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).

A session at Ittai Weinryb’s conference at the Clark Institute.

Alicia Boswell, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Cultures of Conservation, will be joining the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as an assistant professor in the fall.

Ittai Weinryb, with Benjamin Anderson (Cornell University), organized a two-day colloquium in April at the Clark Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, entitled “Causality and the Work of Art.” Participants included: Yukio Lippitt (Harvard University), Andrew Moisey (Cornell University), Sugata Ray (University of California, Berkeley), Yael Rice (Amherst College), Lihong Liu (Univeristy of Rochester), Beate Fricke (University of Bern), Nathaniel Jones (Washington University in St. Louis), Joseph Koerner (Harvard University), Marisa Bass (Yale University), Ivan Drpić (University of Pennsylvania).

Catherine Whalen and Meredith Linn are representing Bard Graduate Center at the twelfth annual meeting of the Consortium of American Material Culture. This year’s meeting, organized by Fath Davis Ruffins, curator at the National Museum of American History, will take place at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., May 31–June 1, 2018. The Consortium was founded at Bard Graduate Center in 2007. Whalen discussed her research on the American Colonial Revival with artist Jane Irish vis-à-vis her work Antipodes, which is currently on view at Philadelphia’s Lemon Hill mansion in Fairmount Park through June 6. The discussion, entitled “Performative Politics in the Decorative Arts: Jane Irish and Catherine Whalen in Conversation,” took place in March.