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).

Henry Colburn earned a PhD in classical art and archaeology from the University of Michigan. His research focuses on the art and archaeology of ancient Iran and on the regions of the Near East, Eastern Mediterranean, and Central Asia that interacted with Iran prior to the advent of Islam. His first book on this subject, Archaeology of Empire in Achaemenid Egypt, was published earlier this year. He has held fellowships at the Harvard Art Museums, the Getty Research Institute, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and taught at the University of California, Irvine; the University of Southern California, the University of California, Riverside; and the Cooper Union. He is also a research associate of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan by virtue of his ongoing work on the seals of the Persepolis Fortification Archive. His current project is to create a new edition of Mikhail Rostovtzeff’s 1935 essay Dura and the Problem of Parthian Art. Rostovtzeff saw Parthian art as a cogent and vibrant phenomenon, rather than a degraded form of Greek art, and Colburn’s new edition will update this crucial essay and make it available to a new generation of scholars while at the same time demonstrating how it remains the best lens through which to view this fascinating material.