Lincoln Center: A Promise Realized, 1979 - 2006

By Stephen Stamas

This book chronicles the major milestones in the artistic, physical, and administrative history of Lincoln Center’s last two-and-a-half decades. Filled with over sixty beautiful black-and-white photographs that highlight the Center’s rich cultural history, it illuminates how Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts served and supported its constituent groups while producing its own innovative artistic programming and how, in the process, it became a role model for performing arts organizations throughout the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: Nov 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9781620458716

Book preview

LINCOLN CENTER

LINCOLN CENTER

A PROMISE REALIZED, 1979–2006

Stephen Stamas

Sharon Zane

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Copyright © 2007 by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. All rights reserved

Lincoln Center and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts names and logos are registered trademarks of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Stamas, Stephen.

Lincoln Center : a promise realized, 1979-2006 / Stephen Stamas and Sharon Zane.

          p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-470-10123-0 (cloth)

ISBN-10: 0-470-10123-7 (cloth)

1. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. 2. Performing arts—New York (State)—New York—History—20th century. 3. Performing arts—New York (State)—New York—History—21st century. I. Zane, Sharon. II. Title.

PN1588.N5S73 2006

790.209747′1—dc22

2006029948

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1  All in the Family: Lincoln Center and Its Constituents

Music Theater at Lincoln Center

The Film Society of Lincoln Center

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center Theater

School of American Ballet

Jazz at Lincoln Center

2  Filling Programming Gaps: Lincoln Center Presents

Great Performers

Mostly Mozart Festival

Lincoln Center Festival

American Songbook

Live from Lincoln Center

Community Programming

Children’s Programming

Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education

3  The Changing Campus: Architecture and Art Serve the Community

The Rose Building

The New York State Theater

Avery Fisher Hall

The Visual Arts

4  Making Things Happen: Leadership at Lincoln Center

Amyas Ames

Martin E. Segal

George Weissman

Beverly Sills

Bruce Crawford

Frank A. Bennack Jr.

5  A New Look: Redevelopment and Renewal

Chronology 1955–2006

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc.

Board of Directors

Senior Staff

Lincoln Center Council

Notes

Credits

Index

PREFACE

The partnership between Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—the umbrella entity created in the late 1950s to serve as the organizing framework and the real-estate manager of the arts center at Broadway and 65th Street—and its constituent resident artistic companies is surely one of the great success stories of our time. Yet inherent in that relationship have been tensions that occasionally have led to differences between the Center and its resident organizations, also known as constituents. How much power and influence does each have in relation to the other? How are funds raised and distributed? What constitutes programming competition among the various players? Despite these issues, Lincoln Center itself, including the programming it sponsors, and its resident organizations have prospered and produced a half century of excellence in their offerings and global leadership in the field of the performing arts.

This is not a chronicle per se of Lincoln Center’s separate resident artistic companies. Each of them—the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; the Film Society of Lincoln Center; Jazz at Lincoln Center; the Juilliard School; Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc.; Lincoln Center Theater; the Metropolitan Opera; the New York City Ballet; the New York City Opera; the New York Philharmonic; the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; and the School of American Ballet—has its own management and board and is financially and artistically autonomous, even as it functions as part of the Lincoln Center family. Rather, this history is an account of how the umbrella organization known as Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts has evolved to serve and support the family in their own remarkable artistic achievements while at the same time broadening the program offerings at the Center to attract a wider public. In the main, this history seeks to accomplish this by telling a series of stories about the major milestones of the last two and a half decades that together comprise the artistic, physical, and administrative history of Lincoln Center. It also acknowledges the complicated relationship between the Center and its constituents as they have worked together in pursuit of Lincoln Center’s overall primary purpose: the presentation of excellence in the performing arts. This chronicle does touch upon the histories of specific constituents insofar as Lincoln Center played a central role in their creation—as with Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center—or where the Center provided substantial support during difficult times, as with the Lincoln Center Theater.

What follows in this history is intended as an updating of Edgar B. Young’s 1980 book Lincoln Center: The Building of an Institution. Young, who played an important part in the establishment of Lincoln Center as a representative of John D. Rockefeller 3rd, has already documented much of the period from 1955 to 1980. With Mr. Young’s encouragement, we have included in this account a fuller discussion of some of the developments in the 1970s that help to carry the story forward through June 2006, the end point of the current history.

In the twenty-seven preceding years, Lincoln Center moved well beyond its considerable administrative and real-estate responsibilities to become a major force in programming in areas not covered by its resident organizations, a role contemplated for it from the beginning. This impetus to fill artistic programming gaps had been reflected in the initiatives of the late William Schuman, the president of Lincoln Center in the 1960s, but financial difficulties and the concerns of the constituents about fund-raising and possible program competition put an end to some of his efforts. With growing financial strength and a clearer purpose, which ameliorated the concerns of the resident organizations, Lincoln Center realized in the period of this history much of Schuman’s initial vision and contributed further to the luster of what the world at large refers to as Lincoln Center. Yet it is important to keep in mind that central to the institution’s luster is the artistic brilliance of its constituents and their achievements over the years.

In the end, this is the story of how Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts has served and supported its constituent groups while producing its own innovative artistic programming and how, in the process, it became a role model for other performing arts organizations around the world.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks are due to the Lincoln Center Directors Emeriti Council, cochaired by June Noble Larkin and Martin E. Segal, for initiating this project to update the history of Lincoln Center. Grants from the Directors Emeriti Council, as well as additional financial support from Lincoln Center, made this project possible.

In addition, the Lincoln Center staff has been patient and helpful to us as we researched the files, the oral histories, and other records that serve as the basis for this history. Judith Johnson, the archivist at Lincoln Center, and her associates made special efforts in assisting with searches and preparing a chronology of major events, a version of which is included in our text. The Lincoln Center Archives are a remarkable asset.

We also thank Susan DeMark for her resourceful research assistance. It was a pleasure to work with her. In addition, we thank Peter Johnson for his helpful editorial suggestions and Martin Timins for his expert initial copyediting.

Finally, we are grateful to Bonnie Zitofsky for keeping track of us and coordinating our many fruitful meetings.

We have found our own collaboration an easy and rewarding one. While the writing of different sections was divided between us, the final product is the result of joint consultation and discussion and reflects our joint judgments and conclusions.

Stephen Stamas

Sharon Zane

INTRODUCTION

In the Spring of 1979, As Lincoln Center Prepared to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of its ground breaking, there was much for which to be grateful. In many respects, the dream of its founder, John D. Rockefeller 3rd, that a center be established to be used for the advancement of the arts and for the benefit of the people who come to attend its performances,¹ had been realized. He, along with his associates, had envisioned a place built not just for today or tomorrow, but for generations to come, where the arts are not for the privileged few, but for the many. Their place is not on the periphery of daily life, but at its center. They should function not merely as another form of entertainment but, rather, should contribute significantly to our well-being and happiness.²

A spectacular, free-to-the-public outdoor sound and light show mounted for the occasion, showcasing many of the performance highlights of the Center’s first twenty years, drew crowds to the plaza throughout the summer of 1979. At the time, Center president John Mazzola told the press, New York is the cultural capital of the world, and this celebration underlines that in gold.³

Much had been accomplished in the twenty years following the 1959 groundbreaking ceremony. The centerpiece of a massive federally funded urban renewal effort for the Upper West Side, Lincoln Center could measure its success in a number of ways. It had sparked an economic renaissance that changed the face of that once blighted neighborhood; restaurants, chic shops, and new upscale residential towers sprang up around the Center, stimulating similar development northward just as the urban planners had anticipated. As a result, the City of New York enjoyed substantially increased real-estate tax revenues from the area.⁴ Fifty million ticket buyers had attended some thirty-one thousand performances in the seventeen years since First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy attended the Center’s televised opening performance in 1962 at Philharmonic Hall, generating a substantial increase in pedestrian and vehicular traffic.⁵

Lincoln Center’s sixteen-acre campus, with imposing buildings by seven of the world’s leading architects and peaceful outdoor public spaces designed by one of the country’s leading landscape architects, offered visitors every opportunity to congregate, to sit in peaceful surroundings, or to enjoy exciting outdoor programming. Its plazas and open spaces beckoned, and New Yorkers and visitors from near and far took great advantage of them.

As the nation’s first performing arts complex, Lincoln Center had already served as the model for a growing number of similar enterprises, both in the United States and abroad. Yet, according to the New York Times, no other center had been able to match the richness of the artistic concentration at Lincoln Center.⁶ Much more than the sum of its parts, Lincoln Center’s dynamic artistic life was everywhere apparent. Already an unofficial New York City landmark, Lincoln Center had become a destination not only for eager audiences enjoying the many and varied pleasures within but also for multitudes of tourists from all over the world.

Aerial view of the original Lincoln Center campus as it appeared in 1979, its twentieth anniversary. Proceeding around the Josie Robertson Plaza from the left: the New York State Theater, the Metropolitan Opera House, and Avery Fisher Hall. To the right of the opera house, the Vivian Beaumont Theater and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. To the right of Avery Fisher Hall, the Juilliard School.

The Center, as originally contemplated, was physically complete by 1979. Philharmonic Hall, with its problematic acoustics, had been completely renovated and renamed to honor its major donor, Avery Fisher. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Film Society of Lincoln Center had been added to its list of resident organizations. And the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education, the Center’s pioneering effort in aesthetic education, had been established, broadening and deepening the scope of its commitment to Rockefeller’s original vision that Lincoln Center would not only preserve the past but also nourish the future. Live from Lincoln Center, broadcast to millions of appreciative viewers and showcasing many memorable performances by participating constituents, had extended the Center’s reach beyond anyone’s wildest dream. Lincoln Center was, in the words of President Carter, a magnet for artists and lovers of the arts everywhere.⁷

Yet amid these singular accomplishments, troublesome challenges remained—challenges that even Lincoln Center’s most ardent admirers could not ignore. For one thing, in 1979, the Center’s finances were in a precarious state. Operating and maintenance costs had continued to climb. With its halls running deficits that were only deepened by high inflation and New York City’s unprecedented fiscal crisis in the mid-1970s, the issues of communal fund-raising and fund-apportionment affected relations with the constituent organizations. Some critics pointed to continuing acoustical problems in Avery Fisher Hall and the New York State Theater. The Vivian Beaumont Theater, once the Center’s show-place for drama, had been dark for two years, a constituent in name only.

Artist Larry Rivers’s model of Lincoln Center, decorated with icing and flowers, constructed for the List Print and Poster Program poster that was issued in 1979 to celebrate Lincoln Center’s twentieth anniversary.

According to some people, the first twenty years had not resulted in enough of the kind of collaboration and cross-fertilization among the constituents that Rockefeller and his associates had hoped for. Pressed for operating funds and the need to develop and retain audiences, the constituents were seen as jealously guarding their own territories and thus depriving the Center of a true sense of community. One critic even referred to it as a shopping center for the arts that has yet to come to grips with integrating.⁸

Perhaps most troubling at the moment of its twentieth anniversary was the feeling that Lincoln Center had yet to define its true purpose, beyond that of real-estate manager. From the start, the founders had recognized that offerings in addition to those the resident constituents presented would be required if Lincoln Center were to truly represent all the performing arts, although, Richard Shepard of the New York Times reported, how much of Lincoln Center’s central function would be more than administrative was not spelled out.⁹

The additional role of Lincoln Center as a producer had begun to emerge as early as the mid-1960s. The need to fill the halls year-round was a potent catalyst. So, too, was the recognition that the Center’s offerings should appeal to as broad a public as possible. Several programming initiatives, including the establishment of its long-lived Mostly Mozart and Great Performers series, extended the performing-arts season and filled in gaps in the programming of the resident companies. The groundbreaking initiative of Live from Lincoln Center brought international notice to the participating constituents and the Center itself. As Shepard pointed out, though, whatever feeling there is that Lincoln Center should be a setting for artistic mingling that would step over the bounds of organization is counterbalanced by a desire for non-interference.¹⁰ In this environment, critics called for more innovative programming on the part of the Center and its constituents, vital leadership, better fund-raising, and more audience-friendly facilities. If, from the very start, the role of Lincoln Center in relation to its resident companies was never clear, this appeared to be ever more the case at the moment of its twentieth anniversary.

Much has been accomplished in many areas since 1979. In its role of real-estate manager, Lincoln Center spearheaded one major building project—the Samuel B. and David Rose Building—and recently has embarked upon another, the ten-year redevelopment project that will transform much of the campus by 2010. In providing programming, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., has transcended its early role as occasional producer. Its impact as an organizing entity that produces a wide range of successful programming and educational initiatives has extended the founders’ initial vision that the Center itself would encourage, sponsor or facilitate performances or exhibitions, commission the creation of works of musical and performing art, and voluntarily assist the education of artists or students of the arts.¹¹ Yet, in the end, it is the strength of its constituents—who were at the heart of the Lincoln Center enterprise from the very start—that truly defines the Center and makes it the important cultural force it is today.

Now, forty-seven years after President Dwight David Eisenhower, sterling-silver shovel ceremonially in hand, broke ground on behalf of Lincoln Center’s trustees, constituents, and future patrons on May 14, 1959, to signal the beginning of the vast construction project, Lincoln Center is on solid financial footing. The Center is able to support its constituents in myriad ways that contribute to their financial stability and thus to their continuing artistic vitality. The revival of Lincoln Center Theater, now with a two-decade string of critical and commercial successes behind it, and the establishment of Jazz at Lincoln Center, would not have been possible without the financial support of Lincoln Center. Its halls are rented year-round and do not present a financial burden to the constituents. Exciting new programming breathes life into the efforts of Lincoln Center, Inc., to draw younger audiences. The Lincoln Center Institute’s innovative programs have been copied by similar entities throughout the country.

Able staff