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).

Marilyn J. Friedland is a collector and patron of the arts. She is a member of the Wrightsman Fellows and Visiting Committee of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as a member of the Friends of Asian Art at The Met. She is a Director of The Wallace Collection in America, a Sustaining Fellow at The Frick Collection, a member of the Association of Fellows at The Morgan Library and Museum, a benefactor of The American Ceramic Circle, a patron of the Metropolitan Opera, a supporter of the American Associates of the National Theatre, Lincoln Center, Asia Society, the American Friends of The Shanghai Museum, and a former long-term member of the Museum Council at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University, where she endowed the Friedland Family Acquisitions Fund and the Rare Book Room in the Music Department at Lincoln Hall. She has supported the publication of European Porcelain: In The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Jeffrey Munger and Elizabeth Sullivan, Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts by Wolf Burchard, Sir Richard Wallace: Connoisseur, Collector & Philanthropist by Suzanne Higgott and David Lindo, Everyday Rococo: Madame de Pompadour and Sèvres Porcelain by Rosalind Savill, and Rubens: The Two Great Landscapes by Lucy Davis.

Marilyn J. Friedland received her BA from Cornell University and her MEd from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.