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).

On February 24, Bard Graduate Center students and alumni were among a large crowd who joined Michelle Tolini Finamore (PhD, 2010), curator of fashion arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, at the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park, Manhattan, for a lecture/tour about one hundred years of American cocktail history. Her talk, entitled “Cocktail Culture and Couture,” traced the history of the American cocktail, as seen in fashion, bar accessories and popular imagery, and covered its evolution from the Jazz Age through the present day.

Maude Bass-Krueger (PhD, 2016) is the curator, with Sophie Kurkdjian, of Mode et Femmes, 14/18, on view at the Bibliothèque Forney, Paris, through June 17, 2017. The exhibition was featured in the New York Times on March 7. Maude is an historian with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the largest governmental research organization in France.