Bard Graduate Center’s Lab for Teen Thinkers, which launched in the
summer of 2017, is a public humanities program that prepares rising juniors and seniors for future academic and professional success through civic development, mentoring, and internship opportunities. During the five-week summer course, participants have access to the BGC study collection and its library with over 55,000 volumes. Offering a behind-the-scenes look at how New York City museums function, the program gives teens the unique opportunity to study objects and artifacts with a variety of scholars, curators, and graduate students working in the fields of material culture, decorative arts, and design history. The teens’ research culminates with an object biography, oral presentations, and dynamic digital projects created in the
Media Lab, that are shared with the BGC community.
In the summer of 2018, Teen Thinkers conducted independent research projects on the theme,
Votive Objects and the Everyday. Their research was informed by the exhibition
Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place, which explored the things that humans choose to offer in their votive transactions.
BGC talked with two of this year’s participants, Alex Szyperek, a junior at Bard High School Early College Queens, and Sergio Maldonado, a senior at DreamYard Preparatory High School, who offered their thoughts on the program.
Read the full story on the BGC website
Post Date: 02-06-2019