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).

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from left: Taco Dibbits, Nina Stritzler-Levine, and Peter Miller

Marking the occasion of the BGC’s twentieth birthday, this symposium, which took place on November 8, 2013, examined the elements of practice and theory that have come to define the Bard Graduate Center. An array of speakers from across the national, disciplinary, and institutional spectrum put the achievements of the past twenty years in context and outlined paths into the future.

After a welcome from Director and Founder, Susan Weber, the morning session concentrated on issues relevant to the future of exhibitions, examining display and interpretation, publishing and the digital challenge, and how philosophy might inform museum practice. Speakers during the morning session included Nina Stritzler-Levine, Director, Bard Graduate Center Gallery/Gallery Publications; Taco Dibbits, Director of Collections, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Architecture & Design, and Director, Research and Development, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA); Jill Shaw, Co-General Editor, Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative (OSCI), and Research Associate, Department of Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture, The Art Institute of Chicago; Garry Hagberg, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics, Bard College; and Ivan Gaskell, Professor, Curator and Head of the Focus Project, Bard Graduate Center.

The afternoon focused on the role of the research institute, ways of defining good research, research as a way of life, and the necessity of research for teaching. Speakers during the afternoon session included Peter N. Miller, Dean and Professor, Bard Graduate Center; Norton Batkin, Vice President and Dean of Graduate Studies, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Art History, and Director of Philosophy Program, Bard College; Joachim Nettelbeck, Former Secretary of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin); Harriet Zuckerman, Professor Emerita of Sociology, Columbia University, and Former Senior Vice President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Michael Shanks, Professor of Classics and Classical Archaeology, Stanford University; and Larry Wolff, Silver Professor of History and Director, Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, New York University.