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Tuesday, July 29, 2014

BAM Receives National Medal of Arts!

President Barack Obama presents the National Medal of Arts to Karen Brooks Hopkins, BAM president, on behalf of BAM in a White House ceremony on July 28, 2014. Photo by Jocelyn Augustino.
We here at BAM like to think of ourselves as well-seasoned cultural citizens, routinely interacting with some of the world's greatest artists—often bold-faced names—as well as national public figures.

But we were collectively truly humbled and honored as we gathered in BAM Rose Cinemas to watch a livestream of BAM President Karen Brooks Hopkins accepting a 2013 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama at the White House yesterday. (Watch the ceremony here.)

BAM was the sole organization to receive the arts award this year, and thus the only recipient to take home the medal in a handsome box. Individuals had their medals personally draped around their necks by President Obama, and included several BAM artists: choreographer Bill T. Jones, filmmaker Albert Maysles, and filmmaker Stanley Nelson (who received a National Humanities Medal). Other arts recipients included writer Maxine Hong Kingston and musician Linda Ronstadt, on whom President Obama confessed to having a crush back in the day.

The official citation (full brief here) reads:
Brooklyn Academy of Music for innovative contributions to the performing and visual arts. For over 150 years, BAM has showcased the works of both established visionaries and emerging artists who take risks and push boundaries.
As the citation was read, President Obama confided to Karen Hopkins that he saw The Gospel of Colonus at BAM in 1983. She invited him to return in the near future, perhaps setting the stage for another historical moment at BAM.

—Susan Yung

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Unseen Warhol

by Sarah Gentile

One of the joys as an archivist at an arts organization with a 150-plus-year history is seeing what has remained unseen for a long time. While working on the Leon Levy Digital Archives grant, we are processing photographs, video, audio, programs and ephemera that in some cases has been hidden for decades. Andy Warhol himself had a fascination with archives, going so far as to create his own version called Time Capsule 21, an art project consisting of more than 600 cardboard boxes full of ephemera from his daily life.

This fall, BAM will present Exposed: Songs for Unseen Warhol Films, a set of films never publicly shown, with accompanying music from rock icons Dean Wareham, Tom Verlaine, and Martin Rev, among others. It's not the first time Warhol's ties to rock were seen at BAM. In 1968, The Velvet Underground, the in-house band at Warhol's Factory, came to BAM for Merce Cunningham's opening night benefit. Warhol's helium-filled, mirrored, floating rectangles—what he called Silver Clouds—were also part of the New York premiere of Cunningham's RainForest, one of a set of eight performances featuring the work of composer John Cage and visual artists Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella. Then in 1989, Lou Reed and John Cale paid tribute to Warhol in the BAM-commissioned Songs for Drella, for which Warhol-inspired Campbell's soup cans and packets were created to give to the opening night audience. With the launch of the BAM archives website in 2016, expect to see more of these finds from BAM's history soon.


Excerpt from a 1968 Merce Cunningham BAM promotional mailing highlighting A Rock 
Dance; the Velvet Underground performed.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

When Invitations Matter: Polish theater finds from the Harvey Lichtenstein Collection

by Anika Paris



The BAM Hamm Archives' recent work processing the files of BAM President Emeritus Harvey Lichtenstein yielded these beautiful items from two luminaries of Polish theater: Jerzy Grotowski's Polish Laboratory Theatre and Józef Szajna's Teatr Studio Warsaw.

In the fall of 1969, the Polish Laboratory Theatre produced three shows with BAM: The Constant Prince, Acropolis, and Apocalypse. Several years later, in the spring of 1976, Teatr Studio Warsaw produced Dante and Replika. Speaking of Replika, Szajna told The New York Times, “It is a protest against war; it says, ‘Look at what we make of ourselves.’”

Grotowski was no stranger to conflict either, though he made his protests a little closer to home—when Lichtenstein and the director of the Chelsea Theater came to the premiere of The Constant Prince, Grotowski told them to leave in these choice words. If only they had these invites in hand!

Friday, July 4, 2014

Next Wave Festival Preview:
Independence Day Edition


By Robert Wood

A slightly cheesy, glibly bohemian, and yet entirely reasonable proposition for this Fourth of July: art has had everything to do with creating what we understand to be America (and the Declaration of Independence has done alright, too). The Great Plains are Woody Guthrie’s masterpiece. Main Street USA? Much obliged, Frank Capra.

That’s what we’re thinking about, at least, on this Independence Day—that and our upcoming Next Wave Festival, which will feature a handful of shows with an American bent to them: a new production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America from Dutch director Ivo Van Hove, a staged version of Teru Kuwayama’s Basetrack project, which documented the experience of Marines serving the front lines in Afghanistan, and a concert of American and other folk music from Kronos Quartet, Sam Amidon, Rhiannon Giddens, and others. All three are sure to contribute fruitfully to the red, white, and blue imaginarium.


Wednesday, July 2, 2014

The Majestic BAM Harvey Theater

by Louie Fleck

Imagine if you will, the entertainment options in 1904: no internet, no video games, no YouTube or TV… in fact practically no movies! Oh yes, and no radio. If you wanted to be entertained, you had to go somewhere.
 
Imagine Fulton Street, Brooklyn in 1904… No sneakers or cell phone stores or discount closeout shops! But there were a lot of theaters. Only six years after consolidation to become part of the City of New York, Brooklyn had its own “Broadway” district on Fulton Street. The newest jewel in this Brooklyn theater row was designed by J. B. McElfatrick at 651 Fulton Street. Meanwhile, just a block away, construction was about to begin on the brand new Brooklyn Academy of Music.


The Majestic opened up with a production of The Wizard of Oz (yes, 33 years before the Judy Garland film). Here at the BAM Hamm Archives, we’re still looking for a program, but it was most likely a road version of the hit that was running at the Manhattan Majestic at the same time. For this production, Toto was played by a cow. Can you imagine the flying monkeys carrying Toto away?

According to the August 24, 1904 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, when it opened, “Brooklyn’s Perfect Theater” had a seating capacity of “over 2300, as follows: lower floor 724, balcony 564, and gallery about 1,000.” Add 12 boxes, each with a capacity of six people, and you have a total of about 2360, making it larger than the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Opera House at 2100 seats!

From 1904 through the late 1930s, Broadway shows regularly transferred to the Brooklyn Majestic. There were notable appearances by Al Jolson, Bert Lahr, Milton Berle, and the Earl Carroll Vanities.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

About Last Night: The Ignite Gala



Last night BAM wrapped up a very full season with the Ignite Gala: Benefiting BAM Education. The fun-filled evening began with cocktails in the Dorothy Levitt lobby, followed by a gorgeous dinner on the stage of the Howard Gilman Opera House and a playful dessert reception with a DIY margarita bar.

The evening was a great way to jump in to summer. Read on for more about the event and what's coming up for BAM Education!

And check-out the full photo album.