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).

Elena Kanagy-Loux’s research into global lace history and the lives of lacemakers is grounded in her own experience as a maker. After earning a BFA in Textile Design from FIT, she won a grant which funded a four-month trip to study lacemaking across over a dozen Europe countries. Upon returning to NYC, she co-founded Brooklyn Lace Guild, an organization dedicated to the preservation of making lace by hand, and began teaching bobbin lace classes. In 2018 she completed her MA in Costume Studies at NYU where she based her thesis on field research conducted on her European travels, and began working as the Collections Specialist at the Antonio Ratti Textile Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was commissioned to create special bobbin lace designs for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2018 and for the BGC exhibition Threads of Power: Lace in the Textilmuseum St. Gallen in 2022, as well as to create an experimental lace reconstruction to the EU-funded project Refashioning the Renaissance. She has contributed to research and events in conjunction with exhibitions at the Yale Center for British Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the American Folk Art Museum, and more, and lectures widely on lace for students of textiles and fashion.