A hand-carved Sinahi necklace from the island of Guahan (Babauta). The stone-encrustedcrown, shining ornaments and traditional dress comprising a costume for the “Living Goddess”Kumari from Kathmandu, Nepal. A vividly colored, boldly patterned crocheted bag from LaGuajira, Colombia. A faded and fraying example of the classic American denim jacket.
These are only a handful of examples from the extraordinary collection of objects that wasunveiled on June 2 during the virtual opening for the online exhibition Connecting Threads:Fashioning Identity in a Global World. This ambitious exhibition marks the culmination of ayear-long collaboration between the Bard Graduate Center and CUNY LaGuardia CommunityCollege in Long Island City. Set in motion thanks to the valuable leadership and support of LisaSelz, the partnership reflects the BGC’s continued efforts to promote diversity, equity andinclusion in the field of decorative arts, design history and material culture. “ConnectingThreads is a wonderful example of the power of collaboration—among students and faculty, aswell as between LaGuardia Community College and Bard Graduate Center—to create somethingtruly new and exciting,” says Dr. Paul Arcario, LaGuardia’s interim director. “With guidanceand support from faculty and staff at both LaGuardia and BGC, our students have opened theirclosets, giving us a glimpse of not just their wardrobes, but of the experiences, relationships,hopes, and dreams that connect them to their clothing as well.”
As its title suggests, connectivity has been a central theme throughout the exhibition’sformulation and planning process. The sixteen objects of fashion and adornment on view wereselected by cultural anthropology students from LaGuardia as part of a course taught byprofessor Filip Stabrowski in the fall of 2019. Initially chosen for reasons of personal resonance,the objects were then studied in greater depth as students explored the broader contexts of theirproduction, consumption and use in an increasingly globalized world. Class visits from BGCfaculty members Catherine Whalen and Ivan Gaskell helped the students hone their research,which was then shared with another group of LaGuardia students the following semester. Theparticipants in professor Liena Vayzman’s spring 2020 course on art and society were taskedwith interpreting and presenting their peers’ work through the creation of a cohesive andaccessible public exhibition, which was to be held in the fourth-floor space of the BGC’s galleryat 18 W. 86 th Street.
Then, of course, COVID-19 happened. But rather than call off the exhibition entirely, theBGC’s Director of Public Engagement Emily Reilly made the quick decision to pivot to a digitalexhibition, enlisting the aid of colleagues Jocelyn Lau, Designer; Hellyn Tang, Web Manager;and Jesse Merandy, the Director of the Digital Media Lab. Plans to host the LaGuardia studentsfor an installation workshop in the gallery space turned into virtual sessions held by BGC staff tointroduce students to the vocabulary and possibilities of digital humanities and discuss different design and formatting options for online exhibitions. In spite of these changes, the studentsremained actively engaged with the development of the exhibition, voicing ideas and feedbackon matters from the website’s overall layout to concerns over the site’s legibility for users withdyslexia or colorblindness. “It surprised me how involved the students wanted to be, and thegreat input they gave me,” said Lau, who met with the students over Zoom several times and wasimpressed by the thoughtfulness and inclusiveness of their comments.
Beyond issues relating to the site’s design, the students were equally responsible for theinterpretative aspects of the exhibition, composing brief introductory texts for each of thefeatured objects in accordance with gallery text standards. In addition to these descriptive labels,many students have taken advantage of the exhibition’s digital platform by incorporating shortfilms or audio files on their pages to provide additional cultural context or illustrate a similartype of object in active use. For Reilly, the students’ multimedia additions were a positive aspectof the shift to a virtual exhibition space. “The digital realm has allowed them to explore moreassociative curatorial thinking, and other ways we can use media to situate an object in itscontext,” she says, something that wouldn’t have been possible to this degree within the confinesof the physical gallery space. The relocation of the exhibition to the virtual realm also presentedthe opportunity to publish the first-semester students’ object essays on the site, furtherconnecting the two groups of students and broadening the perspectives offered on each object.
However, as Reilly points out, the move online has had drawbacks as well. “What saddens me alittle bit is that this second group of students never got to touch the objects they were workingon,” she says. Workshops planned by the BGC for the students intended to encourage tactileengagement and address the material requirements for the safe installation of each object, butthese had to be canceled with the arrival of the shelter-in-place order. Given the significance ofclose looking to the BGC’s approach to material culture studies, Reilly notes that providingopportunities for students to handle and take in the details of their objects would be a priority forany future iterations of this project, even if the exhibition they create is ultimately web-based.
Despite the students’ lack of access to the objects this time, the development of the digitalexhibition over the past year has been a tremendous success, and one that carries unexpectedsignificance in this moment of global crisis. “In this remote time, I think there’s somethingbeautiful about an exhibition like this, with the title Connecting Threads,” Reilly says. Theenlightening scholarship of the LaGuardia students highlights the temporal and geographicthreads that connect each object in the exhibition to individuals and communities around theglobe, showcasing them as “precious relics of how humans have lived their lives,” in the wordsof Dean Peter Miller. Meanwhile, the process of the exhibition’s creation, and the resilience ofeveryone involved at the BGC and LaGuardia as it shifted to the digital, has strung new threadsbetween our two institutions, revealing the power of meaningful connections to transcendphysical distance.
- Elizabeth Koehn
These are only a handful of examples from the extraordinary collection of objects that wasunveiled on June 2 during the virtual opening for the online exhibition Connecting Threads:Fashioning Identity in a Global World. This ambitious exhibition marks the culmination of ayear-long collaboration between the Bard Graduate Center and CUNY LaGuardia CommunityCollege in Long Island City. Set in motion thanks to the valuable leadership and support of LisaSelz, the partnership reflects the BGC’s continued efforts to promote diversity, equity andinclusion in the field of decorative arts, design history and material culture. “ConnectingThreads is a wonderful example of the power of collaboration—among students and faculty, aswell as between LaGuardia Community College and Bard Graduate Center—to create somethingtruly new and exciting,” says Dr. Paul Arcario, LaGuardia’s interim director. “With guidanceand support from faculty and staff at both LaGuardia and BGC, our students have opened theirclosets, giving us a glimpse of not just their wardrobes, but of the experiences, relationships,hopes, and dreams that connect them to their clothing as well.”
As its title suggests, connectivity has been a central theme throughout the exhibition’sformulation and planning process. The sixteen objects of fashion and adornment on view wereselected by cultural anthropology students from LaGuardia as part of a course taught byprofessor Filip Stabrowski in the fall of 2019. Initially chosen for reasons of personal resonance,the objects were then studied in greater depth as students explored the broader contexts of theirproduction, consumption and use in an increasingly globalized world. Class visits from BGCfaculty members Catherine Whalen and Ivan Gaskell helped the students hone their research,which was then shared with another group of LaGuardia students the following semester. Theparticipants in professor Liena Vayzman’s spring 2020 course on art and society were taskedwith interpreting and presenting their peers’ work through the creation of a cohesive andaccessible public exhibition, which was to be held in the fourth-floor space of the BGC’s galleryat 18 W. 86 th Street.
Then, of course, COVID-19 happened. But rather than call off the exhibition entirely, theBGC’s Director of Public Engagement Emily Reilly made the quick decision to pivot to a digitalexhibition, enlisting the aid of colleagues Jocelyn Lau, Designer; Hellyn Tang, Web Manager;and Jesse Merandy, the Director of the Digital Media Lab. Plans to host the LaGuardia studentsfor an installation workshop in the gallery space turned into virtual sessions held by BGC staff tointroduce students to the vocabulary and possibilities of digital humanities and discuss different design and formatting options for online exhibitions. In spite of these changes, the studentsremained actively engaged with the development of the exhibition, voicing ideas and feedbackon matters from the website’s overall layout to concerns over the site’s legibility for users withdyslexia or colorblindness. “It surprised me how involved the students wanted to be, and thegreat input they gave me,” said Lau, who met with the students over Zoom several times and wasimpressed by the thoughtfulness and inclusiveness of their comments.
Beyond issues relating to the site’s design, the students were equally responsible for theinterpretative aspects of the exhibition, composing brief introductory texts for each of thefeatured objects in accordance with gallery text standards. In addition to these descriptive labels,many students have taken advantage of the exhibition’s digital platform by incorporating shortfilms or audio files on their pages to provide additional cultural context or illustrate a similartype of object in active use. For Reilly, the students’ multimedia additions were a positive aspectof the shift to a virtual exhibition space. “The digital realm has allowed them to explore moreassociative curatorial thinking, and other ways we can use media to situate an object in itscontext,” she says, something that wouldn’t have been possible to this degree within the confinesof the physical gallery space. The relocation of the exhibition to the virtual realm also presentedthe opportunity to publish the first-semester students’ object essays on the site, furtherconnecting the two groups of students and broadening the perspectives offered on each object.
However, as Reilly points out, the move online has had drawbacks as well. “What saddens me alittle bit is that this second group of students never got to touch the objects they were workingon,” she says. Workshops planned by the BGC for the students intended to encourage tactileengagement and address the material requirements for the safe installation of each object, butthese had to be canceled with the arrival of the shelter-in-place order. Given the significance ofclose looking to the BGC’s approach to material culture studies, Reilly notes that providingopportunities for students to handle and take in the details of their objects would be a priority forany future iterations of this project, even if the exhibition they create is ultimately web-based.
Despite the students’ lack of access to the objects this time, the development of the digitalexhibition over the past year has been a tremendous success, and one that carries unexpectedsignificance in this moment of global crisis. “In this remote time, I think there’s somethingbeautiful about an exhibition like this, with the title Connecting Threads,” Reilly says. Theenlightening scholarship of the LaGuardia students highlights the temporal and geographicthreads that connect each object in the exhibition to individuals and communities around theglobe, showcasing them as “precious relics of how humans have lived their lives,” in the wordsof Dean Peter Miller. Meanwhile, the process of the exhibition’s creation, and the resilience ofeveryone involved at the BGC and LaGuardia as it shifted to the digital, has strung new threadsbetween our two institutions, revealing the power of meaningful connections to transcendphysical distance.
- Elizabeth Koehn
