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).

Georgios Boudalis has studied fine arts in Thessaloniki and conservation of art in Florence and Athens, specializing in book conservation. Since 2000, he has worked in book conservation at the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki, Greece. In 2005, he completed his PhD at the University of the Arts in London on the evolution of the Byzantine bookbinding tradition from the end of the Byzantine Empire until the early 18th century. He has worked in major monastic libraries, such as those of Mount Athos and St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, where he had the chance to get closer insight into the features of the bookbinding traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean and their interconnections from the 10th to the 18th centuries. He has taught practical and theoretical courses on the history of the bookbinding traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean with special focus on the Byzantine and post-Byzantine one. His research aims to provide a better understanding of the evolution and making of the codex book in all its structural and decorative features, the influences between the different bookbinding traditions, as well as the influences of other crafts. He is currently completing a book on the endbands of the bookbindings of the Eastern Mediterranean. Boudalis will be a Research Fellow at the Bard Graduate Center from February through May 2015. While in residence at the BGC, he will continue his research on how different crafts have been assimilated into the making of the early codex book.