Emma Cormack is a fashion historian specializing in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century textiles and clothing from France and the United States. At Bard Graduate Center, her exhibitions have investigated topics including twentieth-century French and American fashion and costume, the history of hand- and machine-made lace, and the work of nineteenth- and twentieth-century designers and architects in France. Her research about the intersection of consumer culture and women’s labor has been published in peer-reviewed edited volumes and she has lectured and participated in panels at venues including BGC, New York University, Parsons School of Design, Art Basel Miami Beach, and TEFAF New York. She has a background in French painting and literature and holds an MA in decorative arts, design history, and material culture from BGC.

Selected Recent Publications
Co-editor, with Michelle Finamore, Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film, exh. cat. (Bard Graduate Center, 2026), with essay “The Department-Store Shopgirl and the Picture Palace of Consumption,” 100–129.

Co-editor, with Michele Majer, Threads of Power: Lace from the Textilmuseum St. Gallen, exh. cat. (Bard Graduate Center, 2022), with co-authored essay “Fashion and the Lace Industries in France, Belgium, and England, 1800–1900,” 236–265.

Winner of the 2023 Award for Excellence from the

Association of Art Museum Curators

“Collecting Art and Commerce with Nineteenth-Century Trade Cards,” in Perspectives on a Legacy Collection: Sally Casey Thayer’s Gift to the University of Kansas (Spencer Museum of Art, 2020), 258–266.

Selected Exhibitions
Co-curator, with Michelle Finamore
Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film
Bard Graduate Center Gallery

September 18, 2026–January 3, 2027

Institutional project lead

Viollet-le-Duc Drawing Worlds
Bard Graduate Center Gallery

January 28–May 24, 2026

Co-curator, with Michele Majer

Threads of Power: Lace from the Textilmuseum St. Gallen
Bard Graduate Center Gallery

September 16, 2022–January 1, 2023

Curatorial and editorial assistant

Eileen Gray
 Bard Graduate Center Gallery

February 27–July 10, 2020

Assisting curator and institutional project lead

French Fashion, Women, and the First World War
 Bard Graduate Center Gallery

September 5, 2019–January 5, 2020