Dear Friends,

It’s a wonderful fall semester at BGC. We welcomed 25 new MA and PhD students and we reopened our gallery at 18 West 86th Street. Gallery renovations were completed during the summer, and I am delighted that we were able to remount Sèvres Extraordinaire: Sculpture from 1740 Until Today. If you haven’t seen it, please get yourself to the gallery before it closes on November 16. It’s a marvelous exhibition that has garnered rave reviews in the Wall Street Journal and Apollo magazine, and it has been shortlisted for Apollo’s prestigious Exhibition of the Year Award.

I’m very proud that BGC’s Publications Department has released four new titles in recent months, and I hope you will explore them on our store site. The Sèvres Extraordinaire exhibition catalogue by former Sèvres archivist Tamara Préaud is among the new publications, and I’m pleased to share that it recently won the American Ceramic Circle Book Award. (Re)Dressing American Fashion: Wear as Witness, edited by Emma McClendon (BGG PhD candidate) and Lauren Downing Peters (Columbia College Chicago) presents a revelatory new approach to understanding fashion that focuses on the stories told by worn, imperfect, and ordinary clothes. SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa, edited by BGC associate professor Drew Thompson, reflects on the role of design in the success of the exhibition of the same name. Finally, the latest addition to the Cultural Histories of the Material World series is André Leroi-Gourhan on Technology: A Selection of Writings from the 1930s to the 1960s edited by Nathan Schlanger and translated by Nils F. Schott. This is the first time many of Leroi-Gourhan’s most important writings have been translated into English, and as a result, it is likely to have a significant impact on material culture studies in the Anglophone world for decades to come.

The Gallery will be on hiatus from November 17 until January 28, when Viollet-le-Duc Drawing Worlds, curated by Barry Bergdoll and Martin Bressani, opens. However, the Wednesdays@BGC series continues through December 3, and the Leon Levy Foundation Lectures in Jewish Material Culture continue through December 11. I urge you to check our event calendar and get your tickets early, as we frequently sell out!

As some of you may have already seen, BGC will celebrate its first Giving Day later this month, on November 25. Giving Day contributions will support student scholarships, internships, and travel as well as exhibitions, publications, and events. Every gift of any size makes a difference, and I hope I can count on your participation.

Wishing you a lovely holiday season, and looking forward to seeing you in the new year!



Susan Weber
Director and Founder