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).

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Despotiko. Photo Courtesy of Madeline Warner.

A big part of our pedagogy is the encounter with the thing. Yes, there are texts, there are guides, but what we want to give our students is the ability to stand before an object and know how to try to understand it. Up til now, we have lacked one key part of this experience, the ability to expose all our students to things in the ground, before they are taken out and made into objects. In summer 2022—Covid willing—this will change. BGC is launching its first field school in archaeology and material culture on the Cycladic island of Antiparos. Working across a small channel on the adjacent island of Despotiko, students will participate in a project that is excavating and rebuilding using ancient craft ways the sixth-century Sanctuary of Apollo.

Paros and Antiparos exported marble to centers like Athens—some of the earliest statues from the Acropolis were made of Parian marble—and current work on the site bears directly on our knowledge of the material’s enduring cultural significance. Professor Caspar Meyer, who has been working on the site since 2017, will lead the field school. Since its discovery in the early 2000s, the sanctuary on Despotiko has produced an uninterrupted string of finds, including votive deposits under the floor of the temple and domestic buildings pre-dating the sacred structures. The site has become key to understanding the connections between seafaring, craft, and religion that shaped Greek culture for centuries.

The field school will be available to all BGC first year students as a free optional add-on to the existing BGC travel program to Berlin and Paris. Those wishing to participate will fly to Athens, where Professor Meyer will guide them around important ancient sites for two days. They will then travel by ferry to Antiparos for 10 days of work and study. Mornings will be devoted to the dig. But in the evening, discussions based around readings led by Professor Meyer and a second BGC faculty member will make this field school into the capstone event of MA Year One.

The purpose of a field school is to take students out of the classroom so they can see how what they have learned there fits—and does not fit—into the world that we encounter. Excavation and conversation make powerful teachers, and teaching is what we are all committed to.