New Keith Haring Wing To Expand CCS Bard Library and Archives

The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) has announced the expansion of its Library and Archives with a new 6,000-square-foot addition. Supported by a $10M capital project, the Keith Haring Wing will be named in recognition of a lead $3M gift from the Keith Haring Foundation. The expansion responds to the continued growth of CCS Bard's research center and collections, encompassing art and archival holdings, which have seen an infusion of materials from key contemporary art figures, including gallerist Gavin Brown, scholar and art historian Eddie Chambers, and curator and art historian Robert Storr. The addition will more than double the current capacity of CCS Bard's Library and Archives, significantly increasing the number of students, scholars, and researchers it can support.

The Keith Haring Foundation's gift builds on a longstanding partnership with CCS Bard, including most notably the Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism that has brought prominent scholars, activists, and artists to Bard for the past decade, and which was fully endowed in 2022. Additional lead support for the project is provided by the Marieluise Hessel Foundation, along with major gifts from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), the Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg Foundation, and a private foundation. The new wing will break ground this summer with an expected completion date of late 2025.

“The expansion of the CCS Bard Library and Archives is an investment in our core educational mission and the many people who make up the CCS Bard community,” said Tom Eccles, Executive Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. “It is in this spirit that we thank the Keith Haring Foundation, the Marieluise Hessel Foundation, and other supporters whose contributions have had an indelible impact on the intellectual life of CCS Bard.”

“The Keith Haring Foundation is deeply honored to contribute to the expansion of the CCS Bard Library and Archives, an initiative that aligns perfectly with Keith's vision of accessibility and community engagement through art and education. This significant enhancement of the library's resources underscores our shared commitment to fostering an environment where curiosity and creativity can thrive. We are delighted to see Keith's spirit of innovation and inclusion continue to inspire and influence the CCS Bard community,” said Gil Vazquez, Executive Director of the Keith Haring Foundation.

The new Keith Haring Wing designed by the award-winning firm HWKN Architecture with C.T. Male Associates serving as executive architect will complement the existing CCS Bard Library and Archives with a greatly expanded reading room, situated next to open research stacks that can accommodate more than 30,000 additional volumes. A new 30-person classroom and smaller collaborative study room will enable CCS Bard to host a wider range of courses, workshops, and study groups, deepening ties with the undergraduate Art History and Visual Culture program and other college departments. With six new offices, the expansion will also support visiting faculty and researcher positions that engage leading global scholars with the research collection and Bard community. While an additional 6,000 square feet of new storage space below the library will help accommodate the continued growth of CCS Bard's research collections.

"We are thrilled to have developed a contextual design for the expansion of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard, aimed at enhancing the educational and community aspects of this unique venue,” said Matthias Hollwich, Founding Principal of HWKN Architecture. “Paying homage to the existing CCS Bard Library and Archives, we designed the new Keith Haring Wing to weave into the past while looking ahead to the future of the campus."

The CCS Bard Library and Archives

The CCS Bard Library and Archives are a crucial resource for students in CCS Bard's graduate program, undergraduate students from across Bard College, as well as art historians, curators, and interdisciplinary scholars from around the world. Over the past 30 years, the CCS Bard Library has grown from a modest graduate program library into a premiere research center for the study of contemporary art and culture, with more than 50,000 volumes and a wide range of primary materials documenting the history of contemporary art and the practices of exhibition-making since the 1960s. The CCS Bard Archives also serve as the institutional repository for the Center for Curatorial Studies and Hessel Museum of Art, complementing and enriching the Hessel Museum of Art's rich permanent collection.

From the Fluxus-era projects of curator John G, Hanhardt to performance-based curatorial works by Ian White and feminist genderqueer collective LTTR, the CCS Archives contains over 40 distinct archival collections, which are extensively contextualized by Special Collections, encompassing over 7,000 rare exhibition-related and artist-produced publications. Following a 2015 expansion that added a dedicated space for the archives and an innovative Collection Teaching Gallery, the demand for access to CCS Bard's collections, and space for research and teaching within the library, have continued to grow.

Capital Campaign Support

The $10M capital campaign is made possible with lead support from the Keith Haring Foundation and the Marieluise Hessel Foundation. Major support is provided by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), the Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg Foundation, and an anonymous foundation, along with additional support from the CCS Bard Board of Governors and the Center's community of patrons, supporters, members, and friends.