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).

My research analyzes art, design, and material culture as the building blocks of trans-historical and global narratives that reflect on contemporary concerns. I do this in my writing as a historian and as a curator in projects across multiple platforms (exhibitions, publications, social media, lectures, events). I currently focus on two areas that I feel directly target urgent political, social, and cultural issues: sustainability, green design, and environmental history; and Latin American, especially Afro-Brazilian, material culture. My work on sustainability has spanned my career, from my start at MoMA where I curated Digitally Mastered (2006-7), the first museum exhibition to showcase cutting-edge digital design and production technologies, including the earliest commercially available 3D-printed and CAD/CAM objects, as harbingers of material innovation, waste reduction, and improved efficiency in mass production, customization, and consumption. In my work with the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), sustainability takes on an added dimension of social justice and equality/equity in imbalanced global markets. I have been researching indigenous and marginalized communities that work local materials using highly-developed, unique techniques that, due to a number of factors, risk extinction. At BGC, I will introduce a course on material cultures of transatlantic West Africa.

Exhibitions

Inaugural Exhibition, Museu das Cadeiras Brasileiras, Belmonte, Bahia, November 7, 2018 — Present.

Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical. The Met Breuer, 3rd Floor, July 20 – October 8, 2017.

Philodendron: From Pan-Latin Exotic to American Modern. Wolfsonian-FIU and Fairchild Tropical Botanical Gardens, October 16, 2015 – February 28, 2016.

Artist’s Choice: Herzog & de Meuron. Co-curated with Jacques Herzog. 3rd Floor Special Exhibition, MoMA, June 21 – September 25, 2006.

Publications

Larsen, Christian. “Open Letter to Edgardo Giménez,”in Edgardo Giménez. Buenos Aires/Miami: ISLAA and IDA, forthcoming TBA.

Larsen, Christian and Guillermo Parada. “Losing My America, gt2P,” TL Magazine 32, 2019.

Larsen, Christian. “Brasilia: Postcards from a Future Past. An Interview with Vincent Fournier,” TL Magazine 31, 2019.

Larsen, Christian et al. Philodendron: From Pan-Latin Exotic to American Modern, edited by Christian Larsen. Miami Beach: Wolfsonian-Florida International University, 2015.

Lara-Betancourt, Patricia, Christian Larsen, and Jorge Rivas Perez. “Decorative Arts and Design in Latin America 1830-1900,” in History of Design, Decorative Arts, and Material Culture 1400-2000, edited by Pat Kirkham et al. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.

Kirkham, Pat, Christian Larsen, Sarah Lichtman, Tom Treadway, and Catherine Whalen. “Europe and North America: 1945-2000,” in History of Design, Decorative Arts, and Material Culture 1400-2000, edited by Pat Kirkham et al. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.”