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).

Photo by Fresco Photography.

PhD dissertation titles and MA qualifying paper titles are listed below each student’s name.

Doctor of Philosophy

Pengliang Lu, Shanghai, China
“Bronzes of the Yuan Dynasty, 1271–1368”

Thomas Daniel Tredway, Long Beach, CA
“Dinner at Tiffany’s: Walter Hoving, Van Day Truex, and the Arts of the Table at Tiffany & Co., 1955–1980”

Master of Philosophy

Lauren Vollono Drapala, Freeport, NY
“Making Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s Artist Studio: Female Patronage, Transgressive Feminism, and the Rise and Fall of the Artist-Decorator in the Early Twentieth-Century United States of America”

Chika Matsuzaki Jenkins, Tokyo, Japan
“A Sense of Emergent Order: Post-Humanistic Ornament, Rhythm, and Possible Futures”

Tova Kadish, Chicago, IL
“Rocky Utopias: An Archaeology of Jewish Agricultural Collectives in Colorado”

Emma Calvert McClendon, Big Indian, NY
“The Sized Body: Standardized Sizing Technology and Normalcy in New York Fashion, 1860–1910”

Kate Sekules, London, England; Brooklyn, NY
“A History and Theory of Mending”

Master of Arts

R. Heath Ballowe, Lynchburg, VA
“They Sound Different When They Break: The Scientific Struggle to Produce English Porcelain, 1672–1821”

Daniel Foster Chamberlin, Watkinsville, GA
“Comprehensive Stewardship: Responsibly Reconciling the Past”

Emily Louise Harvey, Leesburg, VA
“Seeing Women: The Rise in Popularity of Women’s Vision Aids in Nineteenth-Century America”

Jeffrey Law, New York, NY
“Spiral Ornament in Shang Dynasty China”

Louise Ke Sing Lui, Hong Kong
“The Splendor of Silk in Clay: Mongol Luxury Textiles and Yuan Blue-and-White Porcelain”

Isabella Anne Margi, Williston, VT
“‘A Poppet-Queen, Drest up by me’: Dolls, Propriety, and Girlhood in Early Modern Europe”

Joshua Baker Massey, Denver, NC
“‘To choose and be surrounded with the finest creations’: Assembling Value in the Ben-Zion House”

Talia Ayslyn Perry, Pittsburgh, PA
“Rooftop Fancy and Folly: Tudor Chimney Stack as Device and Discourse”

Madeline Porsella, New York, NY
“The New Promethean: Modernism and the Occult in Claude Fayette Bragdon’s Projective Ornament”

Anna Elizabeth Riley, Birmingham, AL
“Crafting Stories of Value: Commodity Paths for Herati Glass”

Maura Tangum, Atlanta, GA
“‘Facing Determinedly Toward the Future’: Maxwell Shieff’s Involvement and Innovation within the Entertainment Industries of Canada and California, 1946–1959”

Zoe Volpa, Fort Collins, CO
“Imagining the French ‘Self’ and Its ‘Others’ Through the Display of Dress in Late Nineteenth-Century Paris”