles Music Center on February 8, 2025. Andrew joined LeVar Burton in conversation at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles to talk about the role of storytelling in processing grief and his work on the exhibition this past March. The installation will also be presented at Yale’s Schwarzman Center, in collaboration with Yale University Libraries and the School of Public Health. Andrew will be moderating a conversation with curators, astrophysicists, and medical researchers at Yale.

In March, professor Caspar Meyer gave a talk during the graduate seminar History of the Black Sea, a Classics Department course at the Ohio State University, on interpreting ancient nomadic communities using an approach similar to Herodotus’ ethnographic account of the Scythians.


At the Renaissance Society of America Conference in Boston, professor Andrew Morrall cochaired three sessions on the theme of “Collecting, Techne, and the Practice of Governance in the Early Modern World.” He also presented a talk titled, “Intermedialities of Nature and Art in the Works of Bernard Palissy” as part of the conference, “Intermediality and Synagonism in Northern Europe 1400–1700,” hosted by the Center for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, Toronto University.


Director of exhibitions and chief curator Julia Siemon published an article titled “‘Two boys with a bladder” in the J. Paul Getty Museum and Joseph Wright of Derby’s Early Candlelights’” in Burlington Magazine’s March issue.


Professor emeritus Paul Stirton gave a talk at the St Brides Library in London on his recent book, Piet Zwart: NKF and the New Typography.