Art History

Art History major Christopher Richards ’12 won two of the most prestigious awards at Bard College for his senior project titled The Age of Tears: Rogier van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross and its Lachrymose Contexts (Adviser, Susan Merriam).  Christopher received the  Cristina Duarte Prize for Medieval Literature and the Wilton Moore Lockwood Prize for Best Critical Senior Project. Congratulations to Christopher on this spectacular achievement!

The Jean M. French Travel Award was established in 2011 to assist second semester juniors in researching their senior project.  Money for this award was generously donated by Bard art history alumni in honor of Prof. Jean M. French, who retired in 2011.  It was her wish that juniors could use the summer before their senior year to do valuable research at archives, libraries and locations both in the United States and abroad.  The first of what will be an annual award went to Sebastian Sarmiento-Moreno. Sebastian will travel to Paris this summer to conduct artist interviews.   His senior project will deal with Latin American kinetic art.

On Thursday, May 19th, art history seniors presented their projects to their peers and faculty and then participated in a celebratory dinner.

Here is the Program, please enjoy!

Bard Senior Art History majors, Monica Semczyk and Manu Del Peschio emulate Manet’s Bar At The Folies Bergère while interning during winter break at an opening at the Steven Harvey Gallery on the Lower East Side, NYC.

Haumi Nakashima, Struggling Form, 1997

Erica Lome, class of 2011, is a curatorial intern at the Museum of Arts and Design.  She is assisting in the development of a contemporary Japanese design show,  “Beauty in All Things,” and part of her responsibilities is to promote the works in the show through a weekly blog on the MAD website.  The show opens November 22nd.  She also reviews Japanese art shows in galleries and museums on her blog.  Please visit:
http://www.madblog.org/category/beauty-in-all-things/

A.L. STEINER and A.K. BURNS

“COMMUNITY ACTION CENTER”
screening with the artists

Monday, May 9, Weis Cinema, at 7:00 pm
Panel Discussion to follow with Julia Paoli and Nathan Lee

Event sponsored by Art History, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Trans-Action, organized by Marlies Staple as part of her senior project

Summer 2010 – Isabelle Coler

I spent the summer interning at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the Indian and Himalayan art department, as a part of the Museum Studies Internship program. My work ranged greatly, from small tasks like rearranging files and cropping pictures to creating a binder that organized the department’s collection of paintings by region. However, my major project for the summer consisted of researching the department’s textile collection. After being trained in textile handling, I spent two afternoons a week with the assistant curator, photographing the hundreds of scraps, rolls and cloths tucked away in storage. The other part of this project entailed actually researching, both the textiles that I photographed and those with images already in the system. Using other museum’s online collections, and the large number of catalogs and books I had piled up on my desk, I was able to identify the state and sometimes city that many of the textiles came from, as well as the process used to make the cloth and sometimes the date.

This internship was a part of a general museum studies program which was great! Monday and Thursday afternoons were spent with the program’s 37 other interns, who came from every department (such as curatorial, development, education, editorial, conservation, archives, the library, the legal department, the gift shop and Rights and Reproduction). The program is meant to leave you with a very broad and thorough impression of what it is like to work in a museum and all the possible positions that exist, and this was exactly what it achieved. It was a fantastic experience and I highly encourage others to apply.

Summer 2010- Karen Johnson

Napa Gallery

This year, I spent my second summer working at the Quent Cordair Fine Art gallery in Napa, California. The gallery exhibits work in a variety of mediums, all falling within the genre of romantic realism.  My duties were pretty varied.  While I was hired as an art salesperson, I also did a lot of work in marketing, web design, and organization.  I learned about the safest ways to clean paintings and bronze or bonded sand statues.  I was in contact with the wineries, hotels and transportation companies in the Napa valley, working to make the gallery a number one destination for tourists and wine industry events.  I worked at weekly wine pourings and organized a variety of social networking sites to contact potential patrons and learned a great deal about business communications, as well as marketing art to individuals and corporations.

Summer 2010 – Miriam Natis

Chancellor Livingston Grand Lodge

This summer I worked for the Masonic Library and Museum in the Grand Lodge of New York.  It was an interesting experience, working for a not-so-secret secret organization, especially because I couldn’t know some things and wasn’t supposed to know others.  Despite being a touch surreal, it was definitely worthwhile.  I spent my summer in a temperature controlled room where they house the books and artifacts, doing inventory.  I handled artifacts dating from c. 400 CE to the present, and only cracked the surface of all that needed to be inventoried.  I worked for Catherine Walker, the curator of the museum part of the library, who previously worked at the Natural History Museum, and if I’ve learned only one thing this summer, it’s the importance of gloves.
http://lodgesonline.com/Lodges/NY/1/Images/gllogo.gif

Last summer I worked for Fly 16×9, a digital fashion art magazine.  It was a very small production, sharing an office with other companies in an intimate environment.  I spent my time photoshopping models, such as the above, and doing research on the Internet.  I also gave my input on videos and interviews they had done.  It was a much more hands on experience with the current art world, and gave me a good understanding of what goes on behind the scenes of popular media.
http://www.ozonweb.com/gr/files/2010/03/a-face-odyssey.jpg

Summer 2010 – Sara Kornhauser

Eli Wilner

This summer I worked for Eli Wilner framing company in New York City. They have a gallery which houses their antique frames and an offsite studio space where reproduction frames are made as well antique frames are restored. I started with finishes–learning about the different layers that can be applied to the gilded frame to give depth and character to the color. Next, I learned how to guild and burnish frames.I also learned about the different layers of gesso and clay that are applied before the frame is gilded as well as how the clay and gilding water are prepared. I tried my hand at woodcarving, working with the master caver who was a 3rd generation carver from Ecuador.   I also learned about the process of restoring antique frames and made molds of frame sections that would be attached to loses on frames. In my final week at the studio I made my own small frame from start to finish.