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).

Katherine Purcell, joint managing director of Wartski, is a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and chairman of the Society of Jewellery Historians. She specializes in French nineteenth-century jewelry and works of art. She has written a number of articles for The Antique Collector, Apollo, and The Magazine Antiques on subjects including the Parisian jewelry firm Falize, the master of Art Nouveau René Lalique, and the influence of Japanese art on Western jewelry and goldsmiths’ work. She has contributed to the books Master Jewellers (Thames and Hudson, 1990), Dictionnaire International du Bijou (Regard, 1998), and Bejewelled by Tiffany, 1837–1987 (Yale, 2006), focusing on Tiffany and Paris. Her definitive study Falize: A Dynasty of Jewelers was published in 1999 by Thames and Hudson and her translation of Henri Vever’s three-volume French Jewelry of the Nineteenth Century was printed in 2001. Among the exhibitions Purcell has curated for Wartski are French Jewellery of the Nineteenth Century (2001), Fabergé and the Russian Jewellers (2006), Japonisme from Falize to Fabergé (2011), and Fabergé—A Private Collection (2012). She is currently organizing an exhibition entitled From Function to Fantasy: The Brooch, which will take place at Wartski in October 2025 and marks the firm’s 160th anniversary.