Art Spaces Archives Project Merges with Center for Curatorial Studies

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) announces a new partnership with Art Spaces Archives Project (AS-AP). Founded in 2003 by a consortium of alternative art organizations, AS-AP is a collaborative visual arts initiative created to document the history of alternative, avant-garde, and contemporary art movements throughout the United States.  

The continued mission of AS-AP at CCS Bard is to preserve, present, and protect the archival heritage of living and defunct, for- and not-for-profit alternative spaces in an effort to better understand contemporary art and the cultural and social history of the United States.

AS-AP's website—www.as-ap.org—is a virtual resource and aid for locating the places and spaces of alternative and avant-garde art activity. The site contains an online index of over 1000 alternative spaces, locations of avant-garde activity, tools to assist in archiving, and other aids for scholars interested in the alternative or avant-garde movement in the United States. To mark the launch of AS-AP’s merger with CCS Bard, AS-AP’s online index has been expanded and improved, and is now accessible via the Center for Curatorial Studies website at www.bard.edu/ccs/library/asap.

AS-AP is guided by a steering committee consisting of leading archive and library professionals, curators, and scholars of avant-garde and contemporary art. The AS-AP Steering Committee is: David Platzker, AS-AP project director; Linda Earle, executive director, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; Milan Hughston, chief of library and museum archives, The Museum of Modern Art; Maria Lind, director of the graduate program, Center for Curatorial Studies; Elizabeth Merena, director, Visual Arts Program, New York State Council on the Arts; Andrew Perchuk, Contemporary Programs and Research, Getty Research Institute; Marvin Taylor, faculty, Collections and Research Services, Fales Library, New York University Libraries; Martha Wilson, Franklin Furnace Archives; and revolving participants from the College Art Association.

Art Spaces Archives Project has received generous support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. AS-AP also gratefully acknowledges in-kind support from the College Art Association.

For more information about AS-AP at CCS Bard, please call the Center at 845.758.7598, write [email protected], or visit www.bard.edu/ccs/library/asap or www.as-ap.org.

The Center for Curatorial Studies and Hessel Museum of Art

The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) is an exhibition and research center dedicated to the study of art and exhibition practices from the 1960s to the present day. The Center’s graduate program is specifically designed to deepen students’ understanding of the intellectual and practical tasks of curating exhibitions of contemporary art, particularly in the complex social and cultural situations of present-day urban arts institutions. With more than 9,500 square feet of gallery space and an extensive library and curatorial archive, CCS Bard offers students intellectual grounding and actual experience within a museum.

In November 2006, CCS Bard inaugurated the Hessel Museum of Art, a new 17,000-square-foot building for exhibitions curated from the Marieluise Hessel Collection of more than 1,700 contemporary works. The new museum features intimate rooms encircling two large central galleries, and is scaled so that approximately 10 to 15 percent of the collection can be shown at any one time. The Hessel Museum extends the reach of the CCS Bard exhibition program, providing a place to test out the possibilities for exhibition-making using the remarkable resources of the collection as a whole.

Admission is free; museum hours are Wednesdays through Sundays, 1:00–5:00 p.m. For further information, call 845-758-7598, e-mail [email protected], or visit www.bard.edu/ccs.

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This event was last updated on 12-04-2007

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