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.

Monet was going blind and had to wear special cataract glasses. Renoir became so arthritic, he used a wheelchair and had paintbrushes strapped to his wrists. The history of French impressionist art is filled with legends about its most famous practitioners, their bodily impairments, and the ways these were believed to have shaped their art. This lecture uses the French impressionists and their art to introduce the notion of crip objects. In so doing, it suggests that material objects related to disability are useful in helping us understand a range of issues related to human embodiment and the sensorium, all the while raising more complex questions about artistic creativity.

Elizabeth Guffey’s scholarly work meets at the convergence of design history and disability studies. Having authored an extensive body of work, Guffey has been published in Art in America, the New York Times, and the Journal of Visual Culture. Additionally, she is the founding editor of the peer-reviewed journal Design and Culture. As a leading academic in her field, Guffey has most recently co-edited After Universal Design: The Disability Design Revolution (2023). Previously, she co-edited Making Disability Modern (2020) and authored Designing Disability: Symbols, Spaces, and Society (2017). In Designing Disability, Guffey explored how design symbols can alter the environment and make a person more or less disabled, depending on the use of the design. At the State University of New York, Purchase College, Guffey teaches art and design history and heads the MA program in modern and contemporary art, criticism, and theory. Guffey’s dedication and substantial research have created greater visibility for design and disability studies.

26th Annual Iris Foundation Awards