Displaying items by tag: bard college

The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College has received a gift valued at about $2 million of 200 contemporary artworks from New York art collectors Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, the school announced Friday.

The gift includes mostly works from the past 15 years, close to the time Martin Eisenberg has been involved with the center as a board member and avid supporter of the graduate program, its students and exhibitions.

Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies and Human Rights has launched its Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism thanks to a $400,000 grant from the Keith Haring Foundation. The Fellowship is a cross-disciplinary, annual, visiting Fellowship for a scholar, activist or artist to teach and conduct research at the Center for Curatorial Studies and the Human Rights Project at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The recipient will investigate the role of art as a catalyst for social change and present original research in an annual lecture. The findings will be published and distributed among colleges and universities worldwide.

Julia Gruen, Executive Director of the Keith Haring Foundation, said, “We are honored to establish this dynamic fellowship at Bard College in Keith Haring’s name. The artist as activist was a role integral to Haring’s own vision, identity and practice, and we are confident that a fellowship dedicated to this approach can produce illuminating opportunities for discourse and scholarship.” Haring, an American artist and social activist who succumbed to AIDS in 1990, often raised political questions about HIV/AIDS and gay identity through his work. Through his activism, Haring helped the mainstream understand the AIDS crisis as a human rights issue rather than an affliction faced by a specific community.

Bard College will begin accepting applications for the Keith Haring Fellowship in February. The first Fellow will be announced in the spring of 2014.

The Dr. Susan Weber Gallery is now open at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Designed by the Scottish firm NORD architecture, the gallery houses the museum’s expansive furniture collection that was once relegated to occasional displays and temporary exhibitions.

The museum’s collection spans more than five centuries and features over 200 pieces of British and European furniture as well as guest pieces from America and Asia. The V & A’s holdings are varied and include classic works by historic names like Thomas Chippendale and George Bullock as well as modern and contemporary pieces. Special attention is paid to the process of furniture making and the gallery’s display emphasizes the materials and techniques responsible for each masterpiece. The vast collection allows patrons to see how such things as joinery, turning, carving, veneering, marquetry, and upholstery have changed over the years.

Highlights on view include a 17^th-century scagliola table, Patrick Jouin’s “One Shot” folding stool, which is the earliest example of contemporary digitial manufacturing, a painted Tyrolean cupboard from 1776, and a 15^th-century desk-cupboard made from oak that was sources from 1,500 miles away. The new gallery also features touch-screen interfaces, short films that explain fundamental techniques, and audio commentary by furniture-makers and historians.

The gallery was funded by and named after Dr. Susan Weber, a graduate of London’s Royal College of Art. Since 1991, Weber has served as the founder and director of Bard College’s Graduate Center for studies in the decorative arts, design, and culture in upstate New York.