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Upcoming Exhibitions
BGC Gallery will resume its exhibition programming this September with the return of Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today, originally slated for fall 2024.
Bard Graduate Center is an advanced graduate research institute in New York City dedicated to the cultural histories of the material world. Our MA and PhD degree programs, Gallery exhibitions, research initiatives, scholarly publications and public programs explore new ways of thinking about decorative arts, design history, and material culture.

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About

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).


MA, Class of 2012

Sarah Brown-McLeod has accepted a new position as senior account executive in arts communication at Ruder Finn Partners in New York City.

Craig Lee, a PhD student in the Department of Art History at the University of Delaware, spent the summer working as a collection intern at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, outside of Pittsburgh.

PhD, Class of 2010

Michelle Tolini Finamore has been appointed curator of fashion arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

MA, Class of 2008

Christian Larsen presented his paper “Barbarous Jungle Growth: Módulo Magazine and the Global Media Image of a Modern Brazil” at the “Cultures of Decolonization c. 1945-1970” conference at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, May 30-31, 2012.

MA, Class of 2007

Jonathan Tavares has been awarded a three-year Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellowship at the Art Institute in Chicago, beginning in January 2013, in the Department of Decorative Arts

MA, Class of 2006

Katie Hall Burlison and Nicholas Burlison were married on May 19 in Mobile, Alabama. The couple happily resides in New Orleans.

Monica Obniski, assistant curator of American Decorative Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago, recently co-authored the publication For Kith & Kin: The Folk Art Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago (published by Yale University Press). Monica is continuing to work on her dissertation, tentatively titled “Fashioned by Folk Art and Modernism: Alexander H. Girard’s Postwar American Design Projects,” which has been partially funded by a Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design Graduate Research Grant for travel and research. In the fall she will present the paper “The Impact of William Morris on the Arts and Crafts Movement in Chicago” at a symposium co-sponsored by the Victorian Society in America and the Glessner House Museum.

PhD, Class of 2006

Jacqueline Atkins is currently researching and cataloguing the kimono collection of a private European collector. In June, she recently presented a lecture on “Omoshirogara: Novelty Textile Designs in Early Modern Japan” at the Textile Museum in Washington, DC, and she is scheduled to speak on “Fabrics, Folktales and Politics” at the Textile Society of America’s biennial symposium in September, also in Washington. Her most recent publication, a chapter on “Novelty Textiles” in The Brittle Decade: Visualizing Japan in the 1930s (authors: John Dower, Ann Nishimura Morse, Jacqueline M. Atkins, and Fred Sharf) was published by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in June 2012.

MPhil, Class of 2000

Caroline Hannah (PhD candidate) gave a talk in January to the Antiquarian Society at the Art Institute of Chicago on Henry Varnum Poor and Wharton Esherick’s creative friendship. For the past three years she has served as a board member of the Victorian Society New York and until recently on the Victorian Society in America’s summer schools committee. On August 11, 2011 she and her husband, Mark, welcomed a son, Samuel Vincent Masyga.

MA, Class of 1999

Sophie Davidson is currently living in Australia and is working on a project based in Arnhem Land. As director of development for the Karrkad-Kanjdji Trust, she is building an endowment fund to support the natural and cultural resource management of West Arnhem Land, an area particularly rich in culture with thousands of known rock art sites.