Works of applied art have the misfortune of being regarded as products of the lower faculties of homo faber and of being relegated to the basement of the museum for the history of the human mind where, at best, they are shown as creations of technical interest. Who would so easily hit on the idea of responding to such precious showpieces as sensitive reflectors of the outward and inward life of their period? (Aby Warburg, 1927)
At the Bard Graduate Center our focus is on Cultura. This ancient
Latin word referred to the class of activities in which human
beings acted on, and so transformed, their natural surroundings.
Studying the traces of this effort describes the task of a
specific form of cultural history. Our graduate courses, research
projects and exhibitions direct attention to the substances
intervened upon, the processes used to make these interventions,
and the consequences of these interventions for the lives of
human actors.
Our commitment to studying the material world looks to the past -
the historical vision of Aby Warburg, Marc Bloch and Lucien
Febvre—but is geared to the future needs of professors and
curators. Our graduate program reflects an encyclopedic approach
to the material world, drawing on methodologies and approaches
from art and design history, economic and cultural history,
history of technology, philosophy, anthropology, and archaeology.
Course offerings range across topics elsewhere associated with
Decorative Arts or Design History or Material Culture. At the BGC we
uphold no such clear-cut, but ultimately illusory, distinctions.
Just as our professors' research traces an inter-disciplinary
trajectory, so do the courses they teach.
History and Theory of
Museums is central to our intellectual project. We aim as
much as possible to integrate the classroom and the gallery so
that our goal of combining the object-centered vision of the
curator with the question-driven horizon of the university
professor can operate on two levels: through classroom content
and through hands-on experience.
A key expression of this inter-disciplinary and multi-media
project is the Cultural Sciences
Campus: our institutional collaboration with the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New-York Historical Society and American Museum of
Natural History. Launched in 2007 it heralds the possibility of a
new way of thinking about cultural histories of the material
world.
Research at the BGC is bound up with teaching and learning. The Research Department sponsors fellowships and a wide range of seminars, lectures and symposia. There is a monthly faculty work-in-progress series. And there is active support for student research and symposia. All these events are designed to function in a kind of polyphony with its courses. A regular peril of small fields and small institutions is in being too comfortable, and in setting standards that are too easily met. By bringing in interesting scholars from across the world of learning who ask questions that we have not posed, about things that we do not study, the BGC insures that its students’ horizons are as broad as possible, and their standard of excellence as high as possible.
Hands-on examination of objects is an essential feature of study at the BGC. Incorporated into the first-year Survey of the Decorative Arts and Design course are two trips to places where things are made so that students can experience materiality from the maker’s perspective. Our award-winning exhibition program allows students to learn about a range of artifacts and meanings, as well as better understand how exhibitions and galleries function. “Scholars Days” and "Installation Workshops" in the gallery bring together professors, students, curators, and connoisseurs in an informal but rigorous context, and thus serve as a model for the kind of intellectual profile we believe in.
