Travel has long been an important component of a Bard Graduate Center education. All MA students have the option of going on a BGC-sponsored trip to Europe in the summer between their first and second years. This past summer students chose between study trips to Paris or Venice led by faculty members Mei Mei Rado, Jeffrey Collins, and Deborah Krohn, or work on an important archaeological site on the Greek island of Despotiko. These trips afforded students the opportunity to develop familiarity with some of the great collections, museums, and historic sites outside of the United States or gain hands-on, practical experience of recovering ancient objects and structures.
Student Reflections on the 2025 Bard Travel Program
During our recent BGC study trip to Venice, we visited the weaving workshop Tessitura Bevilacqua, where we were able to see artisans making velvet on eighteenth-century looms. Our visit gave me a new appreciation for the complexities of traditional methods of velvet production, which is highly labor intensive. During a subsequent visit to the Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo, curator Luigi Zanini brought us into the museum’s storage and kindly showed us sections of brocades and velvets from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Having learned that morning about the techniques used to produce similar textiles today, I was able to envision the work that underpinned these objects. The vibrant colors and shimmering precious metal threads of the textiles we saw at both Tessitura Bevilacqua and the Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo made these objects a trip highlight. – Maeve Diepenbrock, MA ’26
On an early morning in May, eleven of us first-year MA students stood outside Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, accompanied by our professor, Mei Mei Rado. At the entrance of this historic building, we were greeted by Marie Garraut, deputy head of international relations at École du Louvre, the host of our summer program. She handed us our student ID cards and in we went. We were then led through the premises and into Sainte-Chapelle by researcher and lecturer Delphine Grenet, who explained the building’s significance, focusing particularly on the Gothic, stained-glass windows. The audible gasp we let out in unison upon seeing the stained glass from the chapel’s interior was proof of just how impressive it was. The experience was further enriched by Delphine as she spoke about changes in glass-making and glass-painting technology and taught us how to read the iconography as well as centuries of renovation evident on the glass panes. – Debaleena Bagchi, MA ’26
On the Paris portion of BGC’s annual Summer Travel Program, we visited a wide variety of French museums, cultural institutions, and conservation studios. My favorite visit was to the Petit Palais, one of Paris’s public fine arts museums. Before the museum opened to the public, we met with Clara Roca, their curator in charge of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century graphic arts and photography collections. She walked us through their current show, Dessins de bijoux: Les secrets de la création (Jewelry Designs: The Secrets of Creation). Comparing the 1:1 scale drawings or gouache paintings to the actual jewelry was visually fascinating and led to interesting questions afterwards about museum display and curatorial choices. – Sarah Egan, MA ’26
I have always been a bit fascinated by glass but have never gotten the chance to study it up close until coming to BGC. Then, during fall semester, many of us participated in a glassblowing workshop, where we had the opportunity to watch professionals at work and even attempt to make something for ourselves. It felt like a perfect, full-circle moment to finish our first year with an emphasis on glass. The most incredible experience I had was viewing the eleventh-century Byzantine mosaic in the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta on Torcello, a small island north of Venice that was once the most populous island in the lagoon. The pictures I had seen in college courses couldn’t begin to capture the magnificence and intricate details of these mosaics, and our experience was greatly enriched by the thorough analysis of the historical and biblical significance of the images that professor Collins provided us, but even without understanding everything, the ability to see each individual tesserae tile in a sea of thousands was truly awe-inspiring. Later that week, we visited Orsoni Venezia 1888, a glassworking studio that continues to make tesserae in historic styles. There, we saw each step of the process, from making and storing slabs of glass in every color of the rainbow, to cutting the small pieces of glass with foot-powered machines. The combination of seeing the process and the finished product helped solidify just how much time and dedication it takes to make such stunning mosaics. – Abigail Kosnik, MA ’26
The 2025 Bard Travel Program was generously supported by:The Bonnie Cashin Fund for Study Abroad
The Paul and Irene Hollister Fund
The Selz Foundation
The Lee B. Anderson Memorial Foundation
