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).

Jilly Traganou is Associate Professor of Spatial Design Studies at the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons The New School for Design. She will be a Research Fellow at the Bard Graduate Center from September 2014 through June 2015. Traganou is the author of The Tokaido Road: Traveling and Representation in Edo And Meiji Japan (Routledge Curzon, 2004), and a co-editor with Miodrag Mitrasinovic of Travel, Space, Architecture (Ashgate, 2009; travelspacearchitecture.com). Traganou has published in the Design and Culture, Design Issues, Journal of Design History, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Larchitecture daujourdhui, and has chapters in Critical Cities Vol. 02 (Myrdle Court Press, 2010), Global Design History (Routledge, 2011), Design as Future Making (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014), Iconic Designs (forthcoming by Bloomsbury), Cartographic Japan (forthcoming by Chicago University Press), and other books. In 2012 she was guest-editor of a special issue in the Journal of Design History titled “Design Histories of the Olympic Games” (25:3), and in 2014 she co-curated with Izumi Kuroishi the exhibition “Design and Disaster: Kon Wajiro’s Modernologio” at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons (currently on tour in Macau). Traganou has also co-organized and participated in practice-based collaborative research projects in critical design pedagogy (such as Spatial Imaginary and Multiple Belonging: The Open House Workshop with Eleni Tzirtzilaki and Lydia Matthews, Athens 2008). She is currently finalizing a book titled Designing the Olympics (forthcoming by Routledge), and her new research project focuses on designerly ways of dissenting. Traganou currently serves as Book Reviews Editor of the Journal of Design History (Oxford University Press).