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

Acclaimed artist, illustrator, educator, and pioneer figure in computer arts Barbara Nessim (b. 1939) has had a long relationship with Bard Graduate Center. In 2014 the BGC Gallery was fortunate enough to present a retrospective of her inimitable work, Barbara Nessim: An Artful Life, that was first introduced at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 2013. She and her husband, Jules Demchick, have supported the student scholarship fund at BGC for many years, and to the delight of the BGC community, they frequently attend openings in the gallery.


Recently, Nessim made a contribution that will impact generations of BGC students: a complete set of 104 volumes, faithfully reproduced from the sketchbooks she has created since 1963, encompassing six decades of drawings. These replicas were made possible by rapid advances in technology, particularly the rise of personal computers in the 1980s and their widespread adoption in the early 1990s.

Nessim has carried a 6-by-9-inch, 70-page sketchbook—handmade from high-quality archival paper—with her at all times for decades, choosing its size because it feels natural and unobtrusive. She draws in it whenever a moment allows, capturing the beautiful and the messy, unconscious thoughts, dreams, and daily observations. To her, the sketchbook is a private space that keeps her honest. As she puts it, “Each drawing is a ‘flow’ with no preconceived idea to start. The result is always a surprise.”

She maintains there are just three rules for these books:

1. must have beginning and end pages with dates
2. must work page after page
3. no page is torn out

According to the New York Times, when Nessim arrived at Pratt Institute as a student in 1956, “she began keeping a sketchbook and maintaining a daily stream-of-consciousness drawing practice, an approach more typically found among fine artists. ‘That’s where all my inspiration comes from,’ she said of her scores of sketchbooks. ‘I don’t edit myself – I want to always know what I’m thinking.’”


This collection is especially significant when considered in tandem with BGC’s archival materials from An Artful Life. The exhibition’s webpage includes a video interview with the artist, highlights of works in the exhibition, installation photography, press coverage of the exhibition, related research, and links to recordings of Nessim discussing her works as well as the catalogue’s description and table of contents. Students and researchers may access additional materials from the exhibition in the BGC Digital Archive, which includes images, artifacts, and ephemera.

According to BGC founder and director Susan Weber, Nessim’s donation is an especially important contribution to BGC’s ever growing Study Collection. “It is essential to BGC’s mission that students have the opportunity for hands-on study of the arts, and Barbara’s gift helps make that possible,” she said.

Nessim recently visited the BGC Library to see the display that Mike Satalof, archivist and digital preservation specialist at BGC, created to draw attention to the collection of sketchbooks. She responded, “When Susan Weber first requested printed versions of my sketchbooks for her students, I never expected it would grow into something so meaningful. I was genuinely touched to see reproductions of all 104 of my sketchbooks alongside catalogues from past exhibitions and related ephemera, so thoughtfully organized by Mike Satalof. Knowing that these materials now have a permanent home was overwhelming in the best possible way. It is more than I ever imagined.”