The American Symphony Orchestra is a New York-based orchestra whose mission is to renew live orchestral music as a vital force in contemporary American culture. Under the direction of Leon Botstein ASO pursues innovation in concert presentation and is devoted to the promotion of musical education. At Bard College, the ASO appears in an annual winter subscription series at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, and also takes part in the Bard Music Festival and SummerScape. This collection includes organizational files including papers relating to the founding of ASO and historical financial and corporate documents. The collection also contains miscellaneous ephemera relating to ASO including stagebills; advertising flyers; news releases; and reviews. The collection was given to the Archives by Lynne Meloccaro (BArd class of 1985, executive director of the ASO) through Leon Botstein.

Heinrich Blücher came to Bard College as a visiting professor in 1952, at the invitation of James Case, then President of the College. He developed the Common Course for freshmen at the college and became its director as well as the primary lecturer for the course, which took as its subject the history of philosophy. Over the course of the next seventeen years he taught at Bard and at the New School for Social Research (now The New School: a University in New York City), leaving scores of tapes of his lectures but very little written material. He was known for his practice of lecturing from only a few notes on index cards. Working with Hannah Arendt, Blücher’s wife, Alexander Bazelow (’71) transcribed the tapes from the Bard lectures; many of the New School lecture transcripts appear to have been made by Ruth Shultz. In a deed of gift Arendt left Bard College a collection of reel-to-reel audio tapes of Heinrich Blücher's lectures, given at The New School and at Bard, along with transcripts of some of the audio tapes. Audio cassettes copies were made of many of the original tapes thanks to Dr. George Rose ('63). The collection includes a notebook belonging to Blücher, and some notes and letters.

Bard College is a private liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The Bard College Board of Trustees Collection includes papers related to the functions of the Board of Trustees, encompassing the early years as St. Stephens to the modern Bard College. The collection shows the financial history of the school through the eyes of the trustees, reflecting the progress of the college, including its social life, curriculum development and many other aspects of the management of this college.

Hannah Arendt was among the most influential political thinkers of the 20th century. She and her husband Heinrich Blücher lived in NYC and near Bard College where Blücher taught from 1952 to 1971. After Arendt’s death in 1975, Bard College acquired her personal library of approximately 4000 volumes from her last apartment in New York City. The bulk of the Hannah Arendt Ephemera Collection is made up of paper ephemera found in these books while they were being cataloged. This collection also includes papers from the 1976 Memorial Colloquium, “An Intellectual Appreciation of Hannah Arendt,” and the 2006 Conference, “Thinking in Dark times: A Legacy of Hannah Arendt.” In addition, there are some press clippings and a small collection of correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Alex Bazelow regarding the transcribing of Heinrich Blücher’s lectures.

This collection consists of documents and artifacts created by the architectural firm of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates in 1989-1993 for the design of a new addition and the renovation of the existing buildings for the Bard College Library. Named for the principal donor, the Bard College Board of Trustees Chair Emeritus Charles P. Stevenson Jr., the completed library complex opened as Stevenson library in 1994. Documents include architectural plans, maps, mechanical drawings, and other technical drawings, ephemera, and manuals. Artifacts include mounted drawings and one model.

This collection consists primarily of letters from Edward Jackson Bartlett to his parents detailing his time at Bowdoin College, Bard College, and his service during World War II. It also contains report cards from the Browne and Nicholas School, Governor Dummer Academy, and Bowdoin College. Photographs, postcards describing his travels, a poetry book, and a journal are also present in the collection.

The Blithewood Estate today encompasses the Blithewood Mansion and Garden. The Estate is a contributing property in the Hudson River National Historic Landmark District, a 32-mile stretch that extends from Germantown to Hyde Park. Now housing the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, the Estate represents several periods in American design history: notably the Romantic and Picturesque and the Neoclassical Italianate. The bulk of the Collection dates from three significant periods: 1835 until 1852, when it was under the ownership of Robert Donaldson, who worked with A. J. Downing and A.J. Davis to develop the estate; 1899 -1951, during which time Captain Andrew C. Zabriskie and his wife, Frances Hunter Zabriskie, built the present day mansion and garden; and 1951- present, covering the Estate under Bard College. The Collection includes photographs, personal letters, engravings, and magazines. Tearsheets and photocopies of contemporary magazine articles and book chapters, published from 1951-on, give the history of the site in full, and include reproductions of many important photographs, sketches, engravings and plans.

This collection consists of materials pertaining to the lives of the Delafield Family, primarily John Ross Delafield and his wife Violetta White Delafield, and the activities surrounding the maintenance of the Montgomery Place estate and orchards. The Delafields were a prominent New York family that made Montgomery Place their country home from 1922 through 1985. Located in Red Hook, New York, the estate was originally purchased by Janet Livingston Montgomery in 1802 and served as the country home for many members of the Livingston and Delafield families. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1992.

This collection consists of 277 reel-to-reel tapes of interviews conducted by Karl Eugene Fortess (1907-1993). The subjects of these interviews represent modern artists of the post World War II era. Interviews were conducted over the course of four decades between the 1950s to the 1980s.

Jacob "Jake" Grossberg (1932-2014) taught sculpture at Bard College from 1969 until he retired in 1996. He was also instrumental in developing and starting Bard’s MFA program and was named director of the program in 1981.