Bard Graduate Center

The Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture is a special school for students who want to learn about the history of objects and designs. It is in New York City and works with Bard College, which is in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

The center has a gallery in a big house on West 86th Street and another building nearby for classes and books. Students at the Bard Graduate Center study how people’s culture and history are shown through the things they make and use. This helps us understand more about the past by looking at everyday objects and special designs.

Programs

The Bard Graduate Center offers two main programs: one leads to a Masters of Arts degree and the other to a Doctor of Philosophy degree. Students can choose courses about the history of everyday objects and their importance.

The center also has a Gallery where it shows many exhibitions about the history of decorative arts, design, and everyday items. These exhibitions are created by teachers, special researchers, and students working together.

Teaching

The Bard Graduate Center offers more than just regular classes. It also holds evening talks and seminars that anyone can join. These events work together with the regular courses. Special programs, like the History and Theory of Museums, invite experts from current exhibitions. Another group focuses on Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Europe and holds two events each year with Columbia University.

The center also has special lectures about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France and the history of glass. Every May, it joins together with Yale University, Boston University, the University of Delaware, the University of Wisconsin—Madison, the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New-York Historical Society for the Consortium for American Material Culture.

Students at the Bard Graduate Center get to work closely with real objects. In their first-year classes, there are special "Materials Days" where they learn about how things are made by experiencing it themselves.

Exhibitions

The Bard Graduate Center Gallery shows exhibitions and offers many related activities. These include talks, discussions, films, and special books. All of these help people learn more about the world of materials and objects.

Notable alumni

Some well-known people who studied at the Bard Graduate Centre include:

• Grace Jeffers, a design teacher who earned a Master’s degree in the history of decorative arts in 1996.
• Sarah Archer, a curator and writer who got a Master’s degree in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture in 2006.
• Daniella Ohad Smith, a design historian and writer who earned a PhD.