Welcome new staff members! Bard Graduate Center is happy to welcome Vy Nguyen, new coordinator of the Department of Marketing, Communications, and Design, who joined BGC in January, and Lindsay Smilow, new chief advancement officer, who began her tenure in March.
Since our last newsletter, BGC faculty and alumni have had an opportunity to meet up at conferences and share their scholarly and curatorial successes with each other. Sophie Pitman (MA ’13), Pleasant Rowland Textile Specialist and Research Director of the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been the organizing force behind many of these meetings.
In February, Pitman invited Sarah Scaturro (PhD candidate and Eric and Jane Nord Chief Conservator at the Cleveland Museum of Art) to deliver the annual Ruth Ketterer Harriss Lecture on professionalization in textile conservation. The event coincided with the celebration for the opening of Pitman’s exhibition, Remaking the Renaissance.
In March, associate professor and chair of academic programs Deborah Krohn traveled to Madison at Pitman’s invitation to speak on a panel with Jonathan Tavares (PhD ’13, curator of applied arts of Europe at the Art Institute of Chicago). Maeve Hogan (MA ’14), now a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin, was in attendance.
More recently, BGC PhD student and acclaimed lacemaker Elena Kanagy-Loux traveled to Madison to give a gallery talk as part of the programming for Pitman’s exhibition.
BGC connections at the Renaissance Society of America meeting in Chicago were abundant. Pitman and Hannah Kinney (MA ’14, curator of academic programs at Oberlin College) organized a panel discussion, “Curating the Early Modern Now,” that included Deborah Krohn. Current PhD student Jeremy Reeves and BGC alums including Lisa Skogh De Zoete (MA ’06, independent scholar and curator) and Katie Tycz (MA ’13, postdoctoral research assistant at the University of St. Andrews) also spoke at the conference.
Sonya Abrego (MA ’08, PhD ’16) and Sasha Nixon (MA ’18) were recently quoted in the New York Times. Abrego spoke about “cowboy style” for “What Is a Cowboy, Anyway?” Nixon was quoted in “With This Ring, I Unwed,” a story on divorce rings, the jewelry trend of repurposing wedding rings in a way that signals a new beginning after a marriage ends.
Sarah Archer (MA ’06) recently published “The Case for the All-Red Room” and “Doomsday Design: The Reality of Disaster Preparedness” in Architectural Digest.
MA student and Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) tour guide Mya Bailey gave a private tour of MAD’s current exhibition, Sonya Clark: WE ARE EACH OTHER, for members of the BGC community on May 1.
PhD candidate Lauren Drapala delivered her paper, “Accessing the Fantastic: De-Privatizing the Whitney Studio Interiors” as part of the Northeast Public Humanities symposium’s graduate student lightning rounds. It drew on the last chapter of her dissertation-in-progress, which considers the remarkably intact but understudied and largely unknown artist-decorated interiors commissioned by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in the early 1910s for her sculpture studio in Old Westbury, NY. Whitney’s house is currently on the market for the first time ever, so the spaces and the stories left untold within them are at a crucial moment for reconsideration. Drapala discussed her use of oral history interviews and 3D photography, as well as opportunities for future exhibitions, both physical and virtual.
Michelle Hargrave (MA ’04) recently left the Figge Museum of Art, where she served as executive director, to take on the same role at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art. Congratulations Michelle!
Graduating MA student Bob Hewis delivered his paper, “Heavenly Aromas: Scented Sanctity and the Image of Mary Magdalene” at the 14th Annual Art History Graduate Symposium at Rutgers University on April 19.
PhD student Elena Kanagy-Loux recently published an op-ed in Hyperallergic entitled, “My Grandma’s Doilies Are Not a Joke: When Will Art Institutions Finally Pay Respect to Our Foremothers’Artistry?”
Annabel Keenan (MA ’15) has begun writing for the Financial Times. Most recently, FT published her story, “Performance Artists Defy the Market” about the complexities of collecting performance art.
Andrew Kircher’s installation project, The Gift, opens at Stanford on May 1. It is presented in partnership with the Physics and Electrical Engineering departments and the Office for Religious and Spiritual Life. Kircher is director of Public Humanities + Research at BGC.
Rebecca Klassen (MA ’11) organized Beatrice Glow: When Our Rivers Meet, on view at New-York Historical Society until August 18. Glow, NYHS’s artist in residence (2022–24), reckons with the four hundredth anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam. She collaborated with nine culture bearers to envision an alternative commemoration, creating a series of VR-sculpted and 3D-printed maquettes for parade floats, among other works.
PhD candidate Kenna Libes published “The dress and commercial image of the American ‘Fat Lady’, 1850–1920” in Fashion, Style & Popular Culture.
Congratulations to assistant professor Meredith Linn on the publication of her book, Irish Fever: An Archaeology of Illness, Injury, and Healing in New York City, 1845–1875. According to Stephen A. Brighton (University of Maryland), Linn “has created an original and sophisticated argument highlighting how people blend cultural knowledge to navigate shifting social notions and medical theories concerning health and disease. [She] tells a compelling story, through rigorous research, of how the complex world of medicine, disease, and wellness developed and how disease was perceived at points in time directly impacting the lives of and choices made by working poor immigrant families.” Linn recently spoke to the New York Celtic Medical Society about the book.
Louise Lui (MA ’23) curated Fukusa: Japanese Gift Covers from the Chris Hall Collection at the Peranakan Museum.
Annissa Malvoisin, the Bard Graduate Center/Brooklyn Museum Postdoctoral Fellow in the Arts of Africa, has been appointed to the position of associate curator for the arts of Africa at the Brooklyn Museum.
Professor Caspar Meyer recently teamed up with archaeological jewelry expert Barbara Armbruster (CNRS, France) to author the first English-language publication devoted to the spectacular Scythian-era gold objects from the kurgan Arzhan II in Tuva, southern Siberia.
Research curator Laura Microulis (MA ’97, PhD ’16) cocurated Sonia Delaunay: Living Art and coedited the catalogue of the same name with Waleria Dorogova. Both the exhibition and the publication have received glowing reviews, including in the New York Times.
Professor Andrew Morrall published “Turning Back the Sun: Christoph Schissler’s Horologium Achaz as Kunststück” in Manipulating the Sun. Picturing Astronomical Miracles from the Bible in the Early Modern Era, edited by Volker Remmert and Julia Ellinghaus.
Earlier this month, Morrall gave a talk entitled “Metamorphosis and Metalwork” at the conference Metamorphic Matter: Elemental Imagery in Early Modern Art at Princeton University.
Sebastian Moya, BGC’s technical services and systems librarian, coauthored “A Place to Think About Inclusive Cataloging” in Inclusive Cataloging: Histories, Context, and Reparative Approaches, a new publication to be released by the American Library Association this summer. The chapter and the book have many BGC and Bard College connections: Moya coauthored the chapter with former BGC Library Fellow Vic Panata, who is currently on staff at the Mellon Foundation’s Public Knowledge program, and former Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies librarian Bronwen Bitetti. The publication is coedited by Billey Albina, Bard College’s associate director for bibliographic services.
BGC shared news of Jorge Rivas Pérez’s new exhibition in February. Have a Seat: Mexican Chair Design Today is now on view at Denver Art Museum, where Rivas (PhD ’18) is the Frederick and Jan Mayer Curator of Latin American Art, and it is the subject of a wonderful article in the New York Times Museums special section.
Sasha Nixon (MA ’18) was quoted in the New York Times on “divorce rings,” a jewelry trend of repurposing wedding rings in a way that signals a new beginning after a marriage ends.
Rachael Schwabe (MA ’20, assistant educator at Museum of Modern Art), BGC’s able alumni correspondent of the past two years, has passed the baton to Julia Carabatsos (MA ’22, PhD candidate at Columbia University). Big thanks to Rachael for her wonderful work on the biweekly alumni newsletter, and welcome (back) Julia!
Ann Marguerite Tartsinis (MA ’11) contributed the essay “Haute Bohème: Dressing the Left Coast” to the recent exhibition catalogue Fashioning San Francisco: A Century of Style (edited by Laura Camerlengo) and participated in the exhibition’s opening day panel, “A Conversation on Appropriation and Appreciation in Fashion” on January 21.
Danielle Weindling (MA ’20), assistant director of the Center for the Humanities at University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently moderated a fireside chat with Valeria Luiselli about her 2019 novel, Lost Children Archive, for the 19th annual University of Wisconsin-Madison Great World Texts Conference.
Associate professor Ittai Weinryb co-organized an object session followed by an afternoon lecture on the medieval Black Sea held at Dumbarton Oaks on March 21.
Amber Winick (MA ’13) cocurated Designing Motherhood, a first-of-its-kind consideration of the arc of human reproduction through the lens of design. The exhibition originated in Philadelphia in 2021 and has since toured to Boston and Seattle. The exhibition will be on view in Stockholm beginning in September. The accompanying publication, Designing Motherhood: Things that Make and Break Our Births, is available from MIT Press.
First-year MA student and jewelry designer Katrin Zimmermann’s white acrylic Twirl Bracelet was worn by basketball star Angel Reese in the March/April issue of Women’s Health magazine. Several of her pieces are also featured in Lizzo’s new Yitty swimsuit campaign. See more of Zimmermann’s jewelry.
Since our last newsletter, BGC faculty and alumni have had an opportunity to meet up at conferences and share their scholarly and curatorial successes with each other. Sophie Pitman (MA ’13), Pleasant Rowland Textile Specialist and Research Director of the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been the organizing force behind many of these meetings.
In February, Pitman invited Sarah Scaturro (PhD candidate and Eric and Jane Nord Chief Conservator at the Cleveland Museum of Art) to deliver the annual Ruth Ketterer Harriss Lecture on professionalization in textile conservation. The event coincided with the celebration for the opening of Pitman’s exhibition, Remaking the Renaissance.
In March, associate professor and chair of academic programs Deborah Krohn traveled to Madison at Pitman’s invitation to speak on a panel with Jonathan Tavares (PhD ’13, curator of applied arts of Europe at the Art Institute of Chicago). Maeve Hogan (MA ’14), now a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin, was in attendance.
More recently, BGC PhD student and acclaimed lacemaker Elena Kanagy-Loux traveled to Madison to give a gallery talk as part of the programming for Pitman’s exhibition.
BGC connections at the Renaissance Society of America meeting in Chicago were abundant. Pitman and Hannah Kinney (MA ’14, curator of academic programs at Oberlin College) organized a panel discussion, “Curating the Early Modern Now,” that included Deborah Krohn. Current PhD student Jeremy Reeves and BGC alums including Lisa Skogh De Zoete (MA ’06, independent scholar and curator) and Katie Tycz (MA ’13, postdoctoral research assistant at the University of St. Andrews) also spoke at the conference.
Sonya Abrego (MA ’08, PhD ’16) and Sasha Nixon (MA ’18) were recently quoted in the New York Times. Abrego spoke about “cowboy style” for “What Is a Cowboy, Anyway?” Nixon was quoted in “With This Ring, I Unwed,” a story on divorce rings, the jewelry trend of repurposing wedding rings in a way that signals a new beginning after a marriage ends.
Sarah Archer (MA ’06) recently published “The Case for the All-Red Room” and “Doomsday Design: The Reality of Disaster Preparedness” in Architectural Digest.
MA student and Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) tour guide Mya Bailey gave a private tour of MAD’s current exhibition, Sonya Clark: WE ARE EACH OTHER, for members of the BGC community on May 1.
PhD candidate Lauren Drapala delivered her paper, “Accessing the Fantastic: De-Privatizing the Whitney Studio Interiors” as part of the Northeast Public Humanities symposium’s graduate student lightning rounds. It drew on the last chapter of her dissertation-in-progress, which considers the remarkably intact but understudied and largely unknown artist-decorated interiors commissioned by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in the early 1910s for her sculpture studio in Old Westbury, NY. Whitney’s house is currently on the market for the first time ever, so the spaces and the stories left untold within them are at a crucial moment for reconsideration. Drapala discussed her use of oral history interviews and 3D photography, as well as opportunities for future exhibitions, both physical and virtual.
Michelle Hargrave (MA ’04) recently left the Figge Museum of Art, where she served as executive director, to take on the same role at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art. Congratulations Michelle!
Graduating MA student Bob Hewis delivered his paper, “Heavenly Aromas: Scented Sanctity and the Image of Mary Magdalene” at the 14th Annual Art History Graduate Symposium at Rutgers University on April 19.
PhD student Elena Kanagy-Loux recently published an op-ed in Hyperallergic entitled, “My Grandma’s Doilies Are Not a Joke: When Will Art Institutions Finally Pay Respect to Our Foremothers’Artistry?”
Annabel Keenan (MA ’15) has begun writing for the Financial Times. Most recently, FT published her story, “Performance Artists Defy the Market” about the complexities of collecting performance art.
Andrew Kircher’s installation project, The Gift, opens at Stanford on May 1. It is presented in partnership with the Physics and Electrical Engineering departments and the Office for Religious and Spiritual Life. Kircher is director of Public Humanities + Research at BGC.
Rebecca Klassen (MA ’11) organized Beatrice Glow: When Our Rivers Meet, on view at New-York Historical Society until August 18. Glow, NYHS’s artist in residence (2022–24), reckons with the four hundredth anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam. She collaborated with nine culture bearers to envision an alternative commemoration, creating a series of VR-sculpted and 3D-printed maquettes for parade floats, among other works.
PhD candidate Kenna Libes published “The dress and commercial image of the American ‘Fat Lady’, 1850–1920” in Fashion, Style & Popular Culture.
Congratulations to assistant professor Meredith Linn on the publication of her book, Irish Fever: An Archaeology of Illness, Injury, and Healing in New York City, 1845–1875. According to Stephen A. Brighton (University of Maryland), Linn “has created an original and sophisticated argument highlighting how people blend cultural knowledge to navigate shifting social notions and medical theories concerning health and disease. [She] tells a compelling story, through rigorous research, of how the complex world of medicine, disease, and wellness developed and how disease was perceived at points in time directly impacting the lives of and choices made by working poor immigrant families.” Linn recently spoke to the New York Celtic Medical Society about the book.
Louise Lui (MA ’23) curated Fukusa: Japanese Gift Covers from the Chris Hall Collection at the Peranakan Museum.
Annissa Malvoisin, the Bard Graduate Center/Brooklyn Museum Postdoctoral Fellow in the Arts of Africa, has been appointed to the position of associate curator for the arts of Africa at the Brooklyn Museum.
Professor Caspar Meyer recently teamed up with archaeological jewelry expert Barbara Armbruster (CNRS, France) to author the first English-language publication devoted to the spectacular Scythian-era gold objects from the kurgan Arzhan II in Tuva, southern Siberia.
Research curator Laura Microulis (MA ’97, PhD ’16) cocurated Sonia Delaunay: Living Art and coedited the catalogue of the same name with Waleria Dorogova. Both the exhibition and the publication have received glowing reviews, including in the New York Times.
Professor Andrew Morrall published “Turning Back the Sun: Christoph Schissler’s Horologium Achaz as Kunststück” in Manipulating the Sun. Picturing Astronomical Miracles from the Bible in the Early Modern Era, edited by Volker Remmert and Julia Ellinghaus.
Earlier this month, Morrall gave a talk entitled “Metamorphosis and Metalwork” at the conference Metamorphic Matter: Elemental Imagery in Early Modern Art at Princeton University.
Sebastian Moya, BGC’s technical services and systems librarian, coauthored “A Place to Think About Inclusive Cataloging” in Inclusive Cataloging: Histories, Context, and Reparative Approaches, a new publication to be released by the American Library Association this summer. The chapter and the book have many BGC and Bard College connections: Moya coauthored the chapter with former BGC Library Fellow Vic Panata, who is currently on staff at the Mellon Foundation’s Public Knowledge program, and former Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies librarian Bronwen Bitetti. The publication is coedited by Billey Albina, Bard College’s associate director for bibliographic services.
BGC shared news of Jorge Rivas Pérez’s new exhibition in February. Have a Seat: Mexican Chair Design Today is now on view at Denver Art Museum, where Rivas (PhD ’18) is the Frederick and Jan Mayer Curator of Latin American Art, and it is the subject of a wonderful article in the New York Times Museums special section.
Sasha Nixon (MA ’18) was quoted in the New York Times on “divorce rings,” a jewelry trend of repurposing wedding rings in a way that signals a new beginning after a marriage ends.
Rachael Schwabe (MA ’20, assistant educator at Museum of Modern Art), BGC’s able alumni correspondent of the past two years, has passed the baton to Julia Carabatsos (MA ’22, PhD candidate at Columbia University). Big thanks to Rachael for her wonderful work on the biweekly alumni newsletter, and welcome (back) Julia!
Ann Marguerite Tartsinis (MA ’11) contributed the essay “Haute Bohème: Dressing the Left Coast” to the recent exhibition catalogue Fashioning San Francisco: A Century of Style (edited by Laura Camerlengo) and participated in the exhibition’s opening day panel, “A Conversation on Appropriation and Appreciation in Fashion” on January 21.
Danielle Weindling (MA ’20), assistant director of the Center for the Humanities at University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently moderated a fireside chat with Valeria Luiselli about her 2019 novel, Lost Children Archive, for the 19th annual University of Wisconsin-Madison Great World Texts Conference.
Associate professor Ittai Weinryb co-organized an object session followed by an afternoon lecture on the medieval Black Sea held at Dumbarton Oaks on March 21.
Amber Winick (MA ’13) cocurated Designing Motherhood, a first-of-its-kind consideration of the arc of human reproduction through the lens of design. The exhibition originated in Philadelphia in 2021 and has since toured to Boston and Seattle. The exhibition will be on view in Stockholm beginning in September. The accompanying publication, Designing Motherhood: Things that Make and Break Our Births, is available from MIT Press.
First-year MA student and jewelry designer Katrin Zimmermann’s white acrylic Twirl Bracelet was worn by basketball star Angel Reese in the March/April issue of Women’s Health magazine. Several of her pieces are also featured in Lizzo’s new Yitty swimsuit campaign. See more of Zimmermann’s jewelry.
