ON AND OFF CAMPUS: BARD GRADUATE CENTER

BARD GRADUATE CENTER

Richard Tuttle, photo by Melissa Goodwin

Richard Tuttle: What is the Object?, on view at the Bard Graduate Center (BGC) from February 25 through July 10, 2022, will explore the meaning of objects for Tuttle, an inveterate collector whose taste, like his art, is eclectic and very personal. Visitors will be invited to touch and interact with 75 items, ranging from ceramic teacups and decorative sculptures to vintage fabrics and antique curios, drawn from his collection. The exhibition will also feature some of Tuttle’s art works as well as sculptural furniture he designed to display the objects.

Conserving Active Matter will also be on view at BGC February 25 through July 10, 2022. For as long as people have made and kept things, they have cared for and repaired them. Through objects that span five continents and range in time from the Paleolithic to the present, Conserving Active Matter explores the ways conservators keep alive—and bring back to life—the things that sustain us.

BGC and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art provided support for an innovative digital project, Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest, the first online exhibition to showcase the American Museum of Natural History’s collection of Indigenous textiles from the greater American Southwest. The project elevates the voices of contemporary Native artists and makers to express the cultural legacy and continued vibrancy of weaving traditions in the region.

Martha Tuttle A stone that thinks of Enceladus, 2020 Stone, glass, and marble Dimensions variable Courtesy the artist and Tilton Gallery Photo by Jeffrey Jenkins ©Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York

Meanwhile, across the river from Annandale, Martha Tuttle ’11, Richard’s daughter, has installed a large-scale, temporary, outdoor project, A stone that thinks of Enceladus, at Storm King Art Center. The piece, part of an ongoing program to support emerging artists, consists of a series of cairns built from boulders gathered at Storm King, along with molded glass and carved marble replicas of stones that she collected. The installation will be on view through December 13.

Majolica Mania, photo by Bruce M. White

Majolica Mania

Transatlantic Pottery in England and the United States, 1850–1915 On view at the Bard Graduate Center through January 2, 2022

Deborah Krohn and Yotam Ottolenghi

Whichever French royal actually uttered the words, “Let them eat cake” (it was almost certainly not Marie Antoinette; it may have been Maria Theresa of Spain), the link between pâtisserie and Versailles is etched in fondant. In the summer of 2018, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art invited the acclaimed chef Yotam Ottolenghi to organize a food gala inspired by the museum’s exhibition Visitors to Versailles. Ottolenghi certainly knows a béarnaise from a bechamel, but to get a grip on the historical importance of Versailles in the 18th century—when the French court was at the epicenter of European society—the chef needed a guide. The Met introduced Ottolenghi to Bard Graduate Center Associate Professor and Chair of Academic Programs Deborah Krohn, and she became an essential ingredient in the success of the event and a major character in the documentary about the process, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles (2020). “Through my research of period cookbooks and etiquette manuals, I was able to help Yotam and the other chefs involved in the gala understand the role that food played at the French court as a demonstration of power and innovation,” says Krohn. “It’s related to the research that will be on display in my spring 2023 Focus Project exhibition at Bard Graduate Center Gallery, Staging the Table in Europe, 1500–1800.”