Art History Grad Wins $62K to Attend Mount Holyoke College

Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC/CUNY) Art Foundations/Art History 2023 alumna Johanna Graedler has been awarded a $62,000 scholarship through the Frances Perkins Program at Mount Holyoke College, a college for women in South Hadley, Massachusetts, and one of the prestigious Seven Sisters liberal arts colleges. The award recognizes exceptional students who are at least 25 years of age and have not yet earned a bachelor’s degree but hold between 40 and 64 college credits.

“I couldn’t have gotten this far without the support of my Art Professors Maya Jiménez and Yan Yang, as well as my parents,” says Graedler. “I also owe a lot to the Transfer Scholars Network program at BMCC. They set up zoom meetings with admissions officers and helped me send applications to more than a dozen colleges.”

She explains that having grown up in Germany, advanced degrees were never an option.

“We have three types of high schools there, and only the top tier schools make you eligible to apply to college. They sort you in elementary school, and when I was in 4^th grade, the head teacher made the call and put me in line for the mid-level high school, not the top one.”

After graduating from high school, her only option was to consider vocational training, such as preparing to work in a grocery store, “but I wanted to go to college and study art history,” she says.

Why art history?

At first, Graedler says, she was a history major at BMCC. “I was always interested in the human aspect of history; for example, what people ate, how they dressed, what they valued—and I found that art history can also convey those things.”

The first artist she fell in love with is John Singer Sargent. “I saw an exhibition of his charcoal drawings at the Morgan Library and Museum in 2019,” she says. “To me, his portraits are so brilliant because they make you feel like you are in the room with the sitter. Through a hint of a smile, or the slight tilt of an eyebrow, he manages to capture their likeness along with their personality. At the same time, his style is always painterly and suggestive.”

Part of the time she attended BMCC remotely, she lived in Amsterdam and frequently visited the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum.

“I love Van Gogh and his contemporaries Monet, Manet, Seurat, Signac and Angrand,” says Graedler. “I am currently very interested in Joaquín Sorolla, whose work I was able to see in Madrid last year. His paintings and subjects remind me of Singer Sargent’s, and indeed they were good friends, which leads me to another interesting topic—the transatlantic artistic exchange and the way that new ideas were disseminated during the 19th and 20th centuries. I will have plenty to study and research in the next two years and beyond!”

She says one of her goals is to teach art history at the college level. According to the BMCC Career Map for Art History, other roles in the field of art history include art consultant, museum director, curator, museum marketing specialist and more.

The transition to BMCC started with a visit to NYC

In 2018, Graedler abandoned her exploration of vocational training in Germany and made a trip by herself to New York City.

“I was 19 about to turn 20,” she says. “I stayed at a really shoddy Air B&B in Hell’s Kitchen. While I was there, I went to open house events at BMCC, Hunter and Baruch. They all said the same thing: Improve your English, get a GED, and take the TOEFL and the SAT.”

Eventually, she chose BMCC because of the cost factor.

“In 2020, the cost of four years at Hunter was quoted at $170,000, and since international students are not eligible for financial aid at public schools, there was no way my family could afford it,” she says. “It was serendipity that BMCC turned out to be an excellent school, with an amazing Art department, and in hindsight, I don’t think I could have had a better experience elsewhere.”

She was also impressed by BMCC’s lower Manhattan location. “I really enjoy an urban campus,” she says. “Being in New York offers such a wealth of riches in terms of extracurricular activities and internships, especially for someone interested in the arts. Even attending remotely, I had access to many opportunities.”

After that first eye-opening visit to New York, Graedler returned to Germany and learned English, she says, through movies and podcasts like NPR.

She submitted her CUNY application at the end of 2019, and while waiting for the results in early 2020, she visited New York City as a tourist. She started classes remotely at BMCC in Fall 2020 and completed her associate degree online.

Professors and TSN staff encouraged Graedler to dream big

“I have been emailing and zooming with Johanna for months now, since before she graduated in Spring 2023, and I am happy to see all our hard work pay off,” said Art History Professor Maya Jiménez. “I even mailed her the BMCC commencement program to Germany, since she missed the graduation.”

“Johanna was incredibly proactive, disciplined and optimistic throughout the application process to a bachelor’s degree program,” said Professor Jiménez. “While I nominated her for the TSN [Transfer Scholars network], she really took it from there and took it upon herself to contact individual schools and inquire about funding and transfer credits. It’s her drive and dedication that really stood out to me.”

Professor Jiménez says she is happy that BMCC has valuable partnerships, such as the college’s connection with TSN.

“It allows our students to dream big, while providing real and valuable support that, as seen in Johanna’s journey, made all the difference!”

Graedler’s parents, who were dubious of her plans at first, have second-mortgaged their home to help with her living expenses as she attends Holyoke, an elite private college and one of the top liberal arts schools in the country.

“I am so grateful to my parents, my professors, the staff at TSN and the Frances Perkins Program at Holyoke for believing in me,” Graedler says.

 

For more information on the BMCC application process for international students, visit here.

For more information about the Transfer Scholars Network at BMCC, visit here.

For more information on the BMCC Art Foundations programs, visit here.