Serial dramas of the 1910s and 1920s offered important promotional opportunities for American fashion designers. Like contemporary runway shows, they brought the latest fashion trends to audiences every week. Goddesses in the Machine cocurator Michelle Finamore will screen selections from three such serial dramas—The Perils of Pauline (1914), The Whirl of Life (1915) and The Mysterious Airman (1928)—with live accompaniment by Makia Matsumura. Following the screenings, Finamore and Matsumura will discuss the relationship between style, materiality, and music in these episodic films.

Michelle Finamore (BGC PhD 2010) is a fashion and design historian, curator, and author. She is cocurator of Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film (Bard Graduate Center, 2026) and Shoe Stories: Past, Present, Future (Historic New England, 2026). She is also curator of Fashioning America: Grit to Glamour (New Orleans Museum of Art, 2023; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, 2022) as well as Gender Bending Fashion (2019), #techstyle (2016), Hollywood Glamour: Fashion and Jewelry from the Silver Screen (2014–15), and Think Pink (2013–14) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She is passionate about silent film and her Hollywood Before Glamour: Fashion in American Silent Film (2013) was the first in-depth publication on the subject. She has written numerous books and articles for both the scholarly and popular press on topics as varied as American fashion, menswear, contemporary fashion, sustainability, studio jewelry, and food history and has taught courses on fashion, design, and film history at various colleges in the Northeast.

Makia Matsumura, a New York City–based silent film accompanist, has been captivating audiences for more than two decades with her live piano improvisations for silent cinema. An alumna of the Pordenone Masterclasses, a distinguished program for emerging silent film accompanists, she has served as one of the regular accompanists at the Museum of Modern Art in New York for over fifteen years, alongside numerous appearances at prestigious venues and festivals in the United States and abroad. In addition to her live performances, she has provided recorded scores for silent film releases from Kino Lorber, some of which have been featured on Turner Classic Movies and Netflix.

Gallery Visits with BGC Educators

Drop by the exhibition Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery between 5 and 6 pm at no extra charge! Gallery educators will be stationed throughout the exhibition to share a few highlights.

September 23 and October 28
18 West 86th Street, New York
5–6 pm