Bard Graduate Center Director Susan Weber Wins Prestigious Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—Founder and director of the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture (BGC) Susan Weber is the recipient of the 2015 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award from the College Art Association (CAA) for the catalogue, William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain (Bard Graduate Center and Yale University Press, 2013). Given for an “especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, published in the penultimate calendar year under the auspices of a museum, library, or collection,” the award reflects the BGC’s commitment to the highest standards of scholarship. This year’s award committee members include Thayer Tolles, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, chair; Kelly Baum, Princeton University Art Museum; Alison de Lima Greene, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; David Dearinger, Boston Athenaeum; and Peter Sturman, University of California, Santa Barbara. The award will be presented to Weber during CAA’s Convocation in Manhattan on Wednesday, February 11.

Susan Weber is the author of The Secular Furniture of E. W. Godwin (1999) and editor and contributing author of the catalogue E. W. Godwin: Aesthetic Movement Architect and Designer (1999). She has coauthored and served as editor for numerous exhibition catalogues, including Thomas Jeckyll: Architect and Designer (cocurator and coauthor with C. A. Arbuthnott, 2003); Castellani and Italian Archaeological Jewelry (2004); James “Athenian” Stuart: 1713-1788, the Rediscovery of Antiquity (2006); and William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain (2013). She is the recipient of many awards, including Metropolis’s Game Changers Award (2014), Soane Foundation Honors from Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation (2010), the Philip C. Johnson Award of the Society of Architectural Historians (2005), and the National Arts Club Gold Medal Award (1997).

William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain, on view at the BGC in 2013–14, was the first major exhibition to examine the life and career of one of the most influential designers in 18th-century Britain. Visitors discovered Kent’s genius, through numerous examples of his elaborate drawings for architecture, gardens, and sculpture, along with furniture, silver, paintings, illustrated books, and through new documentary films. Organized by the BGC in collaboration with the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the exhibition was curated by Weber (BGC) and Julius Bryant (V&A). 

The Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for museum scholarship was established in 1980, in honor of the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art and a scholar of early-20th-century painting. This award is presented to the author or authors of an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, published in the English language under the auspices of a museum, library, or collection. Catalogues of public or private collections or significant portions thereof and exhibition catalogues are eligible.

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About the BGC

Founded in 1993, the Bard Graduate Center is a graduate research institute in New York City. Its Gallery exhibitions and publications, MA and PhD programs, and research initiatives explore new ways of thinking about decorative arts, design history, and material culture. A member of the Association of Research Institutes in Art History (ARIAH), the BGC is an academic unit of Bard College. For more information, visit www.bgc.bard.edu.

About Bard College

Founded in 1860, Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, is an independent, nonsectarian, residential, coeducational college offering a four-year B.A. program in the liberal arts and sciences and a five-year B.A./B.S. degree in economics and finance. The Bard College Conservatory of Music offers a five-year program in which students pursue a dual degree—a B.Music and a B.A. in a field other than music—and offers an M.Music in vocal arts and in conducting. Bard also bestows an M.Music degree at Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bard and its affiliated institutions also grant the following degrees: A.A. at Bard High School Early College, a public school with campuses in New York City, Cleveland, and Newark, New Jersey; A.A. and B.A. at Bard College at Simon’s Rock: The Early College, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and through the Bard Prison Initiative at six correctional institutions in New York State; M.A. in curatorial studies, M.S. in economic theory and policy, and M.S. in environmental policy and in climate science and policy at the Annandale campus; M.F.A. and M.A.T. at multiple campuses; M.B.A. in sustainability in New York City; and M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in the decorative arts, design history, and material culture at the Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan. Internationally, Bard confers dual B.A. degrees at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg State University, Russia (Smolny College); American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan; and Bard College Berlin: A Liberal Arts University; as well as dual B.A. and M.A.T. degrees at Al-Quds University in the West Bank.

Bard offers nearly 50 academic programs in four divisions. Total enrollment for Bard College and its affiliates is approximately 5,000 students. The undergraduate College has an enrollment of more than 1,900 and a student-to-faculty ratio of 10:1. For more information about Bard College, visit www.bard.edu.

About CAA

Founded in 1911, the College Art Association promotes excellence in scholarship and teaching in the history and criticism of the visual arts and in creativity and technical skill in the teaching and practices of art; facilitates the exchange of ideas and information among those interested in art and history of art; advocates comprehensive and inclusive education in the visual arts; speaks for the membership on issues affecting the visual arts and humanities; provides publication of scholarship, criticism, and artists’ writings; fosters career development and professional advancement; identifies and develops sources of funding for the practice of art and for scholarship in the arts and humanities; honors accomplishments of artists, art historians, and critics; articulates and affirms the highest ethical standards in the conduct of the profession.

CAA includes among its members those who by vocation or avocation are concerned about and/or committed to the practice of art, teaching, and researching the visual arts and humanities. More than 12,000 artists, art historians, scholars, curators, critics, collectors, educators, publishers, and other professionals in the visual arts belong as individual members. Another 2,000 departments of art and art history in colleges and universities, art schools, museums, libraries, and professional and commercial organizations hold institutional memberships. www.collegeart.org.

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(01/26/15)

This event was last updated on 01-26-2015

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