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).

Making and knowing. The two go hand in hand at the Bard Graduate Center, in academic practice, in the Gallery through exhibitions, and most recently in the Mellon initiative—Cultures of Conservation.

How else might students come to appreciate and begin to understand the still murky process behind a silicate masterpiece like the Portland Vase than to work beside a hot fire, working molten glass on a pontil? That some of the tools have not much changed in the last several centuries speaks to the sameness in such techniques that have existed for millennia, as well as to the importance for historians in grasping an understanding of those material processes.

Students experienced this approach firsthand during a visit to the Brooklyn glassworks UrbanGlass with a tour and workshop session led by master glassmaker and instructor Suzanne Peck. Given the chance to make two objects (a paperweight and a work in blown glass), students came to recognize both the excitement and the difficulties in the medium in all of its stages of production, from the collection of glass, to the working of it before it has cooled, to the sensation of heat radiating, to the amount of breath required to alter its shape. Each took a turn sitting at the bench modifying the glass with tweezers, maneuvering with the block in order to shape the piece, and using the blowpipe to create their very own objects.

Ms. Peck even tailored the experience to the course that had brought us to UrbanGlass, explaining the production of millefiori, which students had just learned about in class in the context of antiquity and bringing it into the contemporary context.

The UrbanGlass experience is a valuable chance to work with materials—something that some other master’s programs overlook. As a starting point for students to experiment with making on their own, they can come to their own conclusions about the creation of the very things that are central to Bard Graduate Center’s curriculum and mission.

~ Martina D’Amato