MA in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture in NYC – Announcements

Passionate about decorative arts, design history, or material culture? Eager to pursue object-based study to advance your curatorial and scholarly interests?

Apply for the MA in Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture at Bard Graduate Center in New York City. Priority application deadline is December 15, 2025; extended deadline is March 1, 2026.

At BGC, we study the human past and present through their material expressions, focusing on objects and other material forms—from those valued for their aesthetic elements to the ordinary things used in everyday life. We apply equal intellectual rigor to our acclaimed exhibitions, award-winning catalogues and scholarly publications, and innovative public programs, all of which are vital to our curriculum.

You will find our alumni working in museums, auction houses, and universities around the world, including the Met, Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Art and Design, New York Historical, the Jewish Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Cooper Hewitt, Sotheby’s, Phillips, Gurr Johns, Parsons School of Design, Fashion Institute of Technology, Queens University, and more.

More than 90 percent of our students receive financial assistance and more than 65 percent live in Bard Hall, our apartment complex for students, faculty, and staff.

To learn more, visit our admissions page or email admissions@bgc.bard.edu.

*Image above: Students in Bard Graduate Center’s Object Lab with objects from the Study Collection, which comprises more than 5,000 objects in a variety of media including artifacts of glass, metal, ceramic, wood, plastic, textiles, paper, and more meant for students’ use. Although many pieces come from Europe and North America, and date from the eighteenth century to the present, there are also significant holdings from Central and South America, Asia, and the Pacific Islands. The collection’s strengths include modern ceramics, Indian and Southeast Asian textiles, silver, silver-plated flatware, jewelry, toys, costume accessories, and more than a thousand French and European textile samples dating from as early as the fifteenth century.