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).

The latest issue of West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History and Material Culture (vol 2, no 23, Fall-Winter 2016) is now available through the University of Chicago Press. For only the second time the issue is devoted to a singular theme: the Material before Modernism. Guest edited by Roland Betancourt (Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton; University of California, Irvine), the volume features three articles exploring how meaning accrues to materials over time and use the examples of marble, gold, and crystal to delve into the historiography of different historical periods. Betancourt writes in his introduction:

“Together these three interventions contribute to an understanding of medium as the event of manifestation, harnessing those moments where transparency, abstraction, or formlessness gives way to the revelation of form in momentary flashes of representation.”1

Explore the full table of contents here and pick up a print or digital copy online, from your library, or our store.

[1] Roland Betancourt, “Introduction: The Medium before Modernism,” West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 23, no. 2 (Fall–Winter 2016): 166.