Bard Graduate Center was mentioned in a recent article in Fashionista about fashion historians. Writer Janelle Sessoms spoke with design historian and BGC alumna Sonya Abrego (MA ’09, PhD ’16), who talks about her time at BGC and how she found a brochure about the school, which inspired her to study fashion history.
Bridget Bartal (MA ’21), a MillerKnoll Curatorial Fellow, cocurated the exhibition Eventually Everything Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the US, on view until September 21 at the Cranbrook Museum in Michigan. Caroline Elenowitz-Hess (PhD ’26) worked as a research assistant on Sargent and Paris, which is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until August 3. She also contributed an essay to the catalogue.
Honors for recent BGC exhibition catalogues are rolling in. Sonia Delaunay: Living Art, edited by Laura Microulis (research curator; MA ’97; PhD ’16) and Waleria Dorogova and featuring chapters by Microulis, Maude Bass-Krueger (PhD ’18), and Geoffrey Ripert (PhD candidate), among others, has won the 2025 Dedalus Foundation Exhibition Catalogue Award, given annually to an outstanding publication that makes a significant contribution to the scholarship on modern art or modernism.
In addition, the catalogue for Bard Graduate Center Gallery’s upcoming exhibition, Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until the Present, edited by Charlotte Vignon and Susan Weber, BGC director, founder, and Iris Horowitz Professor in the History of the Decorative Arts, has landed on the short list for the 2025 American Ceramic Circle Book Award. The award, established in 2005, recognizes English-language publications that advance the study of ceramics, present new scholarship and interpretations and, in doing so, become important and standard references in the field. The 2025 award winner will be announced at the American Ceramic Circle’s annual conference in October.
Our alumni go on to become remarkable fellows. Maeve Hogan (MA ’14) is a 2024–25 Smithsonian American Art Museum Fellow. Allison Stielau (MA ’08) will be a NOMIS Fellow at eikones, Center for the Theory and History of the Image, at the University of Basel in 2025–26. Allison will be using the fellowship year to complete a manuscript on the fate of silver objects in the Thirty Years’ War. Congrats to them both!
We can’t wait to read recently published work from our alumni, such as Annabel Keenan (MA ’15) whose debut book, Climate Action in the Art World: Towards a Greener Future, came out this month. And the blog post, “Men of Letters: A Correspondence Between Franz Boas and E. B. Tylor,” in which alumna Elana Neher (MA ’25) writes about the collection of eighteen handwritten letters from the Pitt Rivers Museum’s manuscript collections sent by anthropologists Franz Boas to Edward B. Tylor. PhD candidate, Kate Sekules published an article in Winterthur Portfolio titled “The One Important Science of Embroidery: The American Stocking Darn 1830 to 1930 as Historical Document,” in which she highlights mending as an undervalued discipline. Artistoric, a research-based gallery founded by alumna Bailey Tichenor (MA ’19) and Michael Assis (PhD candidate) published their first newsletter of historical vases titled “Artistory No. 1 / Neoclassical Daydreams.”
Beatrice Thornton (MA ’15) was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle last month about her recent photography exhibition at Small Works in San Francisco and her workshops teaching plant-based, non-toxic photography processes.
Current MA student, Sarah Egan, gave a talk at the Victorian Society New York on Illinois education advocate Clara Kern Bayliss (1848–1948) who authored early 1900s children’s books.
In faculty news, Ivan Gaskell gave a talk on Henry David Thoreau’s aesthetics at the New York Aesthetics Workshop (CUNY Graduate Center). He also delivered the Katharine Everett Gilbert Memorial Lecture, “Museums and their Values: Aesthetic Value, Artistic Value, Museum Art Value,” at the annual meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Society for Aesthetics in Philadelphia.
Faculty member, Freyja Hartzell (MA ’04), gave a lecture this month at Rhode Island School of Design entitled, “Designing Likeness: Dolls as Functional Objects.”
Public Humanities and Research director, Andrew Kircher, co-created a multilingual art-science installation at Yale’s Schwarzman Center, in collaboration with Yale University Libraries and the School of Public Health, titled “The Gift.”
Meredith Linn, coauthored “Seneca Village, Envisioned” about the making of the Envisioning Seneca Village digital model and published in Urban Omnibus.
Annissa Malvoisin, affiliated faculty member and associate curator at the Brooklyn Museum, is one of seven US curators selected to be a laureate of the 2025 Museums Next Generation by Villa Albertine. Annissa is also an editor for North American Exhibitions for the journal African Arts.
Summer travel is under way! Staff member, Alexis Mucha (MA ’07), led a study trip earlier this month for members of the American Friends of Attingham to Buffalo, New York. Two other BGC alumni were on the trip: Jennifer Klos (MA ’07) and Brandy Culp (MA ’04). They visited a garden restored by former BGC director of public programs Rebecca Allan and toured Graycliff, where alumna Anna Kaplan (MA ’11) is the executive director, among other sites.
Bridget Bartal (MA ’21), a MillerKnoll Curatorial Fellow, cocurated the exhibition Eventually Everything Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the US, on view until September 21 at the Cranbrook Museum in Michigan. Caroline Elenowitz-Hess (PhD ’26) worked as a research assistant on Sargent and Paris, which is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until August 3. She also contributed an essay to the catalogue.
Honors for recent BGC exhibition catalogues are rolling in. Sonia Delaunay: Living Art, edited by Laura Microulis (research curator; MA ’97; PhD ’16) and Waleria Dorogova and featuring chapters by Microulis, Maude Bass-Krueger (PhD ’18), and Geoffrey Ripert (PhD candidate), among others, has won the 2025 Dedalus Foundation Exhibition Catalogue Award, given annually to an outstanding publication that makes a significant contribution to the scholarship on modern art or modernism.
In addition, the catalogue for Bard Graduate Center Gallery’s upcoming exhibition, Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until the Present, edited by Charlotte Vignon and Susan Weber, BGC director, founder, and Iris Horowitz Professor in the History of the Decorative Arts, has landed on the short list for the 2025 American Ceramic Circle Book Award. The award, established in 2005, recognizes English-language publications that advance the study of ceramics, present new scholarship and interpretations and, in doing so, become important and standard references in the field. The 2025 award winner will be announced at the American Ceramic Circle’s annual conference in October.
Our alumni go on to become remarkable fellows. Maeve Hogan (MA ’14) is a 2024–25 Smithsonian American Art Museum Fellow. Allison Stielau (MA ’08) will be a NOMIS Fellow at eikones, Center for the Theory and History of the Image, at the University of Basel in 2025–26. Allison will be using the fellowship year to complete a manuscript on the fate of silver objects in the Thirty Years’ War. Congrats to them both!
We can’t wait to read recently published work from our alumni, such as Annabel Keenan (MA ’15) whose debut book, Climate Action in the Art World: Towards a Greener Future, came out this month. And the blog post, “Men of Letters: A Correspondence Between Franz Boas and E. B. Tylor,” in which alumna Elana Neher (MA ’25) writes about the collection of eighteen handwritten letters from the Pitt Rivers Museum’s manuscript collections sent by anthropologists Franz Boas to Edward B. Tylor. PhD candidate, Kate Sekules published an article in Winterthur Portfolio titled “The One Important Science of Embroidery: The American Stocking Darn 1830 to 1930 as Historical Document,” in which she highlights mending as an undervalued discipline. Artistoric, a research-based gallery founded by alumna Bailey Tichenor (MA ’19) and Michael Assis (PhD candidate) published their first newsletter of historical vases titled “Artistory No. 1 / Neoclassical Daydreams.”
Beatrice Thornton (MA ’15) was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle last month about her recent photography exhibition at Small Works in San Francisco and her workshops teaching plant-based, non-toxic photography processes.
Current MA student, Sarah Egan, gave a talk at the Victorian Society New York on Illinois education advocate Clara Kern Bayliss (1848–1948) who authored early 1900s children’s books.
In faculty news, Ivan Gaskell gave a talk on Henry David Thoreau’s aesthetics at the New York Aesthetics Workshop (CUNY Graduate Center). He also delivered the Katharine Everett Gilbert Memorial Lecture, “Museums and their Values: Aesthetic Value, Artistic Value, Museum Art Value,” at the annual meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Society for Aesthetics in Philadelphia.
Faculty member, Freyja Hartzell (MA ’04), gave a lecture this month at Rhode Island School of Design entitled, “Designing Likeness: Dolls as Functional Objects.”
Public Humanities and Research director, Andrew Kircher, co-created a multilingual art-science installation at Yale’s Schwarzman Center, in collaboration with Yale University Libraries and the School of Public Health, titled “The Gift.”
Meredith Linn, coauthored “Seneca Village, Envisioned” about the making of the Envisioning Seneca Village digital model and published in Urban Omnibus.
Annissa Malvoisin, affiliated faculty member and associate curator at the Brooklyn Museum, is one of seven US curators selected to be a laureate of the 2025 Museums Next Generation by Villa Albertine. Annissa is also an editor for North American Exhibitions for the journal African Arts.
Summer travel is under way! Staff member, Alexis Mucha (MA ’07), led a study trip earlier this month for members of the American Friends of Attingham to Buffalo, New York. Two other BGC alumni were on the trip: Jennifer Klos (MA ’07) and Brandy Culp (MA ’04). They visited a garden restored by former BGC director of public programs Rebecca Allan and toured Graycliff, where alumna Anna Kaplan (MA ’11) is the executive director, among other sites.
