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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.



Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979) was one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. Her remarkably diverse and interconnected body of work focused on the primacy of color and a synthesis of the arts. Painter, artisan, and designer, she embraced modernity and harnessed the creative power of collaboration in the realms of fashion, textiles, interiors, books, mosaics, and tapestries. Living Art comprises almost 200 objects secured from major international lenders, reflecting Delaunay’s kaleidoscopic output through all periods of her career from the early Parisian avant-garde of the 1910s to the spirited 1970s. Exploring the materiality, making, and marketing of her work, the exhibition traces a lifetime of creative expression and presents an innovator who transcended conventional artistic boundaries and devotedly lived her art.


Enjoy activities for children and adults on Simultaneous Saturdays (April 20) named in honor of Sonia Delaunay’s own term for her practice, Simultanism, which describes both her use of bright, contrasting colors and her desire to apply her art to all aspects of life.
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Simultaneous Saturdays


Credits
Curated by Waleria Dorogova, independent curator; and Laura Microulis, research curator, Bard Graduate Center.

Support for Sonia Delaunay: Living Art has been generously provided by the David Berg Foundation, Ann Pyne, the Sherrill Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Galerie Zlotowski, Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown, the Kroll Family Trust, the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, and other donors to Bard Graduate Center.