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!





Research

Bard Graduate Center is a research institute for advanced, interdisciplinary study of diverse material worlds. We support the innovative scholarship of our faculty and students as well as resident fellows, guest curators and artists, and visiting speakers.

Photo by Fresco Arts Team.

Our Public Humanities + Research department focuses on making scholarly work widely available and accessible through the coordination of the fellowship program and public programming that combines academic research with exhibition-related events. Across the institution—from the classroom to the gallery, from publications to this website—we utilize digital media to facilitate and share original research. This section outlines current programming and provides a repository for past scholarly content.
Image: Essex Street Market. https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/essex-st-market-new-york?select=BEIFIuGzTfMI1KurmWroNQ

Food was on my mind as I took a seat on the Brooklyn bound B train headed for the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. I was on my way to take their Foods of the Lower East Side tour, which entails a two-hour walk around the neighborhood of 97 Orchard discussing ways that the immigrant experience has shaped the American foodscape. Other than a general excitement about the opportunity to try different foods for the sake of education, my mind was struggling with finding the meeting place of food and conservation. If conservation’s goal is long-term preservation doesn’t the consuming aspect of food stand in total contradiction to the conservator’s practice?

As I thought this through I looked across the train car and saw an ad for a food delivery service that read: “Kitchen. More like shoe storage. And mini-bar.” The kitchen, I realized, is where conservation and food meet.

Image: Economy Candy. https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/economy-candy-market-new-york?select=n8I9BFKUPQ8sIGuD4MnPvQ

During the tour our guide took us on a journey from Germany to China or as I more clearly remember it, pretzels to dumplings. While the stories told involved many experiences and backgrounds they all displayed methods of cultural endurance or conservation. We stopped at a variety of establishments, from Essex Street Market to Economy Candy. Each location helped to develop a picture of the neighborhood’s history and how immigration continues to shape and evolve the American experience today. Most of the food traditions we experienced are continued as an attempt to remember and reestablish “home”. Food, like the concept of home, is relatable across all boundaries of understanding and creates an influential platform for cultural exchange. As an essential element of survival, food production becomes a powerful mode of cultural performance. By handing down recipes, the kitchen becomes a place of cultural conservation. Younger generations are taught through intent or simply through observation and the food culture continues.

Or doesn’t. As made so pointedly obvious in the ad on the subway, the continuation of family recipes relies on a willingness to keep cooking. Despite what subway ads might imply, the Foods of the Lower East Side Tour highlights the enduring nature of many foods in American culture that did not originate here. One of the most surprising tastes we had on the tour was pickled pineapple. Coming from The Pickle Guys, the last pickle shop on the Lower East Side, this piece of pineapple sums up the concepts of cultural influence and endurance.

Image: Pickled Pineapple.

The Pickle Guys developed from common practice of selling pickles from barrels in Jewish communities during the late nineteenth-century. Something that once was so prevalent has now come down to one shop. Perhaps one thing that helps their tradition stay alive is a willingness to adapt and adopt new foods into their tradition. The pickled pineapple was introduced by an employee reminiscing about the tastes of his home in the Dominican Republic. Pickled pineapple brings in the flavor of a newer wave of immigrants while making a nod to the history of the original families who brought the pickle with them to the Lower East Side over one hundred years ago. When it comes to food, adaptation seems to be the key to endurance and provides a path to cultural preservation that our history and our taste buds can benefit from.