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The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 
Current | Upcoming | Past | Online Be sure to check library hours and holidays for important information. Exhibition Hours: Tues, Wed & Fri: 11 to 6; Mon, Thurs: 12 to 8; Sat: 10 to 6 Revolutionary Voices: Performing Arts in Central & Eastern Europe in the 1980s A performing arts festival marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, presented by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in partnership with key New York City cultural organizations and academic institutions, November 2009-March 2010. www.performingrevolution.org To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism in the countries of the Czech Republic, Former GDR, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will collaborate with creative artists and scholars from those nations on a major exhibition and performing arts festival. The exhibition will focus on theatre performances and other art events, which through their form and/or content contested the prevailing totalitarian regime and anticipated the forthcoming political/social changes. The exhibition will argue that as the revolution in most countries of the Soviet bloc did not take place in form of a violent overthrowing of power, art was one the main arenas where “the revolutionary” started to happen. The exhibition will illustrate the different ways in which performances attempted to break the boundaries set by the Communist state’s culture politicians, aesthetes and censors: Audience and Stage, Barriers: Censorship and other power-games, Theatre outside the theatre, Western aesthetic tradition of absurd, punk, etc… permeates into the aesthetic of official communist art, social realism, and Breaking Taboos. Lincoln Center: Celebrating 50 Years  Lincoln Center: Celebrating 50 Years, the first exhibition to focus exclusively on the evolution and influence of America’s first performing arts center, will feature an extensive collection of historic and contemporary objects including photographs, ephemera, correspondence, costumes, set pieces, props and video recordings. Curated by Thomas Mellins, co-author of the book New York 1960, the free exhibition will be presented at the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center in collaboration with Lincoln Center, October 15, 2009-January 16, 2010. Mr. Mellins will discuss key exhibition themes in a free lecture on opening day, October 15 at 6:00pm in the Library’s Bruno Walter Auditorium. From its inception in the mid 1950s, Lincoln Center has been a powerful symbol of New York’s core substance and style. Its scale, its architecture and urbanism, its concentration of talent culled from the realms of government, philanthropy, academia, architecture, art, and a broad spectrum of the performing arts, all powerfully embody main currents that run throughout New York City’s history and collective character. Lincoln Center: Celebrating 50 Years will show the complex and symbiotic relationship between Lincoln Center and New York City over the course of a half century and the key role Lincoln Center has played in New York’s development as an international cultural capital. Image: Beverly Sills in the title role of The Merry Widow. New York City Opera, 1978. Photo: Jack Mitchell |