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The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to Reopen at Lincoln Center after Major Renovation
Public Service Begins October 29 at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center. Free Public Open House on Saturday, October 13
While it may look familiar from the outside, visitors to The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will find it dramatically transformed when the Library reopens at Lincoln Center after a major renovation. After operating from temporary quarters during the three-year construction period, the Library reopens for regular public service with expanded hours on Monday, October 29. A free public open house will be held Saturday, October 13. The $37 million project, designed by Polshek Partnership Architects, reflects the vast changes in the needs of users, and in methods of documenting the arts, that have developed since the Library was established in 1965."This redesign of one of the world's most popular research libraries is a response to the enormous increase in its collections and usership, the extraordinary advances in information technology, and the development of large multimedia collections that document live performances," said New York Public Library President Paul LeClerc. "We've made the collections more accessible, created inviting reading rooms and galleries, and added the latest technology to improve the environment for the public, the staff, and the collections."
When the building reopens to the public, it will also have a new name -- the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center -- in honor of the couple whose generous contribution to the Library made the new state-of-the-art facility possible. "The Cullmans' support will enable the Library to enhance greatly its ability to document the performing arts and provide broad public access to the materials in its collections," said Samuel C. Butler, Chairman of the Library's Board of Trustees. Major support for the renovation was also provided by the family of Donald and Mary Oenslager. The City of New York, under the leadership of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and City Council Speaker Peter F. Vallone, has contributed more than $20 million to the renovation of the Library for the Performing Arts. The Library will formally express its gratitude to all the contributors to this project at an opening ribbon-cutting ceremony on October 11.
"The list of improvements to the Library is impressive," said William D. Walker, Senior Vice President and Andrew W. Mellon Director of The Research Libraries. "They include a grand, light-filled reading room, spectacular loft-like exhibition galleries, new audiovisual stations, a vastly more efficient centralized retrieval system, expanded storage, an enhanced preservation lab, a four-fold increase in public-access computers, and a massive number of networked databases." He added that "an automated system will control temperatures where delicate materials are stored."
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
The Library for the Performing Arts, one of four major research centers of The New York Public Library, serves more than 425,000 visitors a year and houses the world's most extensive combination of circulating, research, and rare archival collections in its field. The materials are available free of charge, along with a wide range of exhibitions, seminars, and performances. Approximately 30 percent of the Library's holdings are books, but it is known particularly for its prodigious collections of non-book materials such as historic recordings, videotapes, autograph manuscripts, correspondence, sheet music, stage designs, press clippings, programs, posters, and photographs. The Library's Research Collections are the Billy Rose Theatre Collection, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, the Music Division, and the Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound. It also features extensive Circulating Collections with materials in music, dance, drama, film, and arts administration, including large collections of circulating audio and video recordings.
"This marks the first major renovation of the Library since it opened in 1965," said Jacqueline Z. Davis, The Barbara G. and Lawrence A. Fleischman Executive Director of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. "The Library's collections have grown exponentially since then to nine million items that require more than seventeen and a half miles of shelves. In addition," Davis said, "technology has completely changed the way materials are stored and accessed. The reconfigured space will allow us to provide better service in a more pleasing environment that can comfortably accommodate continued collection processing and preservation work. It also gives us the opportunity to make significant improvements to our staff work areas."