Summer school for undergraduates: Dress–Design–Material Culture, 1850–2000

Bard Graduate Center is excited to announce its inaugural Summer School in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. Open to advanced undergraduates (rising juniors and seniors) and recent college graduates, the program draws on resources at BGC and around New York City to provide an intensive, two-week, graduate-level program on material culture studies.

Our topic for 2020 is “Dress—Design—Material Culture, 1850–2000.” The course will look at modern fashion and design through different approaches—methodological, technical, museological—that inform object-based study. Led by faculty members Michele Majer and Paul Stirton, these themes will be explored in morning seminars and tutorials followed by supervised visits to New York City collections in the afternoons, often in the company of curators and conservators bringing special insights into the ways in which dress and designed objects are interpreted. Workshops will incorporate BGC’s spring exhibition on designer Eileen Gray with teaching in BGC’s Gallery.

This program was developed to help prepare undergraduates in the humanities to think critically using object-based approaches. Currently enrolled undergraduate students (rising third- and fourth-year) and recent graduates from any accredited institution may apply. Recommended majors: art history, anthropology, archaeology, classics, religious studies; museum studies track particularly encouraged. Eligible for 3 upper-level undergraduate credits.

Program dates: June 29–July 10, 2020

Housing & scholarships available!

For more information, and how to apply click here. All materials should be sent to summer.school [​at​] bgc.bard.edu by Sunday, March 1, 2020 (11:59pm EST).