Richard B. Fisher Center For The Performing Arts

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College offers an architecturally bold and dynamic environment for innovative artistic presentation in the Hudson Valley. The Frank Gehry–designed center provides audiences with a world-class complex that inspires risk-taking performances and provocative programs in orchestral, chamber, and jazz music and theater, dance, and opera by American and international artists.

In the early 1970’s Bard College’s theater, the Old Carriage House, on the Blithewood estate burned down. Eventually, in the late 1970’s the college completed the building of what is now the Avery Arts Center with limited facilities to house theater, dance, and music near the Edith C. Blum Institute, and later in the 1980’s added the 375 seat F.W. Olin Auditorium for lectures and small chamber programs.

Through the 1980’s and 1990’s it became clear that the college needed to expand its teaching and performance space to meet its curriculum needs and to create a regional performing arts facility which could be part of a larger-scale effort to develop the Hudson Valley as a destination point for cultural tourism.

The current facility is the result of planning that began in the early 1990’s in cooperation with community leaders. The success of the effort to build the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College coincides with the development of other facilities in the region including the opening of the DIA Center, the expansion of Storm King, and the success of Bard’s own Center for Curatorial Studies with its exhibition space.

This new facility is one which will be devoted primarily to teaching and college events during the academic year and used as a public performing arts facility and venue for the college’s graduate programs in the arts during the summer months.