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).

Charlotte Vignon is currently an independent curator living and working in New York City. From February 2020 until July 2023, she was the director of the department of patrimony and collections at Sèvres et Limoges, Manufacture et Musées nationaux, having under her responsibility the collections of the Musée national de céramique and the archives of the Sèvres Manufactory. For more than ten years, Vignon was curator of decorative arts at the Frick Collection in New York. Beforehand, she held three highly regarded fellowships at American museums: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Frick Collection, where she was an Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow. Vignon organized several exhibitions at the Frick Collection: Exuberant Grotesques: Renaissance Maiolica from the Fontana Workshop (2009), Turkish Taste at the Court of Marie-Antoinette (2011), White Gold: Highlights from the Arnhold Collection of Meissen Porcelain (2011), Gold, Jasper, and Carnelian: Johann Christian Neuber at the Saxon Court (2012), Precision and Splendor: Clocks and Watches at The Frick Collection (2013), Pierre Gouthière: Virtuoso Gilder at the French Court (2016), Fired by Passion: Masterpieces of Du Paquier Porcelains from the Sullivan Collection (2017), Masterpieces of French Faience: Selections from the Sidney R. Knafel Collection (2018), and Elective Affinities: Edmund de Waal at The Frick Collection (2019). In addition to writing the catalogues for most of these exhibitions as well as numerous articles and essays on European decorative arts, including sixteenth- to nineteenth-century ceramics, tapestries, furniture, architecture, and the history of the art market and collecting in the United States, Vignon is also the author of Duveen Brothers and the Market for Decorative Arts, 1880−1940 as well as Gouthière’s Candelabras, with Edmund de Waal, both published in 2019.