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).

Abigail Balbale gave a talk entitled “Contesting the Caliphate: Ibn Mardanīsh’s fight with the Almohads in Twelfth-Century Iberia” on April 14 at the University of Pennsylvania. She presented a paper entitled “Ruptures and Continuities from the Umayyad to Abbasid Caliphate” at a conference on “The Global Eighth Century” at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World on April 15–16.

Aaron Glass has been named a 2016–17 Getty Scholar. Read more here. He has also received a grant from the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe to hold a Franz Boas Critical Edition project meeting at their campus during the 2016–17 academic year.

Ivan Gaskell presented a paper entitled “Art and Ethics: The Ethical Significance of the Capacities Engaged by Aesthetic Judgment” at the annual meeting of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association held in San Francisco March 30–April 3. On April 16, at the American Society for Aesthetics Eastern Division Meeting in Philadelphia, he participated in a panel on Art History and Museums.

Peter N. Miller published short pieces on antiquarianism and material culture in The Chronicle of Higher Education and on the intellectual history of academic administration in Perspectives of the American Historical Association. He also gave a paper on Peiresc and jewelry history at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Boston.

Stephanie Su has received the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellowship from the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures in Norwich, England. She will continue her current research project on colors in Meiji Japanese prints and textiles with the Institute and the British Museum.

Ittai Weinryb’s book, The Bronze Object in the Middle Ages, has just been published by Cambridge University Press. His edited volume Ex Voto: Votive Giving Across Cultures, has just appeared as Cultural Histories of the Material World 6.

Catherine Whalen led the session “The Material Culture of Leadership: A Workshop with Objects, Images, and Texts” and co-moderated “When Stuff Matters: How Objects of Controversy Can Spark a Civic Engagement” at the Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting on April 9.

Catherine Whalen, Ivan Gaskell, PhD student Yenna Chan, and 2nd-year master’s student Kaitlin McClure represented Bard Graduate Center at the meeting of the Northeastern Public Humanities Consortium at Brown University, April 22-23.