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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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Honoring Irene Roosevelt Aitken, Dr. Julius Bryant, Dr. Meredith Martin, and Katherine Purcell
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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.




Unknown maker, Haida
Argillite
Collected by Israel W. Powell between 1880 and 1885
Donated by Heber R. Bishop
American Museum of Natural History 16/575

Argillite, a soft carbonaceous shale, was introduced by Haida carvers to the souvenir trade around the 1820s. This figure represents the common Haida story of the Bear Mother, of which there are numerous sculptural and narrative variations. Legends tell of a high-raking Haida woman who marries and has children with the chief of the bears. In this example, the woman’s clawed feet, facial fur, and sharpened teeth suggest her own state of transformation, while her child is depicted as pure bear. She displays insignias of Haida nobility: a robe, labret (lip plug), ear ornaments, and distinctive bear clan headdress. Yet among known Bear Mother sculptures, the configuration of this piece is quite unique and highly evocative of archetypal Madonna and Child iconography even as it may also draw on aboriginal carvings of nursing mothers. While it is not possible to confirm that its maker intended to communicate Christian themes, the figure operates simultaneously within Haida and Euro-American mythologies. As an object intended for exchange, perhaps its intercultural coding was meant to transcend societal boundaries.

Typical Renaissance-era Madonna and Child, Venice, Italy. Stone. Arthur Tilley / Creatas (RF) / Jupiterimages.


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

Click here for a discussion about this object (Lyle Wilson)

Click here for a discussion about this object (Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas)

Tags for Interactive Tag Cloud: Christianity, souvenir, transformation