#material-culture

#material-culture

cardiganed grandmothers eating roadside picnics beside Morris Minors, pale men sunbathing in shoes and socks on stripy deckchairs, Raleigh Choppers and caged budgerigars and faux leather pouffes I feel a wave of what can't properly be called nostalgia, because the last thing I'd want is to return to that age and those places where I was often profoundly unhappy and from which I'd have been desperate to escape if escape had been a possibility.

How did a material conceived for bridges, factories, and large-scale structures make its way to the living room bench, the apartment bookshelf, the café table? For centuries, metal was associated with labor, machinery, and monumentality-from the exposed structures of 19th-century World's Fairs to the productive logic of modern industry. Its presence in domestic interiors is not self-evident but rather a cultural achievement: the transformation of an industrial material into an element of everyday, intimate use, in close proximity to the body.

From thousands of colorful hair beads, Felandus Thames conjures vibrant patterns and portraits. He takes historical photographs as a starting point, focusing especially on Black and Indigenous figures whose stories have largely been underrepresented in American historical narrative. These include dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey and Amos Haskins, a 19th-century Wampanoag man who became a master mariner—one of the few Indigenous people to do so.

The text of Marie Antoinette Style introduces her as "the most fashionable, scrutinised and controversial queen in history," and the portrait said to be most accurate in likeness has been animated in a wall projection so her visage smirks and twinkles out at us. Here are her most intimate clothes and belongings, an astonishing collection of perfectly preserved tiny slippers, corsets, and jewels; objects marked with her monogram in the caption indicate that they belonged to her personally.

Archaeology offers a window into how the Reconquista reshaped daily life across the Iberian countryside. Excavations in Valencia and Granada reveal how irrigation systems, farming communities, and fortified villages adapted as Christian rule spread south - transforming centuries of Islamic rural culture into a new medieval landscape. The history, culture, geography and climate of the Iberian Peninsula are varied. The climates of modern-day Spain and Portugal, which face the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, respectively, are significantly different and must be factored in.

Passionate about decorative arts, design history, or material culture? Eager to discover how object-based study can advance your curatorial and scholarly interests? Attend an open house at Bard Graduate Center 's NYC campus to learn about our outstanding faculty, thriving and close-knit community, and institutional relationships with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, and American Museum of Natural History.

The tomb effigy of a French crusader from the thirteenth century preserves a surprising secret: a carved copy of a Chinese sword which belonged to the knight. The question of how a Chinese sword ended up on the tomb has fascinated scholars for decades. It is a story that speaks to the influence of global travel, crusading warfare, trade and plunder, inviting us to reconsider the Middle Ages as more globally connected than often imagined.

Domination tells the story of how a tiny local cult became one of the greatest cultural and political forces in history. Alice Roberts puts the case that the Roman empire lived on in a different form in the church. It is not an original idea after all the foundation prayer of Christianity says thy Kingdom come but Roberts tells the story from the point of view of individual parishes and even buildings. It's a revelation, like watching those stop-motion films of how a plant grows