Research Institute

Research at the Bard Graduate Center suffuses our practice. The library is at the center of our building and is the central intellectual resource, while our Digital Media Lab reflects an institutional commitment to exploring new and appropriate research tools. The Focus Project, in which faculty and student research feeds into an exhibition rather than a journal article, reflects this openness to experimentation.  Weekly seminars and lectures are curated by faculty, who also organize symposia through the year—these show students that teaching and research are connected. Our learned publications, West 86^th (University of Chicago Press) and Cultural Histories of the Material World (University of Michigan Press), reflect the BGC’s leading role in the study of the material world. On-going research projects on the material culture of New York City, Franz Boas, and the implications of conservation science for the study of materiality have received major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.