As an institute for advanced study of the cultural history of the material world, Bard Graduate Center is defined by the way it relates teaching, research, and exhibitions.

Photo by Da Ping Luo.

At the center of our field of vision is the material world—the ways it has shaped human experience and relationships in the past, and how the past informs the present and future in new or unexpected ways. Bard Graduate Center shares an intellectual foundation with innovative and transdisciplinary historical schools that emerged in the early twentieth century. Our mission is to develop new approaches to social and cultural history informed by material things as well as by textual sources. Even further back lies the work of collectors, connoisseurs, and antiquarians who were among the first scholars to take objects seriously as both evidentiary and aesthetic documents. These lineages are relevant for our study of all regions of the world, and underpin our broad global and chronological scope. Graduate education in small group seminars is informed by faculty research. Many of our exhibitions are also faculty-initiated and developed through dedicated research seminars and direct student participation.

Teaching – Research – Exhibitions

Bard Graduate Center’s encyclopedic breadth is articulated along the axes of geography, chronology, materials, and methods. Faculty members are drawn from the fields of anthropology, archaeology, art history, history, materials science, and philosophy, while our students come from an even wider range of undergraduate majors. Visiting researchers, co-instructors, and speakers connect students and faculty with colleagues and like-minded institutions around the world. Our curriculum offers unique, hands-on opportunities to study an array of material culture in a variety of settings. An expanding Study Collection makes diverse items of global material culture available for close examination, research, and classroom use. Relationships with curatorial and conservation colleagues in New York museums (our extended “Cultural Sciences Campus”) enable onsite visits for classes and individual students. BGC has partnered in the creation and implementation of exhibitions with major institutions, including the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Our summer travel program, often anchored by international partnerships in France and Greece, augments the curriculum with site-specific visits, research, and first-hand experience in collections and archaeological field methods. This expansive vision is supported by two departments that prepare our students to engage in widely accessible forms of scholarship and that help extend BGC’s footprint well beyond West 86th Street: Digital Humanities/Exhibitions, which coordinates the production of digital research and exhibition projects; and Public Humanities + Research, which programs an ambitious roster of visiting fellowships, lectures, symposia, gallery tours, workshops, performances, and events.

Combining the freedom and focus of a specialist institute with the teaching, research, and gallery resources of larger academic and museum institutions, Bard Graduate Center integrates object-based learning with cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary inquiry.

Welcome Letter from the Director

Bard Graduate Center opened its doors in the fall of 1993. Early on I expressed my conviction that “the aspirations and habits of civilization are revealed through the decorative arts, which are fundamental to the lives of all individuals,” and my hope that the Center would help “advance the recognition of the decorative arts as one of the primary expressions of human achievement.” Since then, Bard Graduate Center has more than fulfilled these original aspirations, uniting innovative degree programs with path-breaking museum exhibitions to create a new context for the study of a significant portion of the artistic heritage of human history. As we have added new faculty and new foci, we have also broadened our horizons and our self description. Our even more ambitious aim now is to become the leading center for the study of the cultural history of the material world. Bard Graduate Center’s first three decades were truly amazing. And all of us here—faculty, staff, and students—eagerly look forward to what the next decades will bring. We hope you will want to join us.

Susan Weber
Founder and Director

Areas of Special Strength

Within our global and transhistorical focus on the material world, our current faculty resources and worldwide institutional partnerships make us particularly robust in ten overlapping areas of special strength: Each of these areas are flexible and draw on the changing interests and expertise of our permanent faculty members, as well as postdoctoral fellows and visiting instructors from our New York “Cultural Sciences Campus.” They are reflected in course offerings as well as recurring faculty-programmed research events. Rather than constituting defined or official tracks through our curriculum, these ten areas of special strength offer our students productive points of reference for a broad exploration of history and culture through their tangible and material traces.

MA/PhD

Africa and African Diaspora

MA/PhD

Chinese Decorative Arts and Material Culture

MA/PhD

Cultural Encounter, Colonialism, and Indigeneity

MA/PhD

Early Modern Europe

MA/PhD

Expansive Archaeologies

MA/PhD

Global Middle Ages

MA/PhD

Modern Design and Craft

MA/PhD

Museums, Collecting, Conservation

MA/PhD

New York and American Material Culture

MA/PhD

Textiles, Dress, and Fashion

Americana Redux: Materializing Multiculturalism in the Postwar United States

This course investigates how individuals and groups have deployed material culture to challenge, redefine, and expand constructs of citizenship and belonging in the United States of America. Our pivot point is the American Revolution Bicentennial of 1976. This event marked the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain and the onset of the Revolutionary War, culminating in the formation of the USA. Debates over the impact, meaning, and legacy of this history are longstanding and persist to this day, ranging from celebrations of selected ideals to radical critiques of their failed implementation. We will also examine earlier commemorations, such the Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, and plans for America250 in 2026, announced as “the most comprehensive and inclusive celebration in our country’s history” amid the high stakes of contemporary politics. Why is the USA’s 1976 Bicentennial particularly useful for thinking about diverse expressions of object-based cultural nationalism, past and present? More so than prior commemorations, this event—and its counter-events—offered an unprecedented forum for activists reckoning with social injustice and political marginalization across national, regional, and local stages. Advocates of civil rights, Black Power, women’s and gay liberation, the American Indian and Chicano movements, and the New Left mobilized the rhetoric and symbolism of the revolutionary era to contest, redefine, and lay claim to its history. Material culture was an extraordinarily powerful medium for their practices. Yet, it has been understudied. Modes for integrating material culture, political aims, and social performance culture ranged widely. They encompassed protests, parades, and festivals; theater, film, television, and music; fashion and costuming; painting, sculpture, photography, and graphic arts; craft and design; books and magazines; advertising and consumer culture; projects by government organizations, museums, libraries, and schools; memorials; and the list goes on. These initiatives gained special momentum in the distinctive circumstances of the 1970s, including economic instability, contentious immigration debates, and widespread political disillusionment in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. The history of the postwar United States and the emergent discourse of multiculturalism—and its critics—are fundamental contexts for this course. This seminar will provide students with opportunities to engage with objects and topics of their choice. Class participation is essential; field trips may be required. 3 credits.