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).

Our continuing series features the spring 2016 course:

The American Civil War: Art and Material Culture

In Robert Lowell’s words, “The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier / grow slimmer and younger each year.” The Civil War remains divisive, subject to myth-making as well as historical interpretation. In one sense, it has never ended. By looking at the role material culture and visual representation played in the war, and continue to play in its remembrance, this seminar is trying to come to terms with the legacy of the conflict, and with the relationship between collective memory and history.

We are assembling material for an online exhibition. We examine ten themes, one each week. They include “Slavery Before and During the War,” “Raising Regiments and Companies,” and “Care of the Sick, Wounded, and Captured.” Within each theme there are five topics. Each student researches one topic each week, choosing an object as the focus of discussion. Following presentation in class, they post their texts on the course wiki. They can continue to revise their postings until the end of the semester. The students’ choice of objects takes me by surprise every week. For instance, under “Sufferers for a Cause,” Jefferson Davis, sometime president of the Confederacy, was represented by a crown of thorns given to him by his wife while he was in prison (Confederate Memorial Hall, New Orleans).

One of the many challenges of this undertaking is to be even-handed, making sure that neither North nor South is overrepresented. There is also an ethical dimension to this project, and I hope that all of us will bear in mind that if to establish grounds for judgment is among the duties of the philosopher, among those of the historian is to ensure that none should be too comfortable in its exercise.

—Professor Ivan Gaskell

1 of 3

Lee’s surrender, Appomattox Court House, Virginia, modern print from original glass and wet collodion negative, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC.