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Bard Graduate Center is an advanced graduate research institute in New York City dedicated to the cultural histories of the material world. Our MA and PhD degree programs, Gallery exhibitions, research initiatives, scholarly publications and public programs explore new ways of thinking about decorative arts, design history, and material culture.

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Research

Bard Graduate Center is a research institute for advanced, interdisciplinary study of diverse material worlds. We support the innovative scholarship of our faculty and students as well as resident fellows, guest curators and artists, and visiting speakers.

Photo by Fresco Arts Team.

Our Public Humanities + Research department focuses on making scholarly work widely available and accessible through the coordination of the fellowship program and public programming that combines academic research with exhibition-related events. Across the institution—from the classroom to the gallery, from publications to this website—we utilize digital media to facilitate and share original research. This section outlines current programming and provides a repository for past scholarly content.

Votive objects or ex-votos are a broad category of material artifacts produced with the intention of being offered as acts of faith. Common across historical periods, religions, and cultures, they are presented as tokens of gratitude for prayers answered, and the physical manifestation of hopes, dreams, and anxieties. To celebrate the opening of the exhibition Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place (on view September 14, 2018–January 6, 2019), this one-day symposium will look at what humans chose to offer in their votive transactions. Speakers will explore how votives mark the most intimate moments in human existence and question the nature, role, and function of one of the most fundamental aspects of the relationship between people and things—the imbuing of objects with sentiment.


11 am
Welcome
Peter N. Miller, Bard Graduate Center
Nina Stritzler-Levine, Bard Graduate Center
Introduction
Ittai Weinryb, Bard Graduate Center


11:20 am
Remedial Options and Votive Culture in Early Modern Italy
Fredrika Jacobs, Virginia Commonwealth University


11:40 am
Boons and Blessings in Early India
John Guy, The Metropolitan Museum of Art


12:00 pm
Observations on a Tyrolean War Votive, Its Destination and Function
Mitchell Merback, Johns Hopkins University


12:20 pm
Questions & Discussion


12:40 pm
Lunch Break


2 pm
How Some Yoruba Live Forever: Ẹbọ Arts as Living Votives
Suzanne Preston Blier, Harvard University


2:20 pm
Votive Practice as Sacred Economy
David Morgan, Duke University


2:40 pm
The Politics and Poetics of an Ex-voto in Lourdes
Catrien Notermans, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands


3 pm
Conclusions
Gerhard Wolf, Kunsthistorisches Institut - Max Planck Institute, Florence


3:20 pm
Questions & Discussion


3:40 pm
Reception