Trends: Lincoln Center Looks Ahead

By Reynold Levy

It sounds fundamental, but when any enterprise strays from the essence of what it's supposed to be doing, it gets into trouble. Lincoln Center's mission, its essence, is to produce and present the finest performing arts that the world has to offer, by the finest artists. Our mission also includes a role as an educator of people who are interested in the performing arts. That is what Lincoln Center really is about.

However, the challenge of producing, presenting, and educating changes with the times we live in, and therefore the means we use to address them will vary over time.

That's why, even as we keep our mission foremost in mind, Lincoln Center is launching a number of innovative plans--plans that examine the present and anticipate the future. Current projects include WiFi-ing the campus, exploring different concert times and price points, offering information about our activities in a more accessible context, and making Lincoln Center a congenial place to visit before and after events. As we experiment with 21st-century technology and initiate new efforts like a publishing imprint, even as we do all that--and much, much more--we will not lose focus on our mandate.

Redevelopment of Lincoln Center's campus is a consequence of our need to reinvest in our facilities and public spaces, given that we're 47 years old. When I arrived here four years ago, I was amazed by how congested our facilities are: how frequently they're used and how difficult it is to find time to maintain them. All of that wear and tear from the 5 million people each year who visit Lincoln Center created a need to reinvest in our facilities and public spaces.

This revitalization will truly open up the Lincoln Center campus and send a strong signal to the public that we want to attract new audiences as well as accommodate traditional audiences. If I had a headline for Lincoln Center's redevelopment, it would be "The End of Either/Or." It's a false choice to suggest that you either serve your traditional audience or invite in new audiences. This false choice would dictate that you need to choose between a stereotyped audience--wealthy, lots of leisure time, semiretired or retired--and a potential new or broadened audience. We don't accept that.

Our approach to redevelopment, instead, acknowledges that the physical structure of Lincoln Center has unintentionally created barriers, due to the way it was originally created and how we manage the 16 acres of concert halls and public space. We want to lower those barriers, whether psychological, physical, temporal, or economic. We want to have as many people come to Lincoln Center as wish to visit. All of our redevelopment efforts have that theme in common.

One of the ways we will do that is with discount tickets. As curtain time nears and some seats are available, we want to provide those seats at a discount. Additionally, we want to make it easier to do one-stop shopping for performances at any of our 22 venues. The fact that all of Lincoln Center's resident organizations are prepared to cooperate is important, a recognition that while what we put on our stages and in our classrooms is an utterly necessary condition for our success, it is not enough. We must also embrace the social, environmental, and economic components.

We are reaching out to new donors, to the business community, to multiple ethnic communities, to the university community and others, looking to encourage those who don't know Lincoln Center to ask basic questions about what we do and why we do it.

The physical changes will bring in light and air, and enable people who visit to enjoy our campus without necessarily attending a performance. Several elements have multiple uses: a restaurant with a lawn rooftop, a grandstand with information displayed with ATM-like simplicity below. These innovations come out of a profound respect for what Lincoln Center does, for what we are, and for what we could be in the next century.

Reynold Levy is president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc.