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Description
Drawing out the Gothic
A Curator Conversation with Barry Bergdoll and Femke Speelberg, Moderated by Basile Baudez
Tuesday, May 19, 2026
38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall
gallery@bgc.bard.edu
$15 General | $12 Seniors | Free for people associated with a college or university, people with museum ID, people with disabilities and caregivers, and BGC members
No late seating; admittance is not guaranteed after 6 pm.
Join us for a discussion about the gothic and Gothic architectural drawings as we enter the final week of one exhibition (Viollet-le-Duc Drawing Worlds) and the early weeks of another (Gothic by Design: The Dawn of Architectural Draftsmanship). This program, organized as a partnership between the Drawing Foundation, Bard Graduate Center, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will begin with a critical response to the two exhibitions by Basile Baudez (Princeton), followed by a conversation with curators Barry Bergdoll and Femke Speelberg.
Basile Baudez is associate professor of architectural history in the department of art and archaeology at Princeton University. His latest single-authored book, Inessential Colors: Architecture on Paper in Early Modern Europe (Princeton University Press, 2021), was awarded the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. He has recently coedited Textile in Architecture: From the Middle Ages to Modernism (Routledge, 2023), which explores the interconnections between soft and hard architecture in the longue durée from diverse geographical contexts, and Carceral Architecture: From Within and Beyond the Prison Walls (Jovis, 2025), the first account of prison design and its effects centered on the voices of justice-impacted people alongside activists, designers, scholars, artists, and students. He is currently finalizing a book project on textiles in eighteenth-century Venetian urban spaces.
Since 2011 Femke Speelberg, MPhil, is curator of historic ornament, design, and architecture in the department of drawings and prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In this capacity, she oversees all drawings, prints, and illustrated books pertaining to the history of design and architecture, dating from the Gothic period to the first half of the twentieth century. Her research is focused on the role of works on paper in processes of artistic ideation, creation, and exchange. As such, her exhibitions and publications are inherently interdisciplinary in scope and connect art objects with the worlds in which they were created and functioned.
Barry Bergdoll is Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, New York. His interests center on modern architectural history, with a particular emphasis on France and Germany since 1750. Trained in art history rather than architecture, he has an approach most closely allied with cultural history and the history and sociology of professions. Bergdoll has organized exhibitions at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, and at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where he served as Philip Johnson Chief Curator from 2007 to 2013.
A Lee B. Anderson Memorial Conversation
Lee Anderson, who worked for a time as an arts education teacher, has been referred to as the godfather of the Gothic revival in America. It is largely because of his impressive personal collection that the style has been rekindled among designers and other tastemakers. Lee passed away in 2010, but he left a legacy of philanthropic support through the Lee B. Anderson Memorial Foundation, whose mission is to support programs and organizations that advance an appreciation for the decorative arts.
*This event is presented in conjunction with Viollet-le-Duc Drawing Worlds, on view at the BGC Gallery through May 24.
Image: Maurice Ouradou (French, 1822–1884), painted decor of Chapel of Saint Charles for Notre-Dame de Paris, preparatory drawing for plates 4 and 5 in Peintures murales de chapelles de Notre-Dame de Paris (Wall paintings in the chapels of Notre-Dame de Paris; Paris, Morel 1870), ca. 1870. Ink and watercolor with gouache and gold highlights on tracing paper, mounted on card stock. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Achat, 2013, ARO 2013 10 3.
Date & Time
Tue, May 19, 2026 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Venue Details
Bard Graduate Center
38 West 86th StreetNew York, New York 10024
