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).

Patricia Orpilla is a visual artist who uses an interdisciplinary process to create paintings, prints, and textiles. Her recent work uses print to explore the indexical relationship of weaving to language. By working in an interdisciplinary format, she draws relationships between systems that are materially or metaphorically interdependent. She is interested in the potential of material metaphors to engage questions about authorship, industry, and ideology. She references various archives for fingerprints of these narratives—weaving patterns, religious texts, or ethnographers’ notes become her source material. Recently, she was a resident artist at the Museum of Arts and Design (New York). She completed a fellowship in the summer of 2021 at the Beinecke Library where she researched ephemera such as maps and religious texts related to late nineteenth-century US-Philippines relations. She received her MFA from the Yale University School of Art in painting and printmaking. She has recently shown her work at Jeffrey Deitch, Kiosk Gallery, Front / Space, Beggar’s Table, Vulpes Bastille, and H & R Block Artspace. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.