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).

Charisse Pearlina Weston (born 1988, Houston, TX) is a Brooklyn-based artist and writer whose practice is grounded in a deep material investigation of poetics and the autobiographical to explore the delicate intimacies and reticent poetics underlying Black life. She received a BA in art history from the University of North Texas in 2010, an MS in modern art: history, curating and criticism from the University of Edinburgh’s College of Art in 2011, and an MFA in studio Art, with a critical theory emphasis, from the University of Irvine in 2019. She participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2019–2020 independent study program. Her work has been exhibited in group shows at notable venues, including Contemporary Art Museum Houston and Bard College, and in solo presentations at Abrons Art Center, Project Row Houses, Recess, the Moody Center of the Arts at Rice University, and the Queens Museum (forthcoming). She has received awards from notable institutions, including the Artadia Fund for the Arts (2015, Houston), the Dallas Museum of Art’s Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Award (2014), and the Graham Foundation (2021). She was a 2019 Dedalus Foundation Fellow in Painting and Sculpture and, in 2021, a Museum of Art and Design (MAD) Artist Fellow and MAD’s 2021 Burke Prize recipient.