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).

Antonia Behan (MA 2014, PhD candidate) has received a doctoral fellowship to begin in September from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Michelle Tolini Finamore (PhD 2010) is the Penny Vinik Curator of Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She co-curated #techstyle, on view at the museum through July 10, which “examines how the synergy between fashion and technology is not only changing design and manufacturing, but also the way people interact with their clothes.”

Virginia Fister Laidet (MA 2015), the curatorial research assistant at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, is working with their large glass collection and on an upcoming exhibition on the French decorative arts designer René Lalique.

Sheila Moloney (MA 2016) has been awarded a Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation Traveling Fellowship, which will allow her to travel to London to pursue research on Soane’s role in developing and refining notions of the picturesque in both landscape and architecture.

Sarah Brown McLeod (MA 2012) has accepted the position of manager of communications and marketing for the stores at the Museum of Modern Art. She will begin her new job in June.

Allison Stielau (MA 2009) received her PhD in History of Art from Yale University in December 2015. A postdoctoral fellow for the year 2015–16 with the Early Modern Conversions Project at McGill University’s Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, she was among the scholars and faculty invited by Columbia University’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities to present their work during the 2016 spring semester. She will join the faculty at University College London as Lecturer in Art History in fall 2016.