MA & Ph.D Brochure

MA & PhD in Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture

“There are really no limits here in terms of the questions our students can ask.”

—Deborah L. Krohn, Associate Professor and Chair of Academic Programs

Bard Graduate Center At Bard Graduate Center, we study the cultural history of the material world. Our scope is global and ranges from distant antiquity to the present.

For more than 25 years, our interdisciplinary, objectbased approach to learning has been training future curators, researchers, educators, and museum and arts professionals to ask new questions about our shared history. Founded in 1993 on the idea that decoration is a human universal that can be found in all times and at all places, BGC’s initial focus on the history of design and decorative arts has expanded to include the crucial perspectives of anthropologists, archaeologists, cultural historians, conservators, and materials scientists. Today Bard Graduate Center is the leading American graduate institute for interdisciplinary, object-centered inquiry into material culture.

“Objects that come to us from the past exist outside of a disciplinary matrix. They are things that have a history. And if we take the object as the starting point, rather than a disciplinary bibliography, we are immediately catapulted into a situation that requires drawing on a variety of approaches to give a satisfactory explanation as to what that object is, what it did, how it lived.”

—Professor Peter N. Miller, Dean

BGC students come from all over the world and from a wide range of majors, including art history and studio art, American Studies, anthropology, literature and languages, comparative religion, and politics, and join an equally interdisciplinary faculty. United by a commitment to objects and the stories they tell, these different approaches are a key component of our intellectual culture.

Together, they shape the courses we teach, the exhibitions we produce, and the journals, books, and catalogues we publish. Always posing new questions, always advancing into unexplored terrain, BGC trains the next generation of curators and scholars who study things.

“BGC gave me the breadth and depth to give historical context to my areas of interest. I use the BGC approach—which puts objects into the larger social and cultural context of their time—in my work every day.”

—Susie J. Silbert, MA 2012, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Glass, The Corning Museum of Glass

The BGC Approach In BGC’s two-year MA program, you will develop your specific research interests while reading broadly, being open to the discoveries of scholarship, and thinking comparatively, looking for connections or questions that cross cultures, epochs, and materials.

With support from your academic advisor and an accessible faculty, you will map out a degree individually tailored to your research interests.

Wherever your research leads you, from the classical world to contemporary fashion, it will be informed by our core curriculum, a comprehensive approach to graduate training that emphasizes historical and methodological understanding, writing and digital skills, and close academic advisement. Writing as a cognitive tool and digital training begin with workshops in our August orientation. Two core courses taught in the first year, “Objects in Context” and “Approaches to the Object,” provide a broad historical overview of our fields of study and introduce the methodologies that underpin the study of material culture. A companion seminar, “Writing Objects,” is designed to strengthen graduate-level writing.

And our new first-year tutorial program matches entering students with faculty advisors in regular meetings throughout the year that blend advising and informal intellectual mentorship. You will also have opportunities to further develop your particular areas of interest through elective courses at BGC, designing an independent study, or by taking a course at one of our consortium partner institutions. Professional summer internships provide another way of focusing your studies, as does your final qualifying project that can take the form of a research paper, a digital project, or an exhibition proposal.

MA Requirements First Year August Orientation

Fall Semester

Spring Semester

• Objects in Context I • Approaches to the Object • Writing Objects • Two electives • First-Year Tutorial

• Objects in Context II • Three electives

Summer Bard Travel International Study Trip

Professional Internship

Second Year Fall Semester

Spring Semester

• Four electives • Qualifying paper (QP) proposal

• Two electives • QP due in April • QP Symposium in May

Gallery BGC’s critically-acclaimed gallery provides numerous opportunities for you to expand your training in object-based research and curatorial work. Our Focus Project, an ongoing exhibition series led by faculty curators, breaks down traditional barriers between academic and curatorial spaces and forms of inquiry. These exhibitions promote experimentation in display, interpretation, and the use of digital media, reflecting Bard Graduate Center’s commitment to exhibitions as integral to scholarly activity. These projects begin in the classroom at our academic building and culminate in exhibitions presented just down the block in the BGC Gallery. When you enroll in a Focus Project course, you will participate in the historical and theoretical conceptualization as well as the practical realization of an exhibition. Gallery curators, exhibition designers, and media specialists will work closely with you and your fellow students, and together you will contribute substantially to each project’s form and content. Past Focus Projects have investigated, among other topics, Franz Boas’s influential The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians, typographer and designer Jan Tschichold, Balinese textiles, the transition from roll to codex in the history of the book, and New York’s Crystal Palace of 1853.

Digital Humanities/ Digital Exhibitions Digital innovation is a key part of the BGC experience.

Our Digital Humanities/Digital Exhibitions (DH/DX) program leverages emerging digital tools and methodologies to support new modes of scholarship and to seek creative solutions to challenges of

object-based research. From the beginning of the program, you will learn a variety of digital tools to use in your own work and in collaborative, coursebased projects. These might include multimedia online exhibitions, location-based applications, 3D printing and modeling, mapping, and extended and mixed reality (AR/VR) experiences, with a particular focus on the development of interactive features for galleries, museums, and cultural heritage institutions. BGC’s Digital Media Lab is equipped with significant hardware and software resources for student use.

“My time at BGC taught me to look at material things as guides for studying the past and for making connections between contexts in the present.

This approach to seeing and reading objects prepared me for work across disciplines and cultures.”

—Andrew Goodhouse, MA 2013, Editor, M+

Beyond the Classroom During any given week of term, you will have a wide array of activities beyond the classroom to choose from. Visiting lecturers, fellows, and speakers at academic symposia and events connect students and faculty with an international network of leaders in their fields. Curators lead exhibition tours at the BGC Gallery or neighboring museums. Students consider the knowledge of the maker in our “Materials Days” series, where recent visits have been to glass, ceramics, and paper making studios for hands-on workshops. And we offer a range of career and skills-based sessions to give you the tools you need for your current research and your future career.

Internships You will also complete a professional internship to get real-world experience that complements your academic studies. With an emphasis on professional development, students are given guidance in locating opportunities. Recent internship partners include the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Ashmolean, the Walters Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New-York Historical Society, the American Folk Art Museum, and the Louvre.

Travel Each May, first-year MA students travel internationally with faculty for a ten-day study trip funded by BGC. Recent trips have been to Berlin, Paris, and London where visits to important public and private collections offer behind-the-scenes access and opportunities to meet with preeminent scholars and curators. Students now have the option of extending this experience by traveling with faculty to Greece for an additional week of archaeological fieldwork. This program enriches your studies and expands your professional network beyond New York.

Additionally, funding to support travel is available for attending conferences and qualifying paper research.

“The interdisciplinary nature of the program—and being surrounded by classmates and professors who all explore a diverse set of objects through an equally diverse set of theoretical frameworks—has introduced me to many new ways of approaching my own research interests.” ­— Emily Hayflick, MA 2020, PhD student at Cornell University

Library The BGC Library houses some 50,000 volumes and more than 5,000 periodical titles (both digital and in print) and includes rare books and special collections focused on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century design publications. The Digital Media and Object Labs provide additional resources for research. BGC students can access libraries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Columbia University, New York University, New York Public Library, and many other institutions across the city.

New York City Campus Our location on Manhattan’s Upper West Side gives you access to some of the world’s greatest collections. The American Museum of Natural History and the New-York Historical Society are just around the corner, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is minutes across Central Park. Affiliations with

institutions and their curators, including the Met, the Brooklyn Museum, the Frick Collection, and the Museum of Arts and Design, play an integral role in our curriculum.

Our residential facility, Bard Hall, located near Columbus Circle, offers comfortable and affordable housing options, including studios for single occupancy or spacious two-bedrooms to share with another student. The modern building, which includes a gym and a shared outdoor space, is an easy walk or a short subway ride to BGC. Life in New York City offers you the chance to engage with contemporary art and design, as well as a vibrant world of performances and culture. Bard Hall residents can walk to Broadway and Off-Broadway theaters, Lincoln Center, and to BGC’s West 86th Street buildings. Other galleries, cultural institutions, performance spaces, music venues, and restaurants across the city’s five boroughs are easily accessible via subway.

Careers Based on a recent survey of the MA classes of 2014 to 2018, 85% of graduates are employed in their chosen field within one year of graduation and roughly 30% pursue doctoral work within three to five years.

Our alumni work all over the world, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, LACMA, the Denver Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the High Museum in Atlanta, and the National Trust in the UK. Recent graduates have gone on to doctoral work in fields such as art history, history of science, and anthropology, at programs including Yale, Cambridge, Cornell, Harvard, New York University, Stanford, University of Wisconsin, and BGC.

Placement of MA Alumni, 2016–2018 36%

16%

14%

12%

11%

5%

Other Employment

Design & Architecture

Non-Degree Related Paths

Auction Houses

PhD & Graduate Programs

Cultural, Heritage, & Education

Museums & Galleries

5%

Support Scholarships are available at the MA level. On average, 80% of MA students receive some funding, most in the form of tuition scholarships, but there are also a limited number of research fellowships. You do not have to fill out a separate application for scholarships; all accepted students receive consideration.

Many students also work in a variety of campus jobs assisting faculty members or Gallery or Library staff.

Visit & Apply We welcome you to visit us! At our open houses, you will meet faculty and students and tour our buildings.

To reserve your spot and for more information, please visit bgc.bard.edu/admissions. If you can’t make an open house, or if you have other questions, please email admissions@bgc.bard.edu to schedule a visit and for more information.

Applications for the MA and PhD program are due annually in early January. Select candidates for both programs are invited to BGC for an interview (by video or in person) and admissions decisions are made in early March. Please visit bgc.bard.edu/admissions for annual deadlines and application requirements.

Image Captions (in order of appearance): Page 3: Front of 18 West 86 Street, New York, NY, home of Bard Graduate Center Gallery. Photo by Fresco Photography. Page 4: Artek and the Aaltos: Creating a Modern World Bard Graduate Center Gallery, 2016. Photo by Casey Kelbaugh. Pages 5–10: Bard Graduate Center students in the Object Lab; Library Reading Room; with Jesse Merandy, director of Digital Exhibitions/Digital Humanities; in the Object Lab; on one of the terraces; and in front of 38 West 86 Street, New York, NY, home to BGC’s classrooms, library, and academic offices. All photos by Maria Baranova. Pages 12–13: Furniture Mount with Lions Drinking from Fountain Motif, twentieth century. Bard Graduate Center Study Collection, Gift of Patricia and Martin Levy. Page 17: Bag. South Asian. Bard Graduate Center Study Collection, Gift of Susan Weber. Page 18: Harvey S. Cover (1867-1961). “Nod and Shake” Rubber Safety Goggles, ca.1922. Produced by Cover.

Bard Graduate Center Study Collection, Gift of Kravis Design Center. Page 19: Round Plate, Meiji. Japan. Bard Graduate Center Study Collection, Gift of Susan M. Yecies. Page 20: Enrique Ramirez Martinez. “Animalito”, from the village of Arrazola southwest of Oaxaca, Mexico, purchased in Oaxaca in August 2000. Bard Graduate Center Study Collection, Gift of Jeffrey Collins. Page 22: Achille Castiglioni (1918-2002). Irma Chair, 1979. Produced by Zanotta. Bard Graduate Center Study Collection, Gift of Kravis Design Center.