Browse Exhibits (24 total)

Pleasure Grounds tells the story of the major estates that once comprised the Bard College campus of Annandale-on-Hudson along with the people that imbued them with character and historical value. From the late 1700s throughout most of the 19th century the town of Annandale, then called Cedar Hill, flourished as a mill center. As designers and artists came to discover the breathtaking scenery of the Hudson Valley the term pleasure grounds was born. The area grew in aesthetic popularity and gorgeous estates began to spring up along the river. Between years 1775 and 1835 these estates were designed in a particularly Neoclassical style, and most often modeled after European architecture. By the mid-1800s the romantic period had reached its peak. A shift occurred in architectural leaning from Neoclassical riverfront estates to new romantic designs that stressed emotion, individualism, eclecticism, and an appreciation for beauty. It also goes without saying that these elaborate homes could not have been constructed and maintained without the hands and strength of laborers. These laborers, either on their own volition or by enslavement, worked long, arduous hours building, tending, cooking, and child-rearing. This exhibit uses a map to plot out important buildings and locations along with the people associated with those places.

This exhibit explores how Eleanor Roosevelt redefined the role of the First Lady. The American people had, in the White House, a passionate advocate that attuned and connected to the public. During her time as First Lady, and during the years after FDR’s death, she devoted herself to the betterment of society. 

This exhibition examines the hidden and important role Eleanor Roosevelt played in the formation of New Deal arts programs, as well as her advocacy for the fine arts in American culture. Mrs. Roosevelt articulated multiple dimensions to the role of art in American culture: the connection between making and participating, the appreciation of beauty in simple things, and art as a means to connect individuals to larger national narratives. This exhibition examines these themes through personal correspondence, speeches, radio broadcasts, and especially art objects. 

Since the first European settlers arrived in the 1600s, the Hudson Valley has drawn immigrants from around the world who have seen, in its rich pastoral beauty, the potential to live out an American destiny of open space and unbridled expansion. Red Hook and Rhinebeck started out as collections of land patents owned by Dutch and English gentry, before developing into towns settled by British and American elites, who built lavish estates and properties to take advantage of the bucolic countryside. Today, members of America’s recently established middle class call these towns home. While they have ceased to be the epicenters for the country’s wealthy that they once were, these towns continue to be shaped by a uniquely American conception of Romanticism that originated when they were cultural capitals for the elites. Beginning in the nineteenth century, American Romanticism played a significant role in shaping the towns’ architecture and environment, and Romantic ideas about the role of nature, art, and history have continued to affect the towns’ efforts towards environmental and historic preservation to this very day.

About

This exhibit examines a collection of papers, photographs, and artwork donated by Elsa Rogo to Bard College that have been recently processed and preserved. The collection, which ranges from personal notes, typewritten speeches, small doodles, sketches for murals, lithographs, postcards, and even a death mask, exposes the development of Hirsch’s style over the course of his teaching, creating, and thinking about art. In particular, this exhibit challenges the existing scholarship that labels Hirsch as precisionist artist, suggesting instead that he is “precisely not” such an artist as evidenced by the collection. 

Biographical Note

Stefan Hirsch was a professor of painting at Bard College beginning in 1942 until his retirement in 1960. He was born in 1899 in Germany, where he began studying art. In 1917, he immigrated to the United States. He would become an artist associated with the Precisionist movement in American art, which included artists such as Charles Sheeler, George Ault, Joseph Stella, and Charles Demuth, among others. Like many of this group from the 1920s and 1930s, Hirsch received acclaim for his clean, geometric, and mechanistic style then in vogue as a result of the successful rise of modernist art in the United States.

In 1930 in New York City, he married Elsa Rogo, an artist and noted photojournalist. Together, they spent an extended honeymoon in Mexico, visiting pre-Columbian sites and befriending artists like Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jose Clemente Orozco. Hirsch and Rogo travelled between the United States and Latin America for the remainder of Hirsch’s life. Hirsch continued painting and printmaking, while Rogo worked as a photojournalist and teacher. In the 1930s, he was involved in the New Deal Arts programs, and taught mural painting and art criticism at Bennington College and the Art Students League.
In 1942, Stefan Hirsch accepted a teaching appointment in painting at Bard College, where he led the Division of the Arts. Together with Rogo, he taught at Bard until his retirement in 1960. In 1961 he was granted the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by Bard College. His first retrospective exhibition occurred in 1964 at Bard College, and another was organized at the Phillips Collection in 1977.