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).

Ivan Gaskell gave two lectures in February at Uppsala University, Sweden, at the invitation of the Office for History of Science, and the Department of Literature and Rhetoric.

Aaron Glass will be presenting at the Getty Research Institute’s Scholars Program Symposium on Art and Anthropology on May 2–3. His presentation is entitled “Drawing on Museums: Early Visual Fieldnotes by Franz Boas and the Anthropology of Art.” He has also been invited to give a paper, “Reassembling the Social Organization: Anthropological Typology meets Indigenous Ontology in the Franz Boas Critical (Digital) Edition,” at the Politics of Classification conference, sponsored by the Department of Information Studies, UCLA, on May 5.

Deborah Krohn gave a lecture entitled “Kitchen and Table in Renaissance Europe” at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania on March 2.

Michele Majer participated in the conference, New Perspectives on Parisian Haute Couture, from 1850 until Today, held in Paris March 24–25, along with Michelle Tolini Finamore (PhD, 2010) and PhD student William DeGregorio. Maude Bass-Krueger (PhD, 2016) was a co-convener.

Jessica Walthew attended two conferences in March: “Illumination of Material Culture: A Symposium on Computational Photography and Reflectance Transformation Imaging” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Computer Applications in Archaeology meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, where she presented on the conservation imaging work that she is doing as part of her Andrew W. Mellon “Cultures of Conservation” Fellowship.