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).

Materials Days take Bard Graduate Center students to makers’ studios all over the city for hands-on experience. Recent visits have included glassblowing, bookmaking, letterpress printing, and jewelry making. After attending a silver ring-making workshop at Brooklyn Metal Works and a letterpress workshop at the Arm Letterpress, PhD student Michael Assis offered the following reflection:

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Silver Ring-making Workshop at Brooklyn Metal Works

Johannes Gutenberg, traditionally known as the inventor of the printing press, began his professional career as a goldsmith. During spring 2018, MA and PhD students engaged with both media in hands-on Materials Days workshops. The first of these was a silver ring-making workshop, at Brooklyn Metal Works, in which students learned how to fabricate their own rings using traditional jewelry techniques. The second was a letterpress workshop, at the Arm Letterpress, in which students printed their own designs using a Vandercook printing press.

The recent years have seen a surge in academic writings that acknowledge the intrinsic relationship between making and knowing, which has been a staple at Bard Graduate Center. The meaning of materials and the processes that involved their manipulation are often not straightforward when mediated through the sources, both textual and material, that are available to us today. The appreciation of making as a means of generating knowledge does not only apply to figures of earlier historic periods, it allows us researchers today to get closer to a contemporary comprehension of the physical and technical processes that guided intellectuals and craftsmen. Craft (or making) can become a means of investigating history no less than of investigating nature.

Hands-on engagement has the potential to expose new avenues of thought and understanding. These MaterialsDays have certainly encouraged me to think differently about my research interests concerning Italian renaissance goldsmithing and metalwork. The fine metalwork that is involved in letterpress and the inextricable processes of imprinting that are involved in jewelry-making were made much more evident through my participation in these days. Consequently, the understanding that these arts, and many others, are linked through practice and theory alike was elucidated through the workshops. That Johannes Gutenberg, for instance, began his professional career as a goldsmith is now immensely clearer, and poses more questions for us as researchers regarding the underlying relationships between the various arts.

—Michael Assis, PhD student