Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York has opened the Ralph Ellison Center following a $3.6 million donation from the Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust.
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NEW YORK — Bard College says it has opened the Ralph Ellison Center, a new home for the legacy of writer Ralph Ellison, on the school’s campus in Annandale-on-Hudson.
The centre opened in late September after a $3.6 million donation from the Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust, according to a statement by Donn Zaretsky, the legal representative for the trust.
Zaretsky said Bard “made sense for two big reasons: Ellison had a genuine history there, and they understood the full breadth of his interests.”
Bard says Ellison taught American and Russian literature at the college from 1958 to 1961.
The college also says it now holds the intellectual rights and royalties from Ellison’s body of work, with the trust set to begin winding down before closing.
The transfer of rights includes Ellison’s 1952 novel “Invisible Man,” which follows a Black protagonist navigating social and psychological feelings of ostracization after moving from the Jim Crow South to Harlem in New York City.
“Invisible Man” made Ellison the first Black person to win the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction, Bard says.
Nicholas Alton Lewis, Bard’s associate dean and director of the centre, said the centre will be “celebrating Ellison not just for his literary legacy, but for all the modes through which he engaged in meaningful cultural production.”
Bard says the centre’s programs include Ralph Ellison lectures, a biannual convening of guest speakers and writers, a 10-week student internship supporting archival work and independent research, and a digital archival effort of Ellison’s materials to the Library of Congress.
Bard says the internship program kicked off this past summer, training six students from Bard and partner HBCUs, including a Bard senior studying art history, who spent the summer archiving Ellison’s work in Washington, D.C., and on Bard’s campus. The student said digitization involves “a painstaking devotion to detail” and described the experience as “really, really valuable.”
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