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Bard Graduate Center is an advanced graduate research institute in New York City dedicated to the cultural histories of the material world. Our MA and PhD degree programs, Gallery exhibitions, research initiatives, scholarly publications and public programs explore new ways of thinking about decorative arts, design history, and material culture.

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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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Museo del Tessuto’s courtyard, formerly the Campolmi Textile Mill

In January 2019, I travelled to Venice, Florence, and their hinterlands to conduct research for my Qualifying Paper, “Lacing a Nation: Renaissance Lace Revivalism in Post-Unification Italy.” The QP explores how Renaissance lace revivalism in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Italy functioned as a form of mimetic craft. More specifically, my research asks how revival lacework is implicated in a cultural nationalist agenda; how a socially-feminized craft practice produces and reproduces gender and class structures; and how a women’s textile craft is interwoven with fashioning a body politic.

With support from Bard Graduate Center and the Bonnie Cashin Fund, I conducted archival and collections research in various museum and libraries such as the Palazzo Mocenigo Museum and Centre for Studies of the History of Textiles and Costumes and the Museo del Merletto (formerly the Burano Lace School). While in Florence, I journeyed to the Museo del Tessuto in Prato, where I was greeted by Daniela Degl’Innocenti, the museum’s conservator. The convergence of Italian history and Italian textile history is evident in the very site of the Museo del Tessuto, which was a site of active textile production from the early fourteenth century until 1994 (most recently as the Campolmi Textile Mill).

In collections storage, Daniela showed me objects from the Suardi Collection, which is comprised of more than 1500 Renaissance and Renaissance revival laces and embroideries, and other textiles. The collection is named after Countess Antonia Ponti Suardi (1860-1938) who founded the Suardi School in the late nineteenth century. In addition to reproducing Renaissance laces, Italian women enrolled at the school reframed Renaissance embroideries in contemporary fabrics. Daniela showed me examples of both, some of which still have their original sale tags and prices.

My Italian sojourn has left me with an abundance of material to interpret and incorporate into my Qualifying Paper. My visit to the Museo del Tessuto is one such example, which provided a first-hand encounter with the legacy of Italian women’s Renaissance revival textile work.

— Clara Puton, MA student