Life at Bard

• Accomodations
• Facilities and Area Resources
• Events
• Help & Resources

Bard Accommodations

Bard Campus

Robbins House   The new addition to Robbins House includes a wing for graduate students. The graduate rooms (about 110 square feet in size) are designed for single occupancy and equipped with private bathrooms, thermostats for heat and air conditioning, and Ethernet hookups. Each room is fully furnished. Each floor has one handicapped-accessible room. Many rooms have spectacular views of the Catskill Mountains.

Matriculated graduate students who wish to be considered for a graduate room should contract their program administrator.

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BGC

Bard Hall   Bard Hall, located at 410 West 58th Street in New York City, provides housing for students, faculty, and visiting scholars associated with the Bard Graduate Center in Studies for the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture (BGC). Nine residential floors offer a variety of furnished studios and one- and two-bedroom suites with kitchens and baths for students, as well as one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments for faculty and guest scholars. The building is equipped with 24-hour security, a double- height lounge that opens onto a landscaped outdoor space, an exercise room, conference and study rooms, and laundry facilities. Apartments are equipped for phone, computer, modem, cable TV, and Internet connections.

Apartments are offered for an 11½-month residency beginning July 1 and continuing through June 15. Student apartments are furnished and, depending on size and design, contain a daybed/sofa, small dining table and chairs, desk, bookcase, twin or full-size bed, and chest of drawers. Residents must be enrolled for a minimum of 9 credits each semester in order to remain eligible for housing.

Website: http://www.bgc.bard.edu/degree_programs/admissions/admissions_housing.shtml

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Off-Campus

Local Rentals   For those students who prefer to live off campus, a variety of houses and apartments at reasonable rents can be found near the Bard College campus. During the academic year, a free shuttle bus travels several times per day from campus to Red Hook and Tivoli. For example, in nearby Tivoli a housing coop was completed in 2006. It was designed by the Common Fire Foundation to achieve the United States Green Building Code's highest rating, LEED Platinum. Residents of the coop include Bard College students and other members of the community committed to a sustainable lifestyle. Housing information is available at the Office of Residence Life and through an e-mail listserv for incoming students. In general, the local area, while in relatively close proximity to several major cities, offers a high quality of life with a more affordable cost of living than many metropolitan and other college areas.

For information regarding local housing opportunities, graduate students should contact their program administrator.

Facilities and Area Resources

Bard Campus

Bertelsmann Campus Center   The Heinz O. and Elizabeth C. Bertelsmann Campus Center is a central meeting place. It houses the college bookstore and post office, a café, a 100-seat theater, multipurpose and conference rooms, offices, recreation and meeting rooms, exhibition space, and a satellite computer center.
Website: http://inside.bard.edu/campus/facilities/bcc/

Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Libraries   Students can take advantage of all the facilities of the Bard campus during the summer sessions. The library complex, consisting of the Hoffman, Kellogg, and Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Libraries, provides extensive book and audio collections; an automated circulation system; direct access to campus information sources; remote access to national databases and the Internet; CD-ROM technology; the Nesuhi Ertegun Music Listening Rooms; and facilities for viewing videos, slides, videodiscs, and microforms.
Website: http://www.bard.edu/library/

Henderson Computer Resources Center   The Henderson Computer Resources Center houses approximately 90 computers of various types and capabilities (IBM, Dell, Macintosh), an ample software library, a multimedia classroom, a networked classroom, resource rooms for special projects and video capture/editing/output, and access to high-speed printing.
Website: http://inside.bard.edu/hcrc/

Stevenson Gymnasium   The Stevenson Gymnasium is an athletic and recreational complex with swimming pool, squash courts, fitness studio, aerobics studio, and gymnasium. It also has a weight room with cardiovascular and strength-training equipment, a volleyball court, and an indoor basketball court. Outdoor tennis courts, soccer fields, and bike paths complement the indoor facilities.
Website: http://www.bard.edu/athletics/

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College   Opened in 2003, the Fisher Center, designed by renowned architect Frank O. Gehry, has a teaching theater and a large performance hall. The 110,000-square-foot facility is equipped for modern scene changing, sound, and lighting. During the academic year, the Fisher Center serves students in Bard's Theater and Dance Programs. In the summer months it houses SummerScape, a full-scale public program of theater, dance, and music, hosting visiting theater companies and musical ensembles as well as the Bard Music Festival.
Website: http://fishercenter.bard.edu/

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BCEP

Hudsonia Ltd. and the Bard College Field Station   In addition to being a designated site for the National Estuarine Research Reserve, the Bard campus is also home to the environmental research institute Hudsonia Ltd. and the Bard College Field Station. Their researchers take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the unique ecology that harbors more than 200 species of fish and many thousands of plants, animals, and microbes.

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BGC

The Bard Graduate Center Library   The Bard Graduate Center houses an extensive research library supporting advanced studies in the decorative arts, design, garden history, landscape studies, and culture. The library subscribes to more than 250 periodicals and provides online access to numerous electronic journals, including those in JSTOR, the scholarly journal archive, and Project Muse. The library collection comprises approximately 40,000 volumes, including rare books and microforms. In addition, there is an extensive collection of auction catalogues as well as online access to the auction index Artfact and the SCIPIO Art and Rare Book Sale Catalog database. Students have in-house and off-site access to numerous periodical indexes, including Art Abstracts, Art Index Retrospective, Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, Bibliography of the History of Art, Design, and Applied Arts Index, and the Index to Nineteenth-Century American Art Periodicals. The library also supports bibliographic searches in major union catalogues such as Research Libraries Information Network and Online Computer Library Center. The library encourages students to take advantage of the rich resources in New York City and facilitates their access by participating in the Metropolitan New York Library Council, a consortium of academic and special libraries. The library offers interlibrary loan service when material is not available locally. The

Bard Graduate Center library is a noncirculating collection available to enrolled students and alumni/ae. As a participant in the decorative arts community, the library welcomes visitors by appointment.
Website: http://www.bgc.bard.edu/library/index.htm

The Bard Graduate Center Visual Media Resources  

The Visual Media Resources department maintains the teaching collection of slides and digital images for faculty use and provides equipment, support, and training for students, faculty, and alumni wishing to produce their own slides or digital images for teaching and presentations. In collaboration with the Visual Resources Department at Bard College, VMR is actively building a collection of digital images that are made available to faculty and students on the MDID platform.

The slide collection currently consists of approximately 50,000 slides, many of which have been catalogued in an electronic database. The digital image collection comprises approximately 10,000 images to support survey courses in the decorative arts and material culture, as well as other selected areas of study.

Website: http://www.bgc.bard.edu/library/vmr/about.htm

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CCS

CCS Library   The Center for Curatorial Studies Library opened for the first time at the start of the Fall semester 1994. This unique facility contains a research collection of approximately 17,000 books and exhibition catalogues on contemporary art subjects, and books on modern art history, theory and criticism. Although the collection is non-circulating, the Library is open to the entire Bard community as well as scholars and researchers with an interest in the contemporary visual arts. The CCS Library preserves an archive of more than 1,650 artist and subject files containing biographical and bibliographical materials and ephemera that document art during the last half of the 20th century.

Hessel Museum of Art   Since 1994, the Center for Curatorial Studies has presented rotating temporary exhibitions of contemporary art in the 9,500 square-foot CCS Galleries. Designed by architect Jim Goettsch and Nada Andric, the Galleries include advanced storage facilities and a special gallery designed for the presentation of video art and works on film. Exhibitions in the CCS Galleries are organized by Center staff and visiting curators and scholars, who are invited to discuss their projects with students and the public in gallery walk-throughs and the Center's lecture series. CCS exhibitions reflect the Center's principal aim to encourage and explore experimental approaches to the presentation of contemporary visual arts, and are also utilized by students in the Center's graduate program for their collaborative first-year projects and second-year thesis exhibitions.

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MFA

Universal Builders Supply (UBS)   The renovated Universal Builders Supply building in the center of neighboring Red Hook provides a professional-level gallery in which M.F.A. students present their Master's Projects to the public at large. The 16,000-square-foot space can be used as a gallery for exhibitions of paintings, photographs, and sculptures; a screening facility for films and videos; and/or a performance space for concerts and readings.

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