They Told Me Not to Take that Job: Tumult, Betrayal, Heroics, and the Transformation of Lincoln Center Read Online Free PDF Page B

York Philharmonic and the New York City Opera, Lincoln Center extended every effort to point the way to artistic and financial solvency, orally and in writing. We could propose, but only those proud, independent entities could choose whether to act on our recommendations. Many were airily dismissed, and others were simply ignored.
    There were many bright spots during this period as well, artistic and otherwise.
    Lincoln Center’s geography was redefined by its newest constituent, the Wynton Marsalis–led Jazz at Lincoln Center. In 2004 it opened tocritical acclaim three stunning, Rafael Vinoly–designed spaces on the fifth and sixth floors of the Time Warner Building at Columbus Circle.
    Lincoln Center Theater’s major challenge seemed to be finding adequate storage space to house its many Tony Awards. Contact , Coast of Utopia , The Light in the Piazza , South Pacific , Other Desert Cities , War Horse , and Golden Boy were just a few of its much-heralded productions during the tenure of Andre Bishop and Bernard Gersten.
    The Chamber Music Society, under the fresh artistic leadership of Wu Han and David Finckel, acquired new energy and vitality. Its activities expanded to include many more performances in Alice Tully Hall, more touring, and residencies around the United States and the world. The Lincoln Center Film Society also became more ambitious in the number and kind of its offerings and in related educational programming. And Lincoln Center’s own eclectic presentations of more than four hundred annual events were perhaps never as bold, creative, and award-winning as in the period from 2002 through 2014.
    Leaders of the burgeoning, affluent hedge fund industry were persuaded to adopt Lincoln Center as their artistic cause, and the much-applauded, now consensus-blessed, ambitious physical transformation of Lincoln Center proceeded apace.
    The entire city block, 65th Street from Broadway to Amsterdam Avenue, and all the artistic facilities that align it, were utterly transformed into a warm, receptive, and engaging boulevard of the arts. Never again could Lincoln Center be called forbidding, anonymous, or unwelcoming.
    With the transformation of Alice Tully Hall, the expansion of The Juilliard School, the renovation of the New York State Theater (since renamed the David H. Koch Theater), the creation of a state-of-the-art third performance space for Lincoln Center Theater, two new screening rooms and an education center for the Film Society, and new dance studios for the School of American Ballet came a beautifully designed, graceful welcome to Lincoln Center’s main campus, one filled with light and life. There are new green spaces, new restaurants, and a totally Wi-Fi’d campus. Twenty-first-century technology is displayed indoors and out. And there is a remodeled, utterly overhauled, privately owned public space called the David Rubenstein Atrium (namedafter its principal donor), a new Lincoln Center Commons, open free of charge to the public 365 days a year.
    New board leadership took hold at Lincoln Center, the New York City Ballet, Lincoln Center Theater, the Chamber Music Society, the Film Society, and most recently, the New York Philharmonic.
    This book reports on these events and their results, including both those who helped achieve progress and those who fell short. My administrative colleagues and the trustees to whom we report escape neither unscathed nor unpraised, as the case may be.
    The donors are described with admiration and candor—from the generous who give willingly because they believe in their benefaction and derive pleasure from contributing to a cause beyond self, to the bargainers who treat philanthropy as another opportunity to extract advantage.
    I N REFLECTING ON the forces and personalities at work in the world’s largest performing arts center, much more is involved than an account of heroes and villains, winners and losers, who’s up and who’s down. Above all I hope to