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).

Diana Yang is a doctoral candidate at the Bard Graduate Center in New York. Specializing in East Asian decorative arts, she is particularly interested in early modern ceramics and their pivotal roles in transnational maritime trade as well as in Japanese tea culture. Her ongoing dissertation project builds on her expertise in Asian ceramics and explores the production, circulation, reception, and appropriation of widely-traded Zhangzhou ware (previously known as “Swatow ware”) in its most significant markets: Japan and Southeast Asia. Her work complicates the paradigm of export Asian porcelains, recovers the glory of marginalized trade ceramics for diverse Eastern markets, and recasts varied Asian identities as they were contended, compromised, and constructed throughout porous Asian borders at the turn of the seventeenth century. Prior to joining the BGC, Diana got an M.A. in museum studies/museum anthropology from Columbia University and has since conducted museum and archival research in Japan, China, the Netherlands, and England, in addition to the United States.