Bard Graduate Center is devoted to the study of decorative arts, design history, and material culture through research, advanced degrees, exhibitions, publications, and events.

I am an archaeologist, art historian, and archaeological illustrator; for 25 years I was a professor at the Bard Graduate Center, starting in 1993 when the BGC first opened. I specialize in the history of ancient furniture, ceramics, glass, jewelry, and metalwork; ancient crafts and technology; and the protection of cultural property. Before coming to BGC, I taught at Duke University and Sarah Lawrence College and was a curator in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As Director of the Gordion Furniture Project, I hold the position of Consulting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia. For my work on the Gordion wooden objects, I received an award from the Republic of Turkey (1998) for the protection of the Turkish cultural heritage. Support for my research includes grants from the Archaeological Institute of America, the American Research Institute in Turkey, the National Geographic Society, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the 1984 Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, the Getty Grant Program, and the American Council of Learned Societies. My publications include The Adventure of the Illustrious Scholar: Papers Presented to Oscar White Muscarella(2018), The Gordion Wooden Objects I: The Furniture from Tumulus MM (2010), Gordion Wooden Furniture (1999), and The Spoils of War—World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property (1997).

Simpson’s Academia.edu Page