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.

To request access to the full archival video for research purposes please email archives@bgc.bard.edu.

Vajrabhairava mandala, China, ca. 1330–32. Silk tapestry (kesi). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992.54. Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1992.

A monumental work of silk tapestry depicting the Vajrabhairava mandala, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is one of the most dazzling works produced under the patronage of the Yuan dynasty’s Mongol ruling house (1271–1368). In this presentation, Yong Cho explores the Vajrabhairava mandala’s intended ritual function as well as Yuan-era courtly discourses that theorized silk tapestry as a medium of choice for divine imagery.

Yong Cho is a specialist in the art and architecture of East and central Asia from the medieval period. He has a particular interest in the Mongol Empire. His current book project focuses on woven images to investigate a moment of major cultural transformation in Eurasia when the Mongols, the tent-dwelling pastoral nomadic peoples of the North Asian steppe, became rulers of a world empire. He is currently assistant professor in the Department of the History of Art at the University of California, Riverside.