New Keith Haring Wing at CCS Bard to Open October 2025
Rendering of Keith Haring Wing at CCS Bard. Courtesy of HWKN Architecture
In October 2025, the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) will inaugurate its new Keith Haring Wing, a 12,000-square-foot addition to its Library and Archives. 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 more than doubles the current capacity of CCS Bard’s Library and Archives, significantly increasing the number of students, scholars, and researchers it can support.
Supported by a $10M capital project, the Keith Haring Wing is named in recognition of a lead $3M gift from the Keith Haring Foundation, which builds on the organization’s longstanding partnership with CCS Bard. This includes the Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism, a faculty position that has brought prominent scholars, activists, and artists to teach at Bard for the past decade, and 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 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 Wing, designed by the award-winning firm HWKN Architecture with C.T. Male Associates serving as executive architect, is a two-story masonry structure that complements the existing CCS Bard facility, characterized by minimalist, light-filled interiors. Open ceilings and large windows introduce natural light deep into the expanded library, fostering an inviting and productive atmosphere for research and study.
"Returning to the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College to design the Keith Haring Wing has been a deeply meaningful experience. This contextual addition allowed us to re-engage with our earlier work through a modern lens while pushing the architecture forward, introducing light, openness, and new opportunities for artistic expression. It’s rare for a building to grow alongside its community in this way, and we’re proud that our design reflects continuity, honoring the spirit of Bard College,” said Matthias Hollwich, Founding Principal of HWKN Architecture.
The new wing features an expansive open reading space, the Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg Reading Room, situated next to open research stacks that can accommodate more than 30,000 additional volumes. The new 30-seat Pontus Hultén Classroom, made possible by a generous gift from the Marieluise Hessel Foundation, and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation 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 6,000 square feet of new storage space below the library will help accommodate the continued growth of CCS Bard’s art and archival collections.
The Pontus Hultén Classroom is named in tribute to the curator and museum director Pontus Hultén (1924-2006) for his pioneering role in transforming the modern art museum into the cultural focal point that it is today. Coinciding with the Keith Haring Wing opening, and the Centre Pompidou exhibition Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Pontus Hultén in the Grand Palais in Paris, CCS Bard has co-published the first full-scale biography of Hultén with Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther and Franz König, Köln. “Pontus Hultén —Commander of Modern Art” by Claes Britton is available for purchase at the link.
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 premier 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.
Post Date: 08-26-2025
Supported by a $10M capital project, the Keith Haring Wing is named in recognition of a lead $3M gift from the Keith Haring Foundation, which builds on the organization’s longstanding partnership with CCS Bard. This includes the Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism, a faculty position that has brought prominent scholars, activists, and artists to teach at Bard for the past decade, and 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 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 Wing, designed by the award-winning firm HWKN Architecture with C.T. Male Associates serving as executive architect, is a two-story masonry structure that complements the existing CCS Bard facility, characterized by minimalist, light-filled interiors. Open ceilings and large windows introduce natural light deep into the expanded library, fostering an inviting and productive atmosphere for research and study.
"Returning to the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College to design the Keith Haring Wing has been a deeply meaningful experience. This contextual addition allowed us to re-engage with our earlier work through a modern lens while pushing the architecture forward, introducing light, openness, and new opportunities for artistic expression. It’s rare for a building to grow alongside its community in this way, and we’re proud that our design reflects continuity, honoring the spirit of Bard College,” said Matthias Hollwich, Founding Principal of HWKN Architecture.
The new wing features an expansive open reading space, the Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg Reading Room, situated next to open research stacks that can accommodate more than 30,000 additional volumes. The new 30-seat Pontus Hultén Classroom, made possible by a generous gift from the Marieluise Hessel Foundation, and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation 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 6,000 square feet of new storage space below the library will help accommodate the continued growth of CCS Bard’s art and archival collections.
The Pontus Hultén Classroom is named in tribute to the curator and museum director Pontus Hultén (1924-2006) for his pioneering role in transforming the modern art museum into the cultural focal point that it is today. Coinciding with the Keith Haring Wing opening, and the Centre Pompidou exhibition Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Pontus Hultén in the Grand Palais in Paris, CCS Bard has co-published the first full-scale biography of Hultén with Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther and Franz König, Köln. “Pontus Hultén —Commander of Modern Art” by Claes Britton is available for purchase at the link.
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 premier 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.
Post Date: 08-26-2025