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).

Caspar Meyer led four BGC students on an archaeological dig in Despotiko, Greece this summer. Read more.

Ivan Gaskell’s latest book, Paintings and the Past: Philosophy, History, Art (Routledge), was published in June. During the two-month period of his annual residency as permanent fellow of the Lichtenberg-Kolleg (Advanced Study Institute) of the Georg-August University, Göttingen, he delivered lectures at the University of Tallinn and the Estonian Academy of Arts in June. He gave a paper, “The Artist’s Mark,” at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg Fellows’ Colloquium. On his return to New York, he participated with Dean Miller and other faculty colleagues, teaching in BCG’s summer school, “Conservation as a Human Science.”

Deborah Krohn participated in “Eat, Talk, Walk: Eating Around London,” a mobile seminar in early July. A group of food historians met at the old Spitalfields Market and spent several hours meandering through the City of London, its oldest area, pausing at various spots to learn about foods and sometimes taste concoctions made from period recipes associated with specific locations from the Middle Ages through the eighteenth century. The day ended at the George Inn, London’s oldest pub, in Southwark. Professor Krohn also gave a paper at the Leeds International Medieval Congress before flying to Vienna, where she met with the director of the Kunstkammner and Schatzkammer to consult on a major planned renovation of the Schatzkammer, or Imperial Treasury. Back at BGC, Deborah has taken over the position of chair of Academic Programs from Andrew Morrall.

In September, Paul Stirton gave a special talk and tour of “Designing Through the Wall: Cyan in the 1990s”, at Poster House. He shared his knowledge of the history of German print and poster making from the Bauhaus through the 1990s, and he signed copies of his book Jan Tschichold and the New Typography: Graphic Design Between the World Wars.

Aaron Glass won the Michael M. Ames Award for Innovative Museum Anthropology, presented by the Council for Museum Anthropology (CMA), for his exhibition “The Story Box: Franz Boas, George Hunt and the Making of Anthropology”. This prize is awarded to individuals for an innovative project in museum anthropology, evaluated on creativity, timeliness, and depth. He also launched a new website for the exhibition as part of an international project to create a new Critical Edition, in both print and digital media, that reassembles widely distributed materials.