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, Kwakwaka’wakw
Wood, paint, metal
Collected by George Hunt in 1901
American Museum of Natural History 16/8527

This feast bowl (luk’wa) is one of a pair purchased by George Hunt among the Dzawada’enuxw band of the Kwakwaka’wakw. It was used in an elaborate dance cycle about an ancestral hero named Siwidi. The bowl likely depicts an episode where Siwidi transforms into a killer whale for an undersea voyage that results in his accumulation of wealth. Although the human and whale faces vary, the overall design of both bowls is the same; only the original owner knew why two such similar bowls were created. Hunt listed them as deriving from or belonging to the nearby Gwawa’enuxw band (who still claim rights to the Siwidi cycle today). Ritual or crest objects can be passed down, sold, or exchanged, yet the ceremonial and mythological privileges that they represent often remain the property of the original owner. As vessels, these feast bowls once held food or fish oil—itself a highly valued commodity and potlatch gift. The oil was probably “spouted” out of the whale’s blowhole during the ceremony to further animate the performance of the legend and to display the prestige of the feast’s host.

Feast bowl, pair to the one on display, Kwakwaka’wakw. Wood, paint, metal. Late nineteenth century. Courtesy the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, 16/8528.


Tags for Interactive Tag Cloud: diffusion, multiples, transformation