A symposium, marking the BGC’s 20th birthday, examined the elements of practice and theory that have come to define the BGC.

BGC at 20

Marking the occasion of the BGC’s twentieth birthday, this symposium, which took place on November 8, 2013, examined the elements of practice and theory that have come to define the Bard Graduate Center. An array of speakers from across the national, disciplinary, and institutional spectrum put the achievements of the past twenty years in context and outlined paths into the future.

After a welcome from Director and Founder, Susan Weber, the morning session concentrated on issues relevant to the future of exhibitions, examining display and interpretation, publishing and the digital challenge, and how philosophy might inform museum practice. Speakers during the morning session included Nina Stritzler-Levine, Director, Bard Graduate Center Gallery/Gallery Publications; Taco Dibbits, Director of Collections, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Architecture & Design, and Director, Research and Development, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA); Jill Shaw, Co-General Editor, Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative (OSCI), and Research Associate, Department of Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture, The Art Institute of Chicago; Garry Hagberg, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics, Bard College; and Ivan Gaskell, Professor, Curator and Head of the Focus Project, Bard Graduate Center.

The afternoon focused on the role of the research institute, ways of defining good research, research as a way of life, and the necessity of research for teaching. Speakers during the afternoon session included Peter N. Miller, Dean and Professor, Bard Graduate Center; Norton Batkin, Vice President and Dean of Graduate Studies, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Art History, and Director of Philosophy Program, Bard College; Joachim Nettelbeck, Former Secretary of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin); Harriet Zuckerman, Professor Emerita of Sociology, Columbia University, and Former Senior Vice President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Michael Shanks, Professor of Classics and Classical Archaeology, Stanford University; and Larry Wolff, Silver Professor of History and Director, Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, New York University.