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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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Applications for our MA program may be submitted until March 1, 2025





About

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).


Jeffrey Collins contributed the concluding chapter to A Companion to Early Modern Rome, 1492-1692, published this month by Brill. Intended for scholars and students across the academy, the volume’s thirty essays explore the resurgent papal capital in its religious, political, demographic, administrative, intellectual, and aesthetic aspects. Collins’s chapter, “Sites and Sightseers: Rome through Foreign Eyes,” studies the city as a locus of cultural and artistic pilgrimage, asking how Romans responded to the stream of curious outsiders, and how their fresh perspectives fostered new tastes, new art forms, and new institutions.

Deborah Krohn was interviewed as part of the BBC radio documentary, “Street Cry Goodbyes,” focusing on the cries of Britain’s street vendors, whose distinctive musical sounds are steadily becoming a phenomenon of the past as open-air city markets disappear. In March, at the Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference in Toronto, she presented a paper, “Confluences and Divergences: A Life of Practice, Praxis, and Process,” as part of the panel “From Techne to Metatechne: Sessions in Honor of Robert Williams.”

Andrew Morrall gave a talk at the Art Institute of Chicago, on March 12, entitled “The Inner and Outer Worlds of the Renaissance Art Cabinet.” This month also saw the publication of his article, “Art, Geometry, and the Imagery of Ruins in the Sixteenth-Century German Kunstkabinett,” in Imagery and Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe. Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Chipps Smith, edited by Catherine Ingersoll, Alisa McCusker, and Jessica Weiss (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019).