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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).


Linda Horvitz Roth is Director of Curatorial Special Projects and Charles C. and Eleanor Lamont Cunningham Curator of European Decorative Arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. She has worked at the Wadsworth Atheneum for 40 years and oversees some 10,000 objects. Since joining the Atheneum’s curatorial department in 1980, Roth has organized several exhibitions, including J. Pierpont Morgan, Collector: European Decorative Arts from the Wadsworth Atheneum (1987); Theater, Dance, and Porcelain in the Eighteenth Century (2004–2005); and Morgan: Mind of the Collector (Wadsworth Atheneum, 2017). In 2000 she published French Eighteenth-Century Porcelain at the Wadsworth Atheneum: the J. Pierpont Morgan Collection, and is also the author of several articles on 18th- and 19th-century French porcelain. Roth was co-curator of the 2015 re-installation of European art at the Wadsworth.

Roth earned her BA in 1976 from Bowdoin College, where joined as a board member in 1992 and continues to serve as a board trustee emerita. At Bowdoin, she was a founding member of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art Advisory Committee, serving as chairwoman for several years, and as a member of the Bowdoin College board’s Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, and Facilities committees. Roth holds an M.A. in Art History from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.