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).

Beth H. Piatote is Associate Professor of Native American Studies and affiliated faculty in the Department of Linguistics and the American Studies program at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include Native American/Aboriginal literature and federal Indian law in the United States and Canada, American literature, and Nez Perce language and literature. Her first book, Domestic Subjects: Gender, Citizenship, and Law in Native American Literature (Yale UP, 2013) received an MLA book prize, and her scholarly essays and short fiction have appeared in journals such as American Quarterly, American Literary History, Kenyon Review, and SAIL: Studies in American Indian Literatures, as well as various anthologies. She is co-editor, with Chadwick Allen, of The Society of American Indians and Its Legacies, a joint special issue of American Indian Quarterly and SAIL (summer 2013). Piatote received her PhD in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University. Currently, she is completing a volume of short fiction, Beading Lesson and Other Stories, and is at work on a second scholarly monograph, A Sense of Autonomy: Native American Literature and the Legal Imaginary, which is the focus of her work at Bard Graduate Center. She is also working with the Department of Linguistics at UC Berkeley to create an on-line dictionary and text corpus in Nez Perce, and is committed to indigenous language continuity and revitalization efforts.