News + Events

HOURS OF OPERATION
The Montgomery Place grounds are open daily from sunrise to sunset. The mansion is closed and mansion tours suspended due to ongoing preservation work at the site.

Bard College Awarded $750,000 from National Park Service for Restoration of Montgomery Place Mansion

The National Park Service has announced that Bard College has been chosen as a recipient of a $750,000 Save America’s Treasures grant through the Historic Preservation Fund. This prestigious award will help support the restoration of the Montgomery Place Mansion, a National Historic Landmark owned by Bard College. “As stewards of this historic property, we’re gratified that the National Park Service has recognized the importance of Montgomery Place and awarded us this generous grant to support its ongoing restoration and conservation,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein.
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News & Notes


  • Bard College’s Blithewood Garden and Montgomery Place Featured in the Financial Times For the Financial Times, floral artist Ariel Dearie included both the garden at Blithewood and the grounds of Montgomery Place in a piece about historical horticultural sites and beautiful spots to visit in the Hudson Valley. “My favourites are Blithewood Manor, a Georgian revival mansion where the pillars grow with wisteria,” she writes, adding that another is “Montgomery Place for its pebbled walkways and lily pond.”
  • Burpee Trial Garden Project at Montgomery Place Featured in the Daily Catch The Burpee Trial Garden, a seed test garden and horticultural research site at Bard’s Montgomery Place campus, has been featured in the Daily Catch. The garden, in its first season, is currently being tended to by three Bard students, Violet DiBiasio ’27, Max Frackman ’27, and Mikhal Terentiev ’26, who are undertaking horticultural research and hands-on scientific investigations with real-world applications in the Hudson Valley and beyond.
  • Bard College Presents Returning Home: A Contemporary Native Photography Exhibition, on View April 6–12 at Montgomery Place Mansion Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck and Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College proudly host Returning Home, an exhibition curated by Rethinking Place Post-Baccalaureate Fellow Olivia Tencer ’22 and Rethinking Place Administrative Coordinator Melina Roise ’21, open from April 6 to 12, 2024. This groundbreaking exhibition features works by four contemporary Indigenous photographers, Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nations), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi Indian Tribe), and Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke (Crow)), along with a written commission by Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican) and archival records of local land transfers and the United States’ Indian boarding school history. The exhibition, centered around narratives of Indigenous families, particularly women and children, will delve into the experiences of Native peoples facing settler colonialism, focusing specifically on Indigenous child removal practices and policies.
  • Bard College Landscape and Arboretum Program Renews Accreditation from ArbNet  The Landscape and Arboretum Program at Bard College has renewed its Level II accreditation with ArbNet, an interactive, collaborative, international community of arboreta and tree-focused professionals. ArbNet facilitates the sharing of knowledge, experience, and other resources to help tree-based botanical gardens meet their institutional goals and works to help elevate practices through the ArbNet Arboretum Accreditation Program, the only global initiative to officially recognize arboreta based on a set of professional standards.
  • Bard College Approved to Build “New Pedestrian Path Linking Bard to Montgomery Place,” Reports Daily Catch A new project to further connect Bard’s Montgomery Place Campus to main campus, supported by a $40,000 grant from the Hudson River Greenway, won approval from the Red Hook Town Planning Board. Now, Bard may “move forward on the construction of a pedestrian and cyclist path” connecting the two, writes Victor Feldman for the Daily Catch.
  • Bard College Awarded $26,532 Grant from New World Foundation and Partners for Climate Action Hudson Valley for Sustainability Project Bard College is pleased to announce that it has received a $26,532 grant from the New World Foundation and the Partners for Climate Action Hudson Valley for the project “Bard Bee-Lives: Making Space for At-Risk Pollinators.” Managed by Laurie Husted, Chief Sustainability Officer at Bard, the project was the result of a student proposal developed in the spring of 2022 in an Open Society University Network (OSUN) social entrepreneurship practicum: Leading Change in Organizations.
  • Nineteenth-Century Black Master Gardener of Montgomery Place Honored with Cemetery Marker The 19th-century Black master gardener who tended hundreds of plants and an arboretum at Montgomery Place, who hybridized two flower species, and who mentored white gardeners in Rhinebeck was recognized with a plaque astride his burial place at the Methodist Church Cemetery on Cherry Street in Red Hook. In an interview, Bard Professor Myra Young Armstead discusses the fascinating history of Alexander Gilson.
  • Bard Summerscape Announces Casting for “Most Happy In Concert,” Conceived by Tony Award Nominee Daniel Fish and His Oklahoma! Music Collaborators Daniel Kluger and Nathan Koci Bard SummerScape today announces casting for Most Happy in Concert, a setting of Frank Loesser’s songs for The Most Happy Fella from director Daniel Fish and arrangers Daniel Kluger and Nathan Koci, who previously collaborated on the Tony Award-winning production of Oklahoma! that originated at Bard SummerScape in 2015. The live-in-person performances take place on the evenings of August 5, 6, and 7 on an outdoor stage being constructed at Bard’s Montgomery Place campus on the Hudson River.
  • Live, July 25–Aug 1: Bard SummerScape Presents First Fully Staged American Production of Ernest Chausson’s Only Opera, King Arthur (“Le roi Arthus”) This year’s immersion in “Nadia Boulanger and Her World” presents the long overdue first fully staged American production of King Arthur (“Le roi Arthus”), the only opera by Boulanger’s compatriot and close contemporary Ernest Chausson. Featuring charismatic baritone Norman Garrett and celebrated mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke in an original staging by Princess Grace Award-winner Louisa Proske, King Arthur will run for four performances, anchored by the American Symphony Orchestra and Bard Festival Chorale under the leadership of festival founder and co-artistic director Leon Botstein.
  • Bard SummerScape Presents Black Roots Summer, a Cross-Genre Series of Concerts Organized by Curator-Educator-Producer Musicians Michael Mwenso and Jono Gasparro, July 23–31, Outdoors at Montgomery Place Bard SummerScape celebrates the uplifting spirit of Black music with Black Roots Summer, presented in association with Electric Root and organized and led by the rousing vocalist, bandleader, cultural commentator, and antiracism educator Michael Mwenso and his longtime collaborator Jono Gasparro, former curator of Ginny’s Supper Club in Harlem. The series features original concerts over two weekends (July 23–24 and July 29–31) on an outdoor stage at Bard’s Montgomery Place campus on the Hudson River.