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 courtesy of Yale University Press.

William DeGregorio (MA ’12, PhD ’21) recently co-authored a lavishly illustrated, two-volume publication about the pioneering collector of early English decorative arts, Percival D. Griffiths, for Yale University Press.

According to DeGregorio, in the early twentieth century, Griffiths (1861—1937) formed one of the first real collections of early English furniture and needlework, and he is revered for his connoisseurship and taste. DeGregorio was approached to work on the project based on his expertise in fashion and textiles as well as collectors and collecting.

While he was writing the book, DeGregorio was also finishing his PhD at BGC. Without the training that he received at BGC and the mindset he developed for talking to collectors while working on his dissertation (about the early years of the Museum of the City of New York and the founding of its costume collection), he said that the book would never have become a two-volume, 800-page publication. DeGregorio continued, “I have knowledge of and interest in English needlework, but I was most intrigued by the history of collecting. I found myself really engaged in ideas of how things end up in museums or don’t, how they are collected and dispersed, and how a collection could become a catalogue of one man’s stuff. We tracked every piece that ever passed through Griffiths’s hands, where it is now, and what happened to it along the way. So the project has BGC written all over it.”

The Percival D. Griffiths’ Collection: English Furniture 1680 - 1760 and English Needlework 1600 - 1740 is available from Yale University Press.