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).

Annissa Malvoisin.

Bard Graduate Center (BGC) is honored to introduce Annissa Malvoisin, the inaugural BGC/Brooklyn Museum Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Arts of Africa. According to Susan Weber, BGC’s founder and director, the new fellowship represents the opportunity to work with an outstanding emerging scholar whose research and experience will benefit both BGC and the Brooklyn Museum. Weber continued, “I’m delighted to join with Anne Pasternak and the curatorial team at the Brooklyn Museum in welcoming Annissa Malvoisin to New York.”

Malvoisin, a PhD candidate in the University of Toronto’s Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, specializes in Egyptology, Nubian studies, and museum studies. This summer, she will complete her doctoral thesis, which investigates ceramic production and trade in Meroitic Nubia and its far-reaching networks that potentially link the Nile Valley to Iron Age Western African cultures. She examines these trade networks by piecing together ceramic object biographies and identifying artistic similarities between them in order to better understand Nubian collections in North American museums. Malvoisin earned a master of museum studies from the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto and incorporates museum theory and practice into her academic and professional work. She has developed expertise as a museum professional at the Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives and at the Royal Ontario Museum in the Department of Arts and Culture: Global Africa and the Department of Ancient Egypt and Nubia.

Malvoisin begins her two-year appointment at BGC and the Brooklyn Museum in September. She will assist the curator of African arts at the Brooklyn Museum in all aspects of the installation of its renowned African arts collection, scheduled to open in a new gallery in 2025. In particular, she will focus on interpreting historical African art through a contemporary lens. In addition, Malvoisin will curate dossier-style collection installations at BGC and the Brooklyn Museum; participate in planning a “state of the field” symposium on African art at Bard Graduate Center to be held in 2023 in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the Museum’s groundbreaking exhibition of 1,500 works of African art; and teach one graduate-level course each year on the arts of Africa at Bard Graduate Center.