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Upcoming Exhibitions
BGC Gallery will resume its exhibition programming this September with the return of Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today, originally slated for fall 2024.
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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28th Annual Iris Foundation Awards
Honoring Irene Roosevelt Aitken, Dr. Julius Bryant, Dr. Meredith Martin, and Katherine Purcell
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BGC Gallery reopens this September with the return of Sèvres Extraordinaire: Sculpture from 1740 until Today, originally slated for fall 2024.

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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.




Unknown maker, Haida
Argillite, bone
Collected by Israel W. Powell between 1880 and 1885
Donated by Heber R. Bishop
American Museum of Natural History 16/604

European-style dishes and decorated flatware were two novel categories of commercial argillite carved in abundance by the Haida. Mid-nineteenth-century argillite plates (qwa.a qiihlaa) such as this one were usually engraved with stylized circular and floral patterns, often inlaid with contrasting shell or bone, while later plates tended to depict Haida mythic or crest motifs. In fact, when this plate was accessioned at AMNH, its collection record listed it as a “modern design” despite its probable age. The highly conventionalized American eagle was featured on other contemporaneous Native objects, especially jewelry. The radiating spirals appear on other plates and suggest diffusion of a similar Siberian and Aleutian motif or the influence of Euro-American pressed glass patterns. With such intercultural forms and imagery, Haida carvers signaled both exoticism and familiarity to their foreign customers.


Tags for Interactive Tag Cloud: diffusion, indigenization, souvenir