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.

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 is comprised of photographs and ephemera reflecting the life of Emerald McKenzie ’52. Emerald Rose McKenzie (1928-1989) was one of the first African American woman to attend Bard College. She was also blind, having lost her sight at the age of 16. The bulk of the collection was donated to Bard College by her family after Emerald’s death in 1989. Some items were donated by Cynthia Maris Dantzic ‘54. Cynthia was McKenzie’s reader and friend at Bard from 1950-1952.

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.

Ricarda Schwerin (1912-1999), photographer and active communist, took a series of black and white photographs of Greek architecture, likely taken in 1963, while Schwerin was travelling with Hannah Arendt. She later gifted prints of these photographs to Arendt. The photographs probably came to Bard with Arendt’s library, which was gifted to Bard after her death in 1975.