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).

Aaron Glass attended the joint Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association and the Canadian Anthropological Society in Vancouver, BC, on November 20-24. Here, he presented “‘A Wealth of Thought’: Museum Collections, Indigenous Ontologies, and Franz Boas’s Anthropology of Art.” In addition, there was a panel exhibit installation of Glass’s exhibition, T he Story Box: Franz Boas, George Hunt and the Making of Anthropology, and a film screening of “Opening the Story Box: Reflections on George Hunt and Franz Boas,” the short film produced for the 2019 BGC exhibition. T he Story Box: Franz Boas, George Hunt and the Making of Anthropology, was the winner of the 2019 Michael Ames Prize for Innovative Museum Anthropology, from the Council of Museum Anthropology.

In September, Ivan Gaskell published “For the Union Dead: Memorial Hall at Harvard University, and the Exclusion of the Confederate Fallen,” in Philosophical Perspectives on Ruins, Monuments, and Memorials, edited by Jeanette Bicknell, Jennifer Judkins, and Carolyn Korsmeyer (Routledge). He published two articles in philosophy journals in October: “A Role for Empathy in Decolonizing Aesthetics: Unlikely Lessons from Roger Fry,” in Contemporary Aesthetics 17; and “Race, Aesthetics, and Shelter: Toward a Postcolonial Historical Taxonomy of Buildings,” in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 77: 4. Also in October, he gave the formal response to Frank Boardman’s paper, “Three Histories of Art: On the Advantages and Disadvantages of a Style History of Art” at the annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics in Phoenix, Arizona.

In early December, Artnet published an article interviewing Jennifer Mass titled Ever Wonder How Experts Find Long-Lost Masterpieces? We Asked Top Sleuths in the Trade to Share Their Secrets. She, alongside other experts in the field, helped to explain how to identify and authenticate masterpieces.