At our state-of-the-art academic center on West 86^th Street, the BGC library is a fundamental part of the teaching and conversation spaces. We use books to draw together all the parts of the institution, and schedule a range of formal and informal scholarly events to make the point that here there are no barriers between teaching and research, and that in higher education learning should be happening all the time.

The courses we offer each semester are designed to acquaint the student with a critical interdisciplinary perspective on specific historical subjects. We train both MA and PhD students to think about how objects and the material world can be understood in a variety of contexts and how knowledge about them can enrich our own. In addition to our regular course offerings, we have established a series of Focus Gallery exhibitions, collaborations between faculty and students, to bring ideas born in the classroom to life in our own exhibition space. Our Focus Gallery exhibitions include Objects of Exchange: Social and Material Transformation on the Late Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast, American Christmas Cards, 1900-1960, and Staging Fashion 1880-1920:  Jane Hading, Lily Elsie, and Billie Burke.