MA/PhD
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Bard Graduate Center is an advanced graduate research institute in New York City dedicated to the cultural histories of the material world. Our MA and PhD degree programs, Gallery exhibitions, research initiatives, scholarly publications and public programs explore new ways of thinking about decorative arts, design history, and material culture.

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Research

Bard Graduate Center is a research institute for advanced, interdisciplinary study of diverse material worlds. We support the innovative scholarship of our faculty and students as well as resident fellows, guest curators and artists, and visiting speakers.

Photo by Fresco Arts Team.

Our Public Humanities + Research department focuses on making scholarly work widely available and accessible through the coordination of the fellowship program and public programming that combines academic research with exhibition-related events. Across the institution—from the classroom to the gallery, from publications to this website—we utilize digital media to facilitate and share original research. This section outlines current programming and provides a repository for past scholarly content.

Elissa Auther gave a Brown Bag Lunch presentation on Tuesday, April 28, 2015, from 12 to 1:30pm, at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. Her talk is entitled “Straddling Worlds: Working Across Art and Craft, and the Museum and the Academy.”

This talk will focus on her current research and curatorial projects that cut across the art/craft divide in the contemporary art world.


Elissa Auther was the Associate Professor of Contemporary Art in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She earned her Ph.D. in History of Art in 2000 from the University of Maryland, College Park, with a specialization in modern and contemporary art. Dr. Auther’s book, String, Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art (Minnesota, 2010), focuses on the broad utilization of fiber in American art of the 1960s and 70s and the changing hierarchical relationship between art and craft expressed by the medium’s new visibility. She co-curated and edited the accompanying catalog for the exhibition West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977 (Minnesota, 2012). Most recently she co-curated the retrospective exhibition of the painter and photographer Marilyn Minter, and she has two new publications on the fiber-based work of artist Josh Faught.