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).

Jeanette Lynes is a Professor of English and Director of the MFA in Writing at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. She received her PhD in English from York University, Toronto, and her MFA in Writing from the University of Southern Maine’s low-residency Stonecoast Program. She is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently, Bedlam Cowslip: The John Clare Poems (Buckrider Books Imprint, 2015), which received the 2016 Saskatchewan Arts Board Poetry Award. Her novel, The Factory Voice (Coteau Books, 2009), which tells the story of women aviation-plant workers during the Second World War, was long-listed for The Scotiabank Giller Prize and a ReLit Award. It was also podcast on CBC Radio. In 2015, her book, co-edited with David Eso, Where the Nights are Twice as Long: Love Letters of Canadian Poets was published by Goose Lane Editions. Her monograph on Canadian Poet M. Travis Lane was published in 2015 in How Thought Feels: The Poetry of M. Travis Lane (Frog Hollow Press). She received a Women of Distinction Award in the Arts, Culture, and Heritage category in 2016 from the Saskatoon YWCA. She has been Pathy Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies at Princeton University and a Writer in Residence at several colleges as well as Saskatoon Public Library. During her time as a Visiting Fellow at Bard Graduate Center she will study poetics—specifically, metaphor—and spatiality.