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).

Jeffrey Moser is Assistant Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University. A specialist in the artistic and intellectual history of China during the Song-Yuan era (tenth to fourteenth centuries AD), his research focuses on the ways in which sensory engagement with material things transformed historical approaches to the challenges of making, reasoning, and knowing. His interest in the catalytic potency of objects extends from the historical dimensions of his research to the contemporary challenges of university and museum education. Prior to joining the faculty at Brown in 2015, Moser taught at McGill University and Zhejiang University. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Nominal Things: Bronzes, Schemata, and Hermeneutics of Facture in Northern Song China. His research articles have appeared in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, and elsewhere. During his time at Bard Graduate Center, Moser will be focusing on his new project Excavating China’s First Archaeologist, a micro-historical study of a prominent Northern Song (960–1127) clan of scholar-officials and antiquarians based on the material remains of their recently uncovered cemetery.