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).

Lisa Regazzoni is professor of theory of history at the University of Bielefeld. She studied philosophy at the universities of Bologna and Heidelberg and earned a PhD in philosophy at the University of Potsdam in 2006. After several fellowships in Paris (Centre Alexandre Koyré, German Historical Institute Paris, École des hautes études en sciences sociales), in London (German Historical Institute), and Princeton (Institute for Advanced Study), she qualified as a professor of modern history at Goethe University in Frankfurt in 2019. Her teaching and research interests include theory and history of historiography from the early modern period, scientific and academic collecting, and the historical epistemology and methodology of history with particular attention to the knowledge potential of materiality and things of the past. She addresses this topic in her most recent book Geschichtsdinge. Gallische Vergangenheit und französische Geschichtsforschung im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert (Things of History: Gallic Past and French Historical Research in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century), which was published in 2020.