Join us for BGC Late: Jazz & Conversation in the Gallery (the series formerly known as First Wednesdays)! Enjoy cool jazz, warm vibes, and a glass of wine; see our fascinating exhibitions and learn from provocative conversations about the objects on view. Gene Perla and the fantastic musicians he brings together start playing at 6 pm. At 7 pm, historians and fashion scholars Hazel Clark, Sandra Markus, Kathy Peiss, and Alexis Romano lead a conversation about fashion and female suffrage.

Music Provided by:
Scott Robinson
Dave Stryker (Guitar)
Gene Perla (Bass)
McClenty Hunter Jr (Drums)

More BGC Late: Jazz & Conversation in the Gallery
Thursday, October 10
Jazz at 6 pm
Conversation at 7 pm
Women Designers: Chanel, Lanvin and Boué Sœurs
With Waleria Dorogova, Rhonda Garelick, Mellissa Huber and Jan Glier Reeder

Thursday, December 5
Jazz at 6 pm
Conversation at 7 pm
Fashion, War, Displacement, and Immigration
With Nancy Green

Meet the Speakers
Hazel Clark, PhD is professor of design studies and fashion studies at Parsons School of Design, The New School. Her recent books have included Fashion and Everyday Life: London and New York, with Cheryl Buckley (2017), and the anthology Fashion Curating: Critical Practice in the Museum and Beyond, with Annamari Vanska (2018). In Spring 2020, she will be Visiting Fellow at the Bard Graduate Center.

Sandra Markus is a professor in the School of Art and Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Her research interests include craftivism, participatory culture, and civic and political participation in creative online spaces. Her dissertation, (2019) Through the Eye of the Needle: Craftivism as an Emerging Mode of Civic Engagement and Cultural Participation, examined the political expression and engagement of women in three offline and online craftivist groups. She recently co-authored a paper, “Crafting a Way Forward: Online Participation, Craftivism and Civic Engagement in Ravelry’s Pussyhat Project Group” in Information, Communication and Society. When not in front of a computer, you can find her stitching.

Kathy Peiss is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols professor of American history at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research and teaching center on the 20th century United States and the making of modern culture. She is the author of Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (1986), Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture (1998), and Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style (2011). Her latest book is Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe, appearing in early 2020.

Alexis Romano is a writer, editor, and lecturer within the fashion industry and visual culture, with interests in 20th-century fashion, fashion imagery, and everyday, subjective aspects of dress. She is an adjunct assistant professor at New York City College of Technology, and Parsons, the New School for Design, co-founder of the Fashion Research Network and US Editor of WeAr Global Magazine. She completed her PhD at London’s Courtauld Institute of Art, and is currently writing a book on the development and image of French ready-to-wear, due out from Bloomsbury in 2020.

Music for BGC Late: Jazz & Conversation in the Gallery is guest curated by musician Gene Perla. Perla was raised in New Jersey where he studied classical piano and trombone. After attending Berklee School of Music, he moved to New York and began his musical career as a jazz bassist. He has performed and/or recorded with Chick Corea, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Elvin Jones, Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, Chuck Mangione, Joni Mitchell, Buddy Rich, Sonny Rollins, Nina Simone, Frank Sinatra, Stone Alliance, Sarah Vaughan, Nancy Wilson, and others. In the early 1970s he formed music publishing and record companies, and his group “Stone Alliance” traveled to South America and Europe, through which he developed experience in management and booking. Perla is also a Broadway sound designer (Tony Award for City of Angels), has expertise in recording studio operations, and is the webmaster for the Jazz Education Network.