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 center to house BGC’s Study Collection is planned for 8 West 86th Street.

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).

Dana Katz received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and her PhD from the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Haifa Center for Mediterranean History and held a Lady Davis Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Medieval Academy of America (Olivia Remie Constable Award), and Garden and Landscape Studies at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. She has participated in international seminars organized by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London and funded by the Getty Foundation, as well as the Bibliotheca Hertziana–Max Planck Institute for Art History. She is currently working on a monograph on a historical landscape in the medieval Mediterranean, the royal parklands of the 12th-century Norman kings of Sicily, which she will be completing this year at BGC. Her work has been published in the Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, Convivium: Exchanges and Interactions in the Arts of Medieval Europe, Byzantium, and the Mediterranean, and most recently in the International Journal of Islamic Architecture. In addition to specializing in medieval Sicily, her research interests include Islamic art and architecture, Crusader art, museology, and the formation of modern collections of Islamic and medieval art.