About
Upcoming Exhibitions
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.

About
28th Annual Iris Foundation Awards
Honoring Irene Roosevelt Aitken, Dr. Julius Bryant, Dr. Meredith Martin, and Katherine Purcell
Events
Wednesdays @ BGC
Join us this spring for weekly programming!





Exhibitions

Tickets

Join us for Wednesdays@BGC!

More

Gallery Hours

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

More

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.




Unknown maker, Klawock Tlingit
Wood, hide, paint, metal, sinew
Collected by Louis Levy
Donated by Adolph Lewisohn in 1905
American Museum of Natural History 16.1/308

The Tlingit first acquired firearms from Russians and Europeans in the late 1700s and quickly came to depend on them over traditional methods of hunting and warfare. By the mid to late nineteenth century, all coastal groups had borrowed or developed various types of objects related to the use of guns, including powder measures and cap boxes of carved horn and bone, and cases and pouches (both wooden and woven) to carry ammunition. This case is fitted with compartments made of sheet metal cut and rolled into paired tubes, which once held fragile paper cartridges containing powder and a lead bullet for use in a muzzle-loading firearm. The Tlingit in particular were known to add family crest imagery—in this case, a bear—to their armor in addition to their houses, quotidian equipment, clothing, and regalia. The bear is intricately rendered, suggesting that the commissioner of the case may have been particularly proud of his hunting skills, military record, or social standing.


Click here for a discussion about this object (Beau Dick)

Tags for Interactive Tag Cloud: indigenization, repurposing