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).

Graduate Internship:
I completed an internship with Professor Deborah Krohn at Bard Graduate Center in Summer 2020. I worked on various research projects related to her upcoming exhibition, Staging the Table in Europe, 1500-1800. Since pandemic travel restrictions are loosening, I will be interning at the Medici Archive Project in Florence, Italy, this fall.

Digital Project Requirement:
I completed the digital requirement in Caspar Meyer’s seminar, Nomadic Material Culture: Western Eurasia in the first Millennium BC, in spring 2020 and created a visual inventory of the horse costumes in Pazyryk Kurgan No. 5 using WordPress. The website contextualized the location and type of horses buried, arguing that the Pazyryk horses formed an intimate relationship with their riders in life and in death. Further, their costumes’ designs and materials reflected the animals’ societal contribution and metaphysical association with their human rider in the afterlife.

What was the value of this project for you?
I technically completed my digital project in Nomadic Material Culture when I made a WordPress site. However, I also completed a Qualifying Project Exhibition with a corresponding SketchUp animation, which was extremely valuable to me and my professional goals to eventually curate exhibitions. When I came to BGC two years ago, I had never used SketchUp before. By the end of the program, I produced an animation of my mock exhibition that consisted of two floors complete with objects and interactive elements that materialized the philosophy of scent in Renaissance Italy. Through SketchUp, I was able to situate my argument visually and experiment with how best to materialize notions of scent in a physical space. The mock exhibition enabled me to highlight numerous objects directly rather than reference them in passing in a text-based document. This allowed me to draw out their specific sensory-based histories, many of which have never been written about, for people to smell and consider in galleries designed to bring the social life of Renaissance Italy to twenty-first century New York.

Qualifying Paper:
Perfumed Air and Scented Bodies: Materializing the Philosophy of Scent in Sixteenth-Century Padua

Next Steps:
Although I am flexible, I am mostly applying to positions in the curatorial field, libraries and archives, as well as auction houses. I am also looking into perfume industries and commercial businesses that work with scent and fragrance. Within the United States, I am applying to positions along the Northeast Coast and as far west as Chicago. Outside the U.S., I am considering all possibilities.