Bard Graduate Center is devoted to the study of decorative arts, design history, and material culture through research, advanced degrees, exhibitions, publications, and events.

Bard Graduate Center advances the study of decorative arts, design history, and material culture through its object-centered approach to teaching, research, exhibitions, publications, and events.

At BGC, we study the human past and present through their material expressions. We focus on objects and other material forms—from those valued for their aesthetic elements to the ordinary things used in everyday life.

Our accomplished interdisciplinary faculty inspires and prepares students in our MA and PhD programs for successful careers in academia, museums, and the private sector. We bring equal intellectual rigor to our acclaimed exhibitions, award-winning catalogues and scholarly publications, and innovative public programs, and we view all of these integrated elements as vital to our curriculum.

BGC’s campus comprises a state-of-the-art academic programs building at 38 West 86th Street, a gallery at 18 West 86th Street, and a residence hall at 410 West 58th Street. A new collection study center will open at 8 West 86th Street in 2026.

Founded by Dr. Susan Weber in 1993, Bard Graduate Center has become the preeminent institute for academic research and exhibition of decorative arts, design history, and material culture. BGC is an accredited unit of Bard College and a member of the Association of Research Institutes in Art History (ARIAH).

Jeffrey Collins, Ivan Gaskell, and Ittai Weinryb were official delegates to the 34th World Congress Art History (CIHA) held from 16-20 September in Beijing. In Beijing, Collins and Gaskell participated in the panel dedicated to Display, chaired jointly by Gao Shiming of the China Academy of Art and Michel Hochmann of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. The week prior to the Congress, Collins and Gaskell were invited to contribute to a three-day Seminar in the History of Art organized by China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where they presented additional papers related to the theme of artistic display. That panel, one of twenty-one that constituted CIHA’s official program, was joined by a third Bard Graduate Center connected delegate, Friederike Schäfer, who presented work developed at BGC while she was an exchange student from the Humboldt University in 2015-16.

Freya Hartzell will be presenting a paper at the Munch, Modernism, and Modernity Conference 2016: “Modernisms Still Left on the Doorstep” at the Munch Museum in Oslo on November 18. Her topic is “The Figures of our Fairytales: Local Drama in the Legend of Modern Design.”

Peter N. Miller served with Pamela H. Smith (Seth Low Professor of History, Columbia University) as a commentator at this year’s Lionel Trilling Seminar at Columbia delivered by Horst Bredekamp with the title “Symbiosis of Nature and Art: A new Neo-Mannerism?” On October 26, Miller was the evening’s speaker at a fundraiser for the Warburg Institute held at the Century Association. The title of his talk was “Warburg’s Library: Still a Model for Inter-disciplinary Graduate Education.

Paul Stirton will give a talk entitled “West 86th and Design History” at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague on October 28 as part of the Designblok festival. On October 31, he will contribute to the “journée d’études” at the the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA) in Paris, marking the publication of the two-volume Histoires sociales de l’art: Une anthologie critique (Presses du reel/INHA, 2016).