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).

Published biannually by the University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Bard Graduate Center, West 86th (formerly published as Studies in the Decorative Arts) reaffirms the BGC’s commitment to expanding the conversation regarding the content, meaning, and significance of objects. West 86th will continue to present the type of material and scholarship that was found in Studies in the Decorative Arts, but it will also focus on the wider crossroads where scholarship in the decorative arts meets design history and material culture studies. The journal is committed, above all, to the highest standards of scholarship; it is also committed to enlarging the traditional canon to feature research into the material culture of all periods and regions.

West 86th aims to bring interested scholars together. There is no narrow manifesto, and no methodological axe to grind. Both the specialist and the professional outsider should feel comfortable in a place reserved for good scholarship and profound ideas about the objects that surround us.

Forthcoming issues of West 86th will feature new scholarship from Debora Silverman on the ties between Belgian Art Nouveau and imperialism in the Congo, Anthony Cutler on the art of working ivory in the tenth and the twentieth centuries, Pat Kirkham on the Saul Bass/Alfred Hitchcock collaboration, Nick Pearce on one of China’s first art exhibitions, Lourdes Font on the early career of Christian Dior, Ben Kafka on Roland Barthes and paperwork, and Miruna Achim on the origins of antiquarianism in Mexico City. West 86th is available in print and online and will include scholarly articles, review articles, primary source translations, book, catalog, and exhibition reviews, research inquiries, letters to the editor, and supplementary digital material integral to articles. —- Daniel Lee, Managing Editor

Visit West 86th Online.

Read an interview with Paul Stirton, Editor-in-Chief.