ALUMNI NEWS
Alexis Romano (MA ‘10) co-curated Staten Island Mode: Identity, Memory, Fashion at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden. The opening reception was held on July 29 with the exhibition on view through December 31, 2023.
Claire McRee (MA ’15) curated the exhibition Fashion as Experiment: The 60’s, on view through September 24, 2023 at the Allentown Art Museum. The exhibition features over 120 garments and accessories that range in style from mod to counterculture, exploring how 1960’s youth mobilized fashion as a laboratory for debate, imagination, and activism.
Cassandra Celestin (MA ‘18) screened her film Dislocation, at The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation’s (SDRF) The 8th Floor gallery. Her film was a part of their “Sight/Geist” program, which highlights work that addresses the Foundation’s mission of art and social justice.
STUDENT NEWS
Mackensie Griffin (MA ‘23), Bob Hewis (MA ‘24), and Rachel Salem-Wiseman (MA ‘24) worked with the Borscht Belt Museum to create a pop-up exhibition titled Vacationland! Catskills Resort Culture 1900–1980. It featured displays of the fashion, comedy, entertainment, and foodways of the Borscht Belt, and for visitors with personal history in the region, an opportunity to record their own stories and have their own family photographs scanned. Griffin served as assistant curator, while Hewis and Salem-Wiseman, as curatorial interns on the project.
FELLOW NEWS
Annissa Malvoisin, BGC / Brooklyn Museum Postdoctoral Fellow in the Arts of Africa, was a part of the curatorial team for the exhibition Africa Fashion, which opened at the Brooklyn Museum on June 23, 2023. The exhibition showcases a dazzling array of garments alongside music, visual art, and much more, celebrating the ingenuity and global impact of African fashions from the 1950s to today.
STAFF NEWS
Jocelyn Lau (senior designer) was awarded a 365: AIGA (American Institute for Graphic Arts) Year in Design Award for the program for BGC’s 2022 Qualifying Paper Symposium. One juror commented that the program booklet is “A call back to print glory days! Idiosyncratic type + breathy composition, a celebration of one of my truest-loves, finessing the minutia. Chefs-kiss for the interplay of paper texture and letterform. This is ephemera I’d collect.” Lau designed the booklet in collaboration with Keith Condon (director of admissions and academic affairs) and members of the MA class of 2022, especially Kat Lanza and Pim Supavarasuwat.
Heather Topcik (director of research collections) was recently named dean and director of libraries at Bard College. In this role, she will be responsible for developing, articulating, and implementing a vision for expanding collaboration among all of the libraries across the Bard network. Thankfully, this includes continuing to serve as director of research collections at BGC. According to the announcement by Bard College, “Since joining Bard Graduate Center in 2001, Topcik has worked to investigate and advance the role of libraries as centers of academic, artistic, and civic life, with a focus on engaging a diverse constituency of patrons in the generative practice of research. As director of BGC’s library, she has collaborated with faculty to develop and adapt collections to evolving curricula and design a program of bibliographic instruction to support graduate researchers. In addition to initiating and overseeing the development of Blacklight, a custom discovery tool built on open-source software, she spearheaded the integration of BGC’s object collection into the library’s search interface along with the creation of an archive documenting the institution’s exhibition history. In 2017, she created the BGC library’s artist in residence program, inviting visual and performing artists whose practice is grounded in research to use the library collection as a resource and incubator for new work.”
Alexis Romano (MA ‘10) co-curated Staten Island Mode: Identity, Memory, Fashion at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden. The opening reception was held on July 29 with the exhibition on view through December 31, 2023.
Claire McRee (MA ’15) curated the exhibition Fashion as Experiment: The 60’s, on view through September 24, 2023 at the Allentown Art Museum. The exhibition features over 120 garments and accessories that range in style from mod to counterculture, exploring how 1960’s youth mobilized fashion as a laboratory for debate, imagination, and activism.
Cassandra Celestin (MA ‘18) screened her film Dislocation, at The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation’s (SDRF) The 8th Floor gallery. Her film was a part of their “Sight/Geist” program, which highlights work that addresses the Foundation’s mission of art and social justice.
STUDENT NEWS
Mackensie Griffin (MA ‘23), Bob Hewis (MA ‘24), and Rachel Salem-Wiseman (MA ‘24) worked with the Borscht Belt Museum to create a pop-up exhibition titled Vacationland! Catskills Resort Culture 1900–1980. It featured displays of the fashion, comedy, entertainment, and foodways of the Borscht Belt, and for visitors with personal history in the region, an opportunity to record their own stories and have their own family photographs scanned. Griffin served as assistant curator, while Hewis and Salem-Wiseman, as curatorial interns on the project.
FELLOW NEWS
Annissa Malvoisin, BGC / Brooklyn Museum Postdoctoral Fellow in the Arts of Africa, was a part of the curatorial team for the exhibition Africa Fashion, which opened at the Brooklyn Museum on June 23, 2023. The exhibition showcases a dazzling array of garments alongside music, visual art, and much more, celebrating the ingenuity and global impact of African fashions from the 1950s to today.
STAFF NEWS
Jocelyn Lau (senior designer) was awarded a 365: AIGA (American Institute for Graphic Arts) Year in Design Award for the program for BGC’s 2022 Qualifying Paper Symposium. One juror commented that the program booklet is “A call back to print glory days! Idiosyncratic type + breathy composition, a celebration of one of my truest-loves, finessing the minutia. Chefs-kiss for the interplay of paper texture and letterform. This is ephemera I’d collect.” Lau designed the booklet in collaboration with Keith Condon (director of admissions and academic affairs) and members of the MA class of 2022, especially Kat Lanza and Pim Supavarasuwat.
Heather Topcik (director of research collections) was recently named dean and director of libraries at Bard College. In this role, she will be responsible for developing, articulating, and implementing a vision for expanding collaboration among all of the libraries across the Bard network. Thankfully, this includes continuing to serve as director of research collections at BGC. According to the announcement by Bard College, “Since joining Bard Graduate Center in 2001, Topcik has worked to investigate and advance the role of libraries as centers of academic, artistic, and civic life, with a focus on engaging a diverse constituency of patrons in the generative practice of research. As director of BGC’s library, she has collaborated with faculty to develop and adapt collections to evolving curricula and design a program of bibliographic instruction to support graduate researchers. In addition to initiating and overseeing the development of Blacklight, a custom discovery tool built on open-source software, she spearheaded the integration of BGC’s object collection into the library’s search interface along with the creation of an archive documenting the institution’s exhibition history. In 2017, she created the BGC library’s artist in residence program, inviting visual and performing artists whose practice is grounded in research to use the library collection as a resource and incubator for new work.”
