Bard College Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Bard College, founded in 1860, is a four-year, small liberal arts college located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, on a 600 acre (2.4 km²) campus overlooking the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains. The college's Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts was designed by acclaimed architect Frank Gehry, and was completed in the spring of 2003. Leon Botstein has been the President of the college since 1975, and is generally credited with reviving its academic and cultural prestige. It has developed several innovative graduate programs and research institutes, including the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, the Jerome Levy Economics Institute, the Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture, and the Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan.Professors include such luminaries as Joan Retallack, Joanne Akalaitis, John Ashbery, Chinua Achebe, Joan Tower, Luc Sante, Robert Kelly, Adolfas Mekas (brother of Jonas Mekas), Stephen Shore, James Chace, and Thurman Barker, among others. Former professors of note include philosophers Heinrich Blücher and Alfred Jules Ayer, writers Saul Bellow and Toni Morrison, Albert Jay Nock, and Andre Aciman. Blücher and his wife Hannah Arendt are buried in the Bard Cemetery, and a portion of Arendt's personal library resides in Bard\'s Stevenson Library.
Notable alumni include filmmaker Todd Haynes (MFA program), novelist and NPR commentator Daniel Pinkwater, photographer Herb Ritts, film-critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, comedian Chevy Chase, and Adam Yauch aka MCA of the Beastie Boys who never actually graduated but recalls fond memories of "a lot of LSD, a lot of hairy women." Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan met while students at Bard, and later wrote this heart-felt tribute to their alma-matter. More recent alum include Adrian Grenier (star of HBO's Entourage), Project Greenlight's Erica Beeny, and Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Since Annandale-on-Hudson consists primarily of the college and has no downtown center, neighboring Red Hook and Tivoli serve as "college towns." Shuttles run between the college and the two towns.