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).

Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author, social critic, and independent scholar whose writings often explore technology’s impact on humanity. Her latest book, Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure (Prometheus, 2023), investigates uncertainty’s unexpectedly positive role in the life of the mind. Once overlooked as a topic of study and long maligned, uncertainty is now revealed to be an essential gadfly of the mind, jolting us from the routine and the assumed, as well as a space for exploring new, unseen meaning. A former Boston Globe contributing columnist, Jackson’s books include Distracted (Prometheus, 2008, 2018), winner of the 2020 Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Culture. She has contributed to numerous anthologies including Living with Robots: Emerging Issues on the Psychological and Social Impacts of Robotics (Elsevier, 2019), The State of the American Mind: Sixteen Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism (Templeton Press, 2015), and The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking (Tarcher/Penguin, 2011). Her essays and articles have appeared in media worldwide, including the New York Times, NPR, Utne Reader, and Gastronomica. She has received numerous media awards and was the 2014 Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Art in Wood (Philadelphia). She holds a BA from Yale and a graduate degree in International Politics (with Distinction) from the London School of Economics.