During the spring 2018 semester, students in classes taught by Associate Professor Catherine Whalen reaped the benefits of Bard Graduate Center’s ongoing collaboration with the Brooklyn Museum.
Drawing upon the museum’s renowned American collections, participants in Whalen’s seminar on the American Colonial Revival met with Barry R. Harwood, curator of decorative arts, to study such landmark objects as the Century Vase, 1876, designed by Karl Müller and manufactured by Brooklyn’s own Union Porcelain Works for display at the U.S. Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
Students in her course on postwar United States craft and design met with Harwood to closely examine exemplary works such as the Ellington Necklace created circa 1962 by Art Smith, an important Afro-Caribbean jeweler and metalsmith based in Greenwich Village.
Both classes also explored the collections of the Brooklyn Museum Library and Archives, where librarian Beth Kushner and archivist Molly Seegers shared holdings ranging from lithographs depicting the 1864 Brooklyn Sanitary Fair to records of the 1953 milestone exhibition, Designer Craftsman U.S.A.
