Majolica offers a colorful window into the world of British and American life in the second half of the nineteenth century. Nicholas de Godoy Lopes, a Bard Graduate Center PhD student who works in the Public Programs department as a gallery educator, created an audio guide to the Majolica Mania exhibition. The guide features 15 objects from the exhibition, including vases, plates, teapots, and a garden seat, an umbrella stand, an ice pail, and a water cooler, among others.

Visitors to BGC’s gallery can use the audio guide to enhance their understanding of the objects in the exhibition, and the guide is also available online for those who cannot visit the gallery. deGodoy Lopes’s narration explains why the objects look the way they do and how they might have been used in the Victorian home. It also puts the objects into their historical and cultural contexts and reflects on the tastes, habits, anxieties, and beliefs of those who designed, made, and used them.