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!





Publications

Bard Graduate Center publishes award-winning exhibition catalogues, books, and journals focusing on scholarship in the decorative arts, design history, and material culture.

Contemporary Artists
Publications
Barbara Nessim
An Artful Life


Publications
Waterweavers
A Chronicle of Rivers

Publications
Sheila Hicks
Weaving as Metaphor

Publications
Richard Tuttle
What Is the Object?
BGCX
Publications
Ritual and Capital
BGCX
2020

Publications
What is Research?
BGCX
2021

Publications
What is Conservation?
BGCX
2023

The late nineteenth century was a period of rapid colonization and dramatic change for the indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast of America. Objects of Exchange approaches the material culture of the period as visual evidence of shifting intercultural relations. Drawing on the collection of the American Museum of Natural History-from decorated clothing to containers, ceremonial regalia to trade goods-this book reveals the artistic traces of dynamic indigenous activity whereby objects were altered, repurposed, and adapted to meet the challenges of the time. Rather than treating the period as a climax of “traditional” art and culture, the authors suggest that we view its objects as witnesses to the dawn of an indigenous modernity. This remarkable book includes an intimate family portrait of the renowned Haida artist Charles Edenshaw; a discussion of the use of silver in economic and ceremonial contexts; and an exploration of the ways in which Tlingit women adapted beadwork to crest display as well as the tourist trade.

Table of Contents
Foreword
Susan Weber

Introduction
Aaron Glass

Essays

1. Objects of Exchange: Material Culture, Colonial Encounter, Indigenous Modernity
Aaron Glass

2. Dancing Our Stone Mask Out of Confinement: A Twenty-first-Century Tsimshian Epistemology
Mique’l Askren

3. Charles Edenshaw on the Colonial Frontier
Margaret B. Blackman

4. Bracelets of Exchange
Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse

5. Beadwork for Basketry in Nineteenth-Century Tlingit Alaska
Megan A. Smetzer

6. Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas: It looks like Manga
Judith Ostrowitz

Catalogue of the Exhibition

BGC Graduate Students with Aaron Glass

Relational Index for the Catalogue of the Exhibition

Commentaries

I. On the Relational Exhibition in Analog and Digital Media
Aaron Glass and Kimon Keramidas

II. What We Do: The Focus Gallery
Nina Stritzler-Levine

Maps

Bibliography

Index

About the Authors

Photographic Credits
Contributors
Aaron Glass
BGC Assistant Professor or Anthropology

Mique’l Askren
PhD candidate in art history at the Uiversity of British Columbia

Margaret Blackman
Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the College at Brockport, State University of New York

Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse
Art historian at the Bill Holm Center for the Study of Northwest Coast Art, Burke Museum

Kimon Keramidas
Assistant Director of the Digital Media Lab at the Bard Graduate Center

Judith Ostrowitz
Visual artist and independent art historian in New York City

Megan Smetzer
Independent art historian and lecturer at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design

Nina Stritzler-Levine
Chief Curator and Executive Editor of Gallery Publications at the Bard Graduate Center
Images