This fall’s news update is chock full of BGC alumni authorship, book launches, talks, and exhibitions, as well as a huge win for Sevres Extraordinaire! It’s exciting to share such fantastic news from our community.
IN THE NEWS
Current BGC doctoral candidate and managing director of Cora Ginsburg, Martina D’Amato (MA ’12), was featured in a recent Cultured magazine profile of young art dealers written by alumna J. Cabelle Ahn (MA ’15). Alumna Annabel Keenan (MA ’15) published a fascinating article in The New York Times titled “Art and Data Team Up Against Climate Change,” in which she highlights artists visualizing and tackling climate change through digital and sculptural installations. Constantinopoliad, an installation that Andrew Kircher (director of Public Humanities + Research) brought to BGC in spring 2023, opened in cinematic form at the Venice International Film Festival in late August. Directed by Sister Sylvester and Nadah El Shazly, the original 2023 interactive event at BGC can be viewed here. Sarah Rogers Morris (MA ’13) recently published an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Want to Save Democracy? Teach Art History,” in which she argues for the importance of a visual education. We couldn’t agree more, Sarah! On the subject of education, Ana María Orobio Pinzon (MA ’26), along with her colleagues in the Colonial Image Study Group in the Art History Department at the Universidad de los Andes, contributed a chapter to the book Del Acopio a la Diáspora. Coleccionismo de Arte Religioso en Hispanoamérica (siglos XVII al XX) that reflects years of research on the Santa Inés de Montepulciano monastery’s painting collection. And for material to read regularly, Rachael Schwabe (MA ’20) has transformed MoMA’s most popular Coursera course, Modern Art & Ideas, into a free weekly newsletter. Check it out here.
CAREER MOVES
We are proud to know that our alumni play a part in institutions everywhere and straddle the globe! Nishtha Dani (MA ’25) is starting as a curatorial assistant at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai. After receiving their master of library information science degree in 2024, Patricia Flores (MA ’07) was appointed instructional design librarian at the University of Wyoming Libraries. Additionally, they serve as the liaison librarian for disability studies and communication disorders. In August, Kate Fox (MA ’11) started a new job as a research and instruction librarian at the Rhode Island School of Design’s Fleet Library. Andrew Gardner (MA ’15) was recently appointed director of creative partnerships at the Public Art Fund. In New York, Samuel Snodgrass (MA ’22) is the new administrative assistant for education at the Frick Collection, where he has worked since August 2022 on a range of education projects, including creating and leading tours and public programs. Genevieve Ward Swenson (MA ’05) started a new position as adult public programs manager at Pequot Library in Southport, Connecticut. Designed by Robert H. Robertson and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Pequot Library offers significant special collections of rare books, manuscripts, and archives. She is eager to collaborate on lectures, workshops, and symposia, so please be in touch! Christianne Teague (MA ’15) has relocated to the Beverly Hills office of Heritage Auctions. The move included a promotion to consignment director of decorative arts and design.
RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS
Rebecca Jumper Matheson (PhD ’22) will be celebrating the launch of her new book Artisans and Designers: American Fashion Through Elizabeth and William Phelps at FIT on December 1. The book focuses on the couple’s journey to crafting a new design identity in mid-century America. Christian Ayne Crouch (dean of graduate studies) coedited and contributed an essay to the catalogue Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me, published by Delmonico and Bard College’s Center for Indigenous Studies, which she directs. Lauren Drapala (PhD ’25) is giving a talk on her PhD research at the Newport Museum on November 12, focusing on Howard Gardiner Cushing’s staircase mural of imagined scenes of Persia, considered a Gilded Age masterpiece. PhD candidate and lacemaker Elena Kanagy-Loux will be in conversation with Carry Somers on the publication of her book The Nature of Fashion: A Botanical Story of Our Material Lives, which examines the roots of materials and dyes, at the Rizzoli Bookstore in Manhattan on November 18. Elena also contributed research and an essay in the catalogue for the exhibition Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600 to 1750, on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in DC until January. Kenna Libes (PhD candidate) edited and wrote one of the chapters for Fashion’s Missing Masses: The Representation of Marginalized Populations in Collections and Exhibitions of Dress, published by Vernon Press. The volume also features a foreword by Sarah Scaturro (PhD ’25), a chapter coauthored by Emma McClendon (PhD candidate), and another by Angela Hermano Crenshaw (PhD candidate, MA ’24). In collaboration with New York stone carver Chris Pellettieri, Professor Caspar Meyer investigated how ancient Greek sculptors created the very surfaces of representation. Their experimental carving revealed how lines and planes on marble stelai became both literal and metaphorical grounds for image and text, showing that the “immanent planes” we take for granted today on paper and screens were, in Archaic Greece, an artisanal achievement in themselves. The results have been published in “Thinking through Marble: Early Attic Stelai as Lithic Technology,” in Relief in Greek, Roman, and Late Antique Art, ed. J. Elsner, M. Gaifman, and N. B. Jones (Cambridge, 2025), 65–107. Julia Siemon (director of exhibitions and chief curator) and coauthor Selena Andrews recently published “Eighteenth-Century Architectural Examinations at the Accademia di San Luca: New Evidence for the Concorsi Clementini” in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol. 84, no. 3 (2025): 347–67. What a wonderful representation of BGC scholars and their work!
AWARDS
The exhibition catalogue for Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today by Tamara Préaud and edited by Charlotte Vignon (trustee) and Susan Weber (founder and director, Iris Horowitz Professor in the History of the Decorative Arts) was awarded the American Ceramic Circle Book Award, and the exhibition itself has been shortlisted for Apollo magazine’s Exhibition of the Year Award. The Royal Ontario Museum named Antonia Anagnostopoulos (MA ’23) the 2025 Veronika Gervers Research Fellow in Textiles and Fashion History. She will study historic garments held in its collection in order to make a fustanella garment—a metal-embroidered jacket customarily worn with what is now known as the male national costume of Greece. Her project explores making as an insightful academic practice. PhD candidate David Gassett was awarded the Phillips Fund for Native American Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society. And Emily Hayflick (MA ’20) is a current PhD candidate at Cornell University and was recognized by the American Bird Conservancy for her work as a Conservation and Justice Fellow. Associate professor Meredith Linn and her collaborators Gergely Baics, Leah Meisterlin, and Myles Zhang have won the American Historical Association’s Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Creativity in Digital History for their project, Envisioning Seneca Village. Congratulations to all!
IN THE NEWS
Martina D’Amato (PhD candidate, MA ’12)
Current BGC doctoral candidate and managing director of Cora Ginsburg, Martina D’Amato (MA ’12), was featured in a recent Cultured magazine profile of young art dealers written by alumna J. Cabelle Ahn (MA ’15). Alumna Annabel Keenan (MA ’15) published a fascinating article in The New York Times titled “Art and Data Team Up Against Climate Change,” in which she highlights artists visualizing and tackling climate change through digital and sculptural installations. Constantinopoliad, an installation that Andrew Kircher (director of Public Humanities + Research) brought to BGC in spring 2023, opened in cinematic form at the Venice International Film Festival in late August. Directed by Sister Sylvester and Nadah El Shazly, the original 2023 interactive event at BGC can be viewed here. Sarah Rogers Morris (MA ’13) recently published an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Want to Save Democracy? Teach Art History,” in which she argues for the importance of a visual education. We couldn’t agree more, Sarah! On the subject of education, Ana María Orobio Pinzon (MA ’26), along with her colleagues in the Colonial Image Study Group in the Art History Department at the Universidad de los Andes, contributed a chapter to the book Del Acopio a la Diáspora. Coleccionismo de Arte Religioso en Hispanoamérica (siglos XVII al XX) that reflects years of research on the Santa Inés de Montepulciano monastery’s painting collection. And for material to read regularly, Rachael Schwabe (MA ’20) has transformed MoMA’s most popular Coursera course, Modern Art & Ideas, into a free weekly newsletter. Check it out here.
CAREER MOVES
We are proud to know that our alumni play a part in institutions everywhere and straddle the globe! Nishtha Dani (MA ’25) is starting as a curatorial assistant at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai. After receiving their master of library information science degree in 2024, Patricia Flores (MA ’07) was appointed instructional design librarian at the University of Wyoming Libraries. Additionally, they serve as the liaison librarian for disability studies and communication disorders. In August, Kate Fox (MA ’11) started a new job as a research and instruction librarian at the Rhode Island School of Design’s Fleet Library. Andrew Gardner (MA ’15) was recently appointed director of creative partnerships at the Public Art Fund. In New York, Samuel Snodgrass (MA ’22) is the new administrative assistant for education at the Frick Collection, where he has worked since August 2022 on a range of education projects, including creating and leading tours and public programs. Genevieve Ward Swenson (MA ’05) started a new position as adult public programs manager at Pequot Library in Southport, Connecticut. Designed by Robert H. Robertson and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Pequot Library offers significant special collections of rare books, manuscripts, and archives. She is eager to collaborate on lectures, workshops, and symposia, so please be in touch! Christianne Teague (MA ’15) has relocated to the Beverly Hills office of Heritage Auctions. The move included a promotion to consignment director of decorative arts and design.
RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS
Rebecca Jumper Matheson (PhD ’22) will be celebrating the launch of her new book Artisans and Designers: American Fashion Through Elizabeth and William Phelps at FIT on December 1. The book focuses on the couple’s journey to crafting a new design identity in mid-century America. Christian Ayne Crouch (dean of graduate studies) coedited and contributed an essay to the catalogue Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me, published by Delmonico and Bard College’s Center for Indigenous Studies, which she directs. Lauren Drapala (PhD ’25) is giving a talk on her PhD research at the Newport Museum on November 12, focusing on Howard Gardiner Cushing’s staircase mural of imagined scenes of Persia, considered a Gilded Age masterpiece. PhD candidate and lacemaker Elena Kanagy-Loux will be in conversation with Carry Somers on the publication of her book The Nature of Fashion: A Botanical Story of Our Material Lives, which examines the roots of materials and dyes, at the Rizzoli Bookstore in Manhattan on November 18. Elena also contributed research and an essay in the catalogue for the exhibition Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600 to 1750, on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in DC until January. Kenna Libes (PhD candidate) edited and wrote one of the chapters for Fashion’s Missing Masses: The Representation of Marginalized Populations in Collections and Exhibitions of Dress, published by Vernon Press. The volume also features a foreword by Sarah Scaturro (PhD ’25), a chapter coauthored by Emma McClendon (PhD candidate), and another by Angela Hermano Crenshaw (PhD candidate, MA ’24). In collaboration with New York stone carver Chris Pellettieri, Professor Caspar Meyer investigated how ancient Greek sculptors created the very surfaces of representation. Their experimental carving revealed how lines and planes on marble stelai became both literal and metaphorical grounds for image and text, showing that the “immanent planes” we take for granted today on paper and screens were, in Archaic Greece, an artisanal achievement in themselves. The results have been published in “Thinking through Marble: Early Attic Stelai as Lithic Technology,” in Relief in Greek, Roman, and Late Antique Art, ed. J. Elsner, M. Gaifman, and N. B. Jones (Cambridge, 2025), 65–107. Julia Siemon (director of exhibitions and chief curator) and coauthor Selena Andrews recently published “Eighteenth-Century Architectural Examinations at the Accademia di San Luca: New Evidence for the Concorsi Clementini” in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol. 84, no. 3 (2025): 347–67. What a wonderful representation of BGC scholars and their work!
AWARDS
The exhibition catalogue for Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today by Tamara Préaud and edited by Charlotte Vignon (trustee) and Susan Weber (founder and director, Iris Horowitz Professor in the History of the Decorative Arts) was awarded the American Ceramic Circle Book Award, and the exhibition itself has been shortlisted for Apollo magazine’s Exhibition of the Year Award. The Royal Ontario Museum named Antonia Anagnostopoulos (MA ’23) the 2025 Veronika Gervers Research Fellow in Textiles and Fashion History. She will study historic garments held in its collection in order to make a fustanella garment—a metal-embroidered jacket customarily worn with what is now known as the male national costume of Greece. Her project explores making as an insightful academic practice. PhD candidate David Gassett was awarded the Phillips Fund for Native American Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society. And Emily Hayflick (MA ’20) is a current PhD candidate at Cornell University and was recognized by the American Bird Conservancy for her work as a Conservation and Justice Fellow. Associate professor Meredith Linn and her collaborators Gergely Baics, Leah Meisterlin, and Myles Zhang have won the American Historical Association’s Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Creativity in Digital History for their project, Envisioning Seneca Village. Congratulations to all!
