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).

Corinne Brandt (MA 2014) has been with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation since June on a year- long fellowship funded by the Americana Foundation. She is working on a new silver gallery for the Dewitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, set to open next September, and has also been researching potential silver accessions, investigating, for example, the provenance of a fob seal believed to have been owned by George Washington. She reports that there is always something new and different to do, and it is never boring!

Professors Pat Kirkham and Paul Stirton are pictured with Sarah Lichtman (PhD 2014) in front of the Harcourt group portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. They were attending a reception at which Alison Kowalski (MA 2014) was presented with the Design History Society’s annual student essay prize.

Sarah Rogers Morris’s (MA 2013) BGC Qualifying Paper was published as an article entitled “Richard Nickel’s Photography: Preserving Ornament in Architecture” in Future Anterior, a peer-reviewed journal devoted to historic preservation published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Christian Larsen (MA 2011, PhD candidate) presented his initial research to an audience at Florida International University for his 2016 exhibition and catalogue Paradise Found: Cuban Allure, American Seduction on September 22. Christian is curator at The Wolfsonian, where the exhibition will be held. Drawing on several photographic archives and a vast array of material culture, the exhibition will document the dizzying transnational influences between Cuba and the United States during the Republican Era (1902-1959).