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BGC Gallery will resume its exhibition programming this September with the return of Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today, originally slated for fall 2024.
Bard Graduate Center is an advanced graduate research institute in New York City dedicated to the cultural histories of the material world. Our MA and PhD degree programs, Gallery exhibitions, research initiatives, scholarly publications and public programs explore new ways of thinking about decorative arts, design history, and material culture.

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BGC Gallery reopens this September with the return of Sèvres Extraordinaire: Sculpture from 1740 until Today, originally slated for fall 2024.

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The Bard Graduate Center Gallery produces multiple exhibitions and publications each year, serving as a vital center of learning and a catalyst for engagement in the interrelated disciplines of decorative arts, design, and material culture. The gallery is celebrated in the museum world for its longstanding legacy of landmark projects dedicated to significant—yet often understudied—figures and movements in the history of decorative arts and design; these exhibitions and publications typically represent the definitive intervention on the artists and objects they investigate. BGC Gallery is also committed to generating and supporting a vast range of diverse presentations, small and large, that challenge traditional approaches to object inquiry; these examinations of material culture explore the human experience as manifest in our creation and use of “things” of all kinds. Whether originating in internal research and expertise, or in collaboration with external subject specialists, these endeavors prioritize rigorous scholarship while seeking to adhere to the field’s highest standards in production and design.



In 1897, anthropologist Franz Boas published The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians. This exhibition website explores the hidden histories and multiple legacies of the groundbreaking volume, which had considerable influence on anthropology, museums, and the modern concept of “culture.” It is part of a collaborative international project to create a new Critical Edition, in both print and digital media, that reassembles widely distributed materials, including items of regalia and archival photographs, drawings, field notes, manuscripts, and wax cylinder recordings. After a century of resilience, the Kwakwaka’wakw are reactivating these texts, museum collections, and archival records as tools for strengthening cultural identity.


This project features interactive elements included in the exhibition The Story Box: Franz Boas, George Hunt and the Making of Anthropology, held at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery February 14–July 7, 2019.


Online Exhibition


Credits

The Story Box: Franz Boas, George Hunt and the Making of Anthropology was on view at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery from February 13–July 7, 2019.


The Story Box: Franz Boas, George Hunt and the Making of Anthropology
has been organized by the Bard Graduate Center and the U’mista Cultural Centre, Alert Bay, BC, Canada, with support provided by donors of Bard Graduate Center. Special thanks to the Audain Foundation for the Visual Arts, Donald Ellis, Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic Artisan Fund, the Government of Canada (Canadian Heritage), and the Rock Foundation for the installation at the U’mista Cultural Centre.