Bard College

The Bard College Conservatory of Music is part of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Founded in 2005, the program is unique among music conservatories in the United States in that all undergraduate students are required to participate in a five-year dual-degree program, in which both a B.M. in music and a B.A. in a subject other than music are obtained. Many of the Conservatory's faculty also teach at other conservatories such as the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute.Undergraduate faculty teach the standard orchestral/chamber music instruments and composition. The Conservatory also offers two graduate programs: the Graduate Vocal Arts Program and the Graduate Conducting Program, and a Post-graduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship in addition to a Preparatory Division.

Bard College is a census-designated place (CDP) covering the Bard College campus in Dutchess County, New York, United States.It first appeared as a CDP in the 2020 Census with a population of 358.

The campus of Bard College comprises 1,000 acres (400 ha) in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus, situated on the east shore of the Hudson River, offers sweeping views of the Catskill Mountains and is within the Hudson River Historic District, a National Historic Landmark. Almost all campus buildings built prior to 1950 are listed on the National Register of Historic Places as contributing features to the historic district.The campus contains more than 70 buildings with a total gross building space of 1,167,090 square feet (108,426 m2). Campus buildings represent varied architectural styles, but the campus remains heavily influenced by the Collegiate Gothic and Postmodern styles. Bard's historic buildings are associated with the early development of the college and the history of the Hudson River estates (see Bard College History). During a late twentieth-century building boom, the college embraced a trend of building signature buildings designed by prominent architects like Robert Venturi, Frank Gehry, and Rafael Viñoly.

The CCS Hessel Museum of Art is an art museum located on the campus of Bard College, in Annandale-On-Hudson, New York. The museum was built in 2006. The Hessel Museum is housed in the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS). The Museum draws from the Marieluise Hessel Collection of Contemporary Art, which comprises more than 1,700 objects on permanent loan to Bard. The Hessel Museum activates the collection for research, teaching and learning for students, faculty and the general public through exhibitions, publications, public programs, and events – on site and through digital resources.

Founded in 1990, the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is an exhibition and research center dedicated to the study of art and exhibition practices from the 1960s to the present. The Center initiated its graduate program in 1994 and is one of the oldest institutions in curatorial pedagogy, offering a two-year graduate-degree program in curating. Hundreds of curators, writers, critics, artists, and scholars taught seminars and lectured in practicums. The Center alumni/ae include more than 200 individuals working in contemporary art field in the U.S. and internationally.

Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts is a graduate program associated with Bard College that grants Master of Fine Arts degrees. Founded in 1981, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts (otherwise known as the Bard MFA program) is a nontraditional school for interdisciplinary study in the visual and creative arts. The program takes place over two years and two months, with students residing on campus during three consecutive summers, and two winter sessions of independent study completed off campus. Each summer session runs for eight intensive weeks. Currently ranked as one of ten most influential Master of Fine Arts programs in the world by Artspace Magazine. The Bard MFA program is one of eight graduate programs at Bard College.

Annandale-on-Hudson is a hamlet in Dutchess County, New York, United States, located in the Hudson Valley town of Red Hook, across the Hudson River from Kingston. The hamlet consists mainly of the Bard College campus.

The Saw Kill is a 14.3-mile-long (23.0 km) tributary of the Hudson River, called the Metambesem by the Algonquin people of the area and sometimes called Sawkill Creek today. It rises in the town of Milan and drains a 22-square-mile (57 km2) area of northwestern Dutchess County, New York, that includes most of the town of Red Hook to the west and part of Rhinebeck to Red Hook's south. It flows predominantly through forests and farmland. Just above its mouth, it descends more steeply through a wooded area with several waterfalls into South Tivoli Bay, between the Montgomery Place estate and Bard College, which uses the stream as both its primary water source and for disposal of its treated wastewater. In the 1840s, the owners of those properties made an agreement to prevent development along the stream, one of the earliest such conservation measures in American history.

Montgomery Place, now Bard College: The Montgomery Place Campus, near Barrytown, New York, United States, is an early 19th-century estate that has been designated a National Historic Landmark. It is also a contributing property to the Hudson River Historic District, itself a National Historic Landmark. It is a Federal-style house, with expansion designed by architect Alexander Jackson Davis. It reflects the tastes of a younger, post-Revolutionary generation of wealthy landowners in the Livingston family who were beginning to be influenced by French trends in home design, moving beyond the strictly English models exemplified by Clermont Manor a short distance up the Hudson River. It is the only Hudson Valley estate house from this era that survives intact, and Davis's only surviving neoclassical country house.Andrew Jackson Downing praised the landscapes of the estate, work he had informally consulted on that was not completed in its final form until almost the mid-20th century. The southern 70 acres (28 ha) of the estate, which he called the Wilderness and is today known as the South Woods, is the oldest oak forest in the Hudson Valley. It has grown to 380 acres (150 ha), and includes many outbuildings. A network of trails and paths connects them and offers both quiet wooded tracts and views of the river and Catskill Mountains. The estate was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. Ten years later, the Livingston descendants sold it to Historic Hudson Valley, a regional historic preservation group. The district was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1990, and Montgomery Place received that designation itself in 1992. In January 2016, Bard College purchased the estate from Historic Hudson Valley. Montgomery Place is located on Annandale Road near Barrytown, just off NY 9G. Montgomery Place grounds are open from dawn to dusk year-round. Mansion tours are available seasonally.

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College is a performance hall located in the Hudson Valley hamlet of Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The center provides audiences with performances and programs in orchestral, chamber, and jazz music, and in theater, dance, and opera. Designed by architect Frank Gehry, the 110,000-square-foot (10,000 m2) center houses two theaters, four rehearsal studios for dance, theater, and music, and professional support facilities. The building's heat and air-conditing systems are entirely powered by geothermal sources, enabling the Fisher Center to be fossil fuel free during standard operations. The total cost of the project reached $62 million and took three years to complete, opening in April 2003. The New Yorker calls it "[possibly] the best small concert hall in the United States." The Sosnoff Theater, an intimate, 900-seat theater with an orchestra, parterre, and two balcony sections, features an orchestra pit for opera and acoustics designed by Yasuhisa Toyota, including an acoustic shell that turns the theater into a concert hall for performances of chamber and symphonic music. The smaller of the two theaters is the flexible 200-seat LUMA Theater, which houses Bard's Theater and Dance Programs during the academic year. The Fisher Center is also the home of the Bard Music Festival, hosting companies from around the world during Bard SummerScape, a festival of opera, theater, and dance. The Performing Arts Center is primarily devoted to teaching and college events during the academic year and used as a public performing-arts facility and venue for the college's graduate programs in the arts during the summer months.

Red Hook is a town in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The population was 9,953 at the time of the 2020 census, down from 11,319 in 2010. The name is supposedly derived from the red foliage on trees on a small strip of land on the Hudson River. The town contains two villages, Red Hook and Tivoli. The town is in the northwest part of Dutchess County. The town also contains two hamlets. Bard College is in the hamlet of Annandale-on-Hudson. The Unification Theological Seminary is in the hamlet of Barrytown. Both hamlets are located within the Hudson River Historic District.

Edgewater is an architecturally significant, early 19th-century house located near the hamlet of Barrytown in Dutchess County, New York, United States. Built about 1824, the house is a contributing property to the Hudson River Historic District. Edgewater's principal architectural feature is a monumental colonnade of six Doric columns, looking out across a lawn to the Hudson River. Writing in 1942, the historians Eberlein and Hubbard described Edgewater as an exemplar of "the combined dignity and subtle grace that marked the houses of the Federal Era."