About
28th Annual Iris Foundation Awards
Honoring Irene Roosevelt Aitken, Dr. Julius Bryant, Dr. Meredith Martin, and Katherine Purcell
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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The Bard Graduate Center Gallery produces multiple exhibitions and publications each year, serving as a vital center of learning and a catalyst for engagement in the interrelated disciplines of decorative arts, design, and material culture. The gallery is celebrated in the museum world for its longstanding legacy of landmark projects dedicated to significant—yet often understudied—figures and movements in the history of decorative arts and design; these exhibitions and publications typically represent the definitive intervention on the artists and objects they investigate. BGC Gallery is also committed to generating and supporting a vast range of diverse presentations, small and large, that challenge traditional approaches to object inquiry; these examinations of material culture explore the human experience as manifest in our creation and use of “things” of all kinds. Whether originating in internal research and expertise, or in collaboration with external subject specialists, these endeavors prioritize rigorous scholarship while seeking to adhere to the field’s highest standards in production and design.




Digital Interactive: Aino Marsio’s Travel Sketchbook, 1921

A full reproduction of Aino Marsio’s travel sketchbook. The first half of this book traces Marsio’s study trip to Germany, Austria, and Italy in 1921, following her graduation from the Polytechnic Institute of Helsinki. The second half of the sketchbook follows Marsio’s travels in Ostrobothnia, a region in western Finland, where she made sketches of interiors, rubbings from gravestones, and meticulous ground plans of farms.

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Digital Interactive: Aino Marsio-Aalto’s Diary, 1931–36

A selection of pages from Aino Marsio-Aalto’s diary, recording travel to Amsterdam in 1931; to London in 1933; to Paris, Brussels, Zurich, Ascona, and Stockholm in 1935; and finally to Milan in 1936.

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