Marking its twentieth birthday, this symposium examines 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 will put the achievements of the past twenty years in context, and also outline paths into the future. The morning session will concentrate on issues relevant to the future of exhibitions, examining display and interpretation, publishing and the digital challenge, and how philosophy might inform museum practice. The afternoon focuses 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.

Welcome
Susan Weber
Founder and Director, Bard Graduate Center

Morning Panel

Introduction
“Where We Have Been and Where We Are Going From Here”
Nina Stritzler-Levine
Director, Bard Graduate Center Gallery/Gallery Publications

“Playful Simplicity: The Making of the New Rijksmuseum”
Taco Dibbits
Director of Collections, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

“Exhibitions for the Real World: Contemporary Design at MoMA”
Paola Antonelli
Senior Curator, Architecture & Design, and Director, Research and Development, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

“Meta-Monet: The Journey from Print to Digital at The Art Institute of Chicago”
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

“Word and Object”
Garry Hagberg
James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics, Bard College

“The Museum of Big Ideas”
Ivan Gaskell
Professor, Curator and Head of the Focus Project, Bard Graduate Center

Afternoon Panel

Introduction
“Research as a Calling”
Peter N. Miller
Dean and Professor, Bard Graduate Center

“BGC at Forty”
Leon Botstein
President of the College and Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities, Bard College

“The Administration of Serendipity: What is a Research Institute?”
Joachim Nettelbeck
Former Secretary of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin)

“Basic Research with Potentials of Relevance”
Harriet Zuckerman
Professor Emerita of Sociology, Columbia University, and former Senior Vice President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

“Research as Performance”
Michael Shanks
Professor of Classics and Classical Archaeology, Stanford University

“Lucky Jim’s Children: Research and Teaching at the Modern University”
Larry Wolff
Silver Professor of History and Director, Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, New York University

The symposium is free. It will take place at the Lecture Hall at 38 West 86th Street, between Columbus Avenue & Central Park West, in New York City.

RSVP is required.

Please note that our Lecture Hall can only accommodate a limited number of people, so please come early if you would like to have a seat in the main room. Registrants who arrive late may be seated in an overflow viewing area.