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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.



This online exhibition is a companion to the SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa exhibition and centers on the profound and generative relationship between historical African arts and material culture and the work of contemporary artists. Through seven themes (extraction, speculative architecture, currency, devotion, embodying power, domesticity, and protection), the site explores the diverse material worlds that these artworks inhabit, while highlighting their connections and the dynamic kinship they forge between the past and present.
Online Exhibition


Credits

SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa is a new expanded presentation of Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa, a touring exhibition curated by Susan Cooksey, former curator of African Art at the University of Florida’s Harn Museum of Art.


Support for SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa is generously provided by the Scully Peretsman Foundation and other generous donors to Bard Graduate Center.


Peace, Power and Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa is organized by the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida and curated by Susan Cooksey, Retired Curator of African Art. This exhibition is made possible with support from the UF Office of the Provost, Dr. Richard H. Davis and Mrs. Jeanne G. Davis, the C. Frederick and Aase B. Thompson Foundation, the UF Office of Research, Drs. David and Rebecca Sammons, the UF International Center, the Margaret J. Early Endowment, Visit Gainesville Alachua County, the Harn Anniversary Fund, Marcia Isaacson, Roy Hunt, Robin and Donna Poynor, UF Center for African Studies, Kenneth and Laura Berns, and retired Lt. Col. David A. Waller, with additional support from the Harn Program Endowment, the Harn Annual fund and a group of generous donors.