Whether a man is burdened by power or enjoys power; whether he is trapped by responsibility or made free by it; whether he is moved by other people and outer forces or moves them—this is the essence of leadership.
—THEODORE H. WHITE, The Making of the President, 1960
The talent, character, and drive of those holding high office matter a great deal. The health of an enterprise depends in no small measure on the qualities of mind and the management acumen of its leadership.
Where does that leadership come from?
For me, a vital source of inspiration and emulation has been observing carefully the lives of others, whether by reading about exceptional people or seeing them depicted across the footlights of a stage or on a screen at home or in a darkened movie theater.
I have also been fortunate in coming to know personally some leaders whose influence on me has been profound. It is my privilege to introduce you to a few of them. Some of my depictions portray public figures, revealing features of character or accomplishment that are either not well known or are underappreciated. Others delineate personalities who are hardly household names.
These individuals share three traits. They work very hard to achieve uncommon results. They wish to make of this world a better place. They offer time, treasure, and talent to advance the public good.
By examining their lives closely, I have grown personally and at the workplace. How others assess situations, unearth opportunities, respond to threats, and conduct themselves more generally has always been an essential wellspring of learning for me. My career has been immensely enriched by dozens of such associations, models to closely watch, lively examples of how to inhabit a life of consequence.
BEVERLY SILLS WAS SINGULAR. A global superstar on the world’s opera stages, she retired at fifty years of age, never to sing again. Not even in the shower, she claimed.
In our family, my mother revered two Jewish women. One was Bess Myerson, who in 1945 became the first Jewish Miss America. There has not been another since. That Myerson went on to also become the first commissioner of the Department of Consumer Affairs in the city of New York and a favorite of Mayor Ed Koch was another point of pride for Barbara Levy.
Her second heroine, Beverly Sills, was regarded as virtually a neighbor. If you take a two-and-a-half-mile stroll on the boardwalk going west, starting off across the street from my apartment house on Bay Seven in Brighton Beach, to its very end, passing by all of Coney Island, you reach Sea Gate. That is where Sills was raised. The very idea that a child brought up in a Jewish home in such a place could rise to global prominence was amazing to my mother.
Is there an opera star you know of who could hold her own on The Johnny Carson Show, or with Carol Burnett on a one-hour television special in prime time? How many divas can you name who served on four corporate boards of directors, including American Express and Macy’s? Sills could count as close friends not just CEOs and fellow household-name artists, but also mayors, governors, and US senators.
There are only a handful of artists who could move deftly from a career in singing to running an artistic institution like the New York City Opera, which Sills did as its general director from 1979 to 1989.
Sills once told me, tongue in cheek, that she learned all one needed to know about finance from the developer Peter Jay Sharp, the owner of the Carlyle Hotel. Apparently he told her that two things were not good to find when examining an operating statement: any number in parentheses and any number colored red!
Sills’s effervescence was everywhere apparent. She was always upbeat, always smiling. In the business of the arts there are setbacks, of course. But Sills really believed that for every door that closes, a window opens.
Her positive spirit at work and in public was remarkable given the private setbacks she and her husband Peter Greenough endured. Their daughter Muffy was diagnosed as deaf before she was two years old, and their son Peter Jr., “Bucky,” was very severely disabled at birth. That Bev could manage to deal with these setbacks and not let them dilute her indomitable spirit was remarkable. It is not for nothing that she decided to title her book-length self-portrait Bubbles.
When it came to attending opera performances, Beverly was the least stuffy person I ever encountered at Lincoln Center. Just enjoy it, she would advise. Don’t treat attending this grand art form as some kind of stress test. Lead with your senses. Study up on the opera later, after you have seen a show, rather than before. If you are too tired to enjoy the performance after the second act concludes at 10:20 p.m. and all you can think about is your 7:00 a.m. breakfast the next morning, then just take your leave. Act 3 will be ready for you when you are better prepared for it. Sills often followed her own advice, stealing away from performances as inconspicuously as possible.
For all of Lincoln Center’s disorganization and for all of the problems that afflicted it, being around Beverly always made me feel relaxed and comfortable. I count myself fortunate for having had the couple of years our lives touched. Barbara Levy would have thought that there was no greater success than to proclaim that one knows, let alone works with, Beverly Sills.
In July 2012 the staff at Lincoln Center decided to hold a party to bid Sills good-bye and to thank her for the service she had rendered as chair for more than seven years. She insisted on planning the luncheon menu: fried chicken, French fries, three quarter sour pickles, and for dessert, s’mores, cotton candy, ice cream, and the ingredients to make your own sundae: wet walnuts, maple and chocolate syrup, whipped cream, and cherries. And for those who preferred them, root beer floats. Of course there were also egg creams.
Alice Waters, forget it. The choices of our honoree came right out of her Sea Gate origins. There was not a vegetable to be found. There were words of praise and tears of remembrance from all of those gathered in the grand lobby of Avery Fisher Hall. We expressed our appreciation and, in honor of Beverly, we gained some weight. For all of the glamour and glitter, the ball gowns and the white-tie occasions, for all of the globetrotting and the hotel suites in world capitals, and for all of the admiration in which she was held, at bottom, when given her choice, the sights, smells, and sounds of her youth prevailed.
Egg creams in hand, we offered our final toast to a star more indelibly identified with Lincoln Center than any other.1
I FIRST MET David Koch months after setting in motion his dramatic entrance onto the public stage of Lincoln Center. It happened this way. The New York State Theater, which was owned, notwithstanding its name, by the city of New York, had virtually always housed the New York City Ballet and the New York City Opera. In a fit of pique, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who did not like fellow Republican, Mayor John V. Lindsay, decided to name the space, designed by Philip Johnson, after New York State.
In anticipation of the desirability of the entire building carrying the name of a private donor as part of a campuswide, comprehensive capital campaign, Lincoln Center took the initiative. On behalf of the New York City Opera and the New York City Ballet, we proposed to Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, and Governor Eliot Spitzer that a bill be passed permitting the New York State Theater to be renamed for an as yet unknown private party, hopefully a very generous donor.
The statute embodying this purpose was passed by unanimous consent and signed into law on April 23, 2008. That act paved the way for the solicitation of David Koch, who readily pledged $100 million, to be paid out over ten years, for the renovation of what for ballet fans was a hallowed space. The gift was publicly announced on July 10, 2008.
In one decisive move, Koch elevated the way in which donors viewed cultural institutions, and places of public accommodation more generally. Before Koch’s donation, only hospitals and universities were receiving gifts of such size. Now places like Lincoln Center were transformed in the minds of wealthy philanthropists into fully worthy recipients of mega-gifts.
Earlier, the largest-known gifts received by Lincoln Center or any of its resident artistic organizations had been $25 million from financier and Lincoln Center trustee Julian Robertson; $25 million and $30 million from Mercedes Bass and Ann Ziff, respectively, to the Metropolitan Opera; and separate donations, each of comparable size, to The Juilliard School from its board chair, Bruce Kovner.
As if to prove a point, several months later Stephen Schwarzman, the cofounder of the Blackstone Group, donated $100 million to the New York Public Library. The headquarters and main branch, located on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, now carries his name.
Several years later John Paulson, a leading hedge fund manager, donated $100 million to the Central Park Conservancy.
David Koch’s gift not only set an extraordinary precedent, but as a practical matter it enabled the frequently quarreling New York City Opera and the New York City Ballet to cooperate on a marvelous modernization. The gift made possible the removal of carpeting and layers of material from the floor and walls of the theater, significantly improving its acoustics. It allowed for the creation of an orchestra lift that would elevate the musicians from the pit to become level with the stage if the repertoire so demanded. It created a media room that could potentially broadcast and narrowcast what was appearing on the stage outdoors on Lincoln Center’s Josie Robertson Plaza and to movie theaters, television sets, and mobile devices. It enlarged and improved bathroom facilities. It created aisles for easier access to seating in the orchestra, originally built to the specifications of George Balanchine as the home of the New York City Ballet, the place with which his name will forever be indelibly associated.
Koch, of his own volition, took another very unusual step. Typically, buildings and parts of them are named in perpetuity by way of acknowledgment for appropriately sized gifts. David Koch voluntarily offered to have his name on the building for a fixed period of fifty years and not a day longer, thereby enabling that funding opportunity to be “resold,” charitably speaking. His generosity on this score is rare and much to be admired. He had created nothing less than a timeshare opportunity that could be renewed and renamed for another family. Alas, no such provision exists for the likes of Alice Tully Hall, or Avery Fisher Hall, or Frederick P. Rose Hall, or the Vivian Beaumont Theater, or any other space, indoors or out, that carries a benefactor’s name on Lincoln Center’s sixteen-acre campus.2
Koch and I met on February 22, 2009, at the first concert in the completely new and refurbished Alice Tully Hall. He could not have been more engaged or curious. He marveled at the idea that the wood paneling of the entire auditorium came from one African moabi tree, cut into the thinnest slices in Japan and shipped to New York City. He was very impressed with the geometric contours of the space, likening it to a cruise line or a spaceship. He couldn’t quite believe the dramatic effect that light-emitting diodes carefully placed behind the thin wood veneer had on the room, “blushing walls,” in a hall where the interior was fitted out as if it were a “bespoke suit.” And Koch, who holds an engineering degree from MIT, put many questions to me about why musicians, audiences, and critics were so captivated by the acoustics, referring to them as heavenly, among other words of praise. What is it about the shape of the hall and/or the three stage configurations and/or the volume of the space that allowed for just the right reverberation time, leading to splendid sound?
I found Koch genuinely enthusiastic about what Lincoln Center had accomplished and eager to learn more about its whys and wherefores. His excitement extended to other elements of Lincoln Center’s physical transformation, not least the new fountain. Its engineering enabled hundreds of spigots to create a kind of water choreography that enchanted David as it did thousands of visitors each week. All eagerly witnessed the various configurations of water that staff fondly called by names like “The Wedding Cake” and “The Swan Song.”
Koch showed up at the fountain’s inauguration and was mesmerized by all the tricks it could play. He asked to be taken to the mechanical room underneath the plaza at Lincoln Center that ran the fountain and to be tutored in the software that drove it. He even wanted to see the manual that explained to staff how it worked.
Apart from his natural curiosity, he had a specific purpose in mind as he put these questions to me. Serving on the Board of Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he found its Fifth Avenue frontage in general, and its ill-kept and unkempt fountains in particular, forlorn and depressing. Its renovation was very much on his mind.
Working together with developer Dan Brodsky, who in a volunteer capacity had guided the Josie Robertson Plaza renovation, Koch ultimately donated $65 million to the Metropolitan Museum to modernize its Fifth Avenue frontage. It turned out that Brodsky was also the chair of the Met’s real estate committee, and as such had oversight over this modernization as well. Soon thereafter Dan, a good friend, was appointed chair of the board of the Metropolitan Museum.
A couple of years later, Koch was invited to serve on Lincoln Center’s board of directors. That invitation was not without controversy. He and his brother Charles were among the principal benefactors of the right wing of the Republican Party. They lavished tens of millions of dollars on their own super PAC, Americans for Prosperity, on the election campaign of Mitt Romney, and on Karl Rove’s super PAC, American Crossroads. These investments had paid virtually no dividends. President Obama was reelected with plenty of room to spare. The Democrats gained two seats in the US Senate and eight more in the House of Representatives.
Nonetheless, as word spread about how tens of millions of dollars had been pumped into 2012 election campaigns and separate committee advertising campaigns by the Koch brothers, among others, strong supporters of the Democratic Party were not pleased by the New York State Theater’s new name, nor with David’s presence on our board. Displeasure was expressed at a few poorly attended demonstrations and in a steady flow of protest letters, many originating from bastions of liberal Democratic strongholds, like the Upper East Side and West Side of Manhattan, gentrified Brooklyn, and even Greenwich, Connecticut, the world’s hedge fund capital.
How could Lincoln Center accept “guilt money” and lend legitimacy to a family notorious for taking so much advantage of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case? That ruling treated money as speech and determined that it would be unconstitutional to place any limits whatsoever on how much cash could be given to support candidates without violating the First Amendment rights of citizens. Moreover, the Supreme Court had also determined that corporations are people, and therefore Koch Industries, as a company, enjoyed similar campaign contribution prerogatives.
How could we, a performing arts center that cooperated fully with dozens of unions, countenance a huge gift from David Koch, who was bound and determined to weaken, if not destroy, them?
Dismantling the New Deal, shrinking the federal government, and favoring policies that strengthened still further the wealthy at the expense of the poor and working class were policy stances attributed to the Kochs and widely opposed. By accepting his outsized donation and asking David to be on the boards of the New York City Ballet and Lincoln Center, we were accused in some quarters of virtually endorsing them. In the view of what appeared to be a small but strident minority, we were thought to be guilty by association.
There are more than a few trustees at Lincoln Center, and for all I know, at the New York City Ballet, who do not share David Koch’s values or agree with his politics. So what? In the toxic partisan environment that characterizes our divided nation, what purpose is served by infusing such differences into the nonprofit boardroom? The Lincoln Center Board of Directors, in deciding to elect David to its ranks, affirmed the principle that the institution’s mission did not admit of a political litmus test for service on its governing body. David Koch was no less welcome on Lincoln Center’s board than would be George Soros, whose politics were the mirror opposite.
Of course citizens are free to object to the politics of the Koch brothers and to the way Koch Industries is run. Similar objections were directed in their time at the “robber barons,” including Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller. But who among us would deny the benefits countless Americans have enjoyed from their benefactions? To cite just two examples from Mr. Carnegie, how about the public libraries and Carnegie Hall? To mention just two illustrations from John D. Rockefeller, how about the University of Chicago and the Population Council?
Try to explain to the first-generation American student studying for a college degree in a well-lit and well-ventilated branch library reading room in the south Bronx, or to a student on full tuition scholarship at one of the world’s great universities, that he or she is enjoying the tainted philanthropic fruit of the poisonous capitalist tree.
Many institutions and those they serve have received gifts from $20 million to $200 million from David Koch, and I would be very surprised if their beneficiaries would quarrel very much with Koch’s legal (but objectionable to some) activities and with his political proclivities and financial support of them. The roster of grantees is astounding: MIT, the University of Texas M.D. Cancer Center, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, Johns Hopkins University, the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York City Ballet, and Lincoln Center.
I like David Koch. He and his wife are friendly people, good conversationalists, patriots, eager to use some of their wealth to help others. I also vehemently disagree with many of his political views.
It has been said that differences of opinion among elected officials should stop at the water’s edge. Likewise, one’s political views should not be allowed to intrude on decisions about who serves on nonprofit boards of directors. Such a course of action is a slippery slope.
From my vantage point, on the battleground of politics, the Kochs and their allies deserve a good drubbing. And if David Koch or his firm violates the law, the remedies of our justice system should be invoked. But his willingness to devote so much of his time, talent, and treasure to cancer research and treatment, to higher education, and to strengthening our nation’s museums and performing art institutions is entirely meritorious.
When it comes to David Koch’s philanthropy, I have four words for him: THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
IT WAS A good old-fashioned cold call. Everyone on Lincoln Center’s nominating and governance committee knew of David Rubenstein, but no one knew him personally. And all thought that recruiting David to be on the board of Lincoln Center was a terrific idea, even though the chances of succeeding were slim.
After all, he lived in Bethesda, Maryland, regarded himself as a Washingtonian, and appeared to be waiting in the wings to succeed Steve Schwarzman, the cofounder of Blackstone, as the chair of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
I dialed the phone. He picked up. I told him we had a lot in common. We both were fascinated by the performing arts. His business took him to my hometown, New York City, with some frequency. In fact, over 125 employees of Carlyle worked in Manhattan, its second largest location.
I wondered aloud. Is that enough for the two of us to become acquainted in my office over a sandwich lunch? Sure, he replied.
We met, and the conversation flowed easily. David said yes on the spot when I suggested that he join the board of Lincoln Center.
Rubenstein is not just a piece of work; he is all work. He is simply indefatigable. No one logs as many hours on behalf of Carlyle, the company he cofounded and dearly loves. In a quarter century he and his colleagues have built a firm that now has over $200 billion under management and is widely admired around the world. It is a world that Rubenstein has gotten to know, as he spends, by his own count, 190 days in the air every year on his private jet, prowling the planet for sovereign wealth funds and other pools of capital that could do far worse than invest in Carlyle.
In the last decade or so, Rubenstein has matched his propensity for business with a passionate commitment to philanthropy and nonprofit institutions. By last count, he serves on the boards of directors of over a dozen nonprofit organizations, including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Duke University (he is the chairman of both), Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago, the Brookings Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Smithsonian Institution.
He is no letterhead trustee. He works hard to advance the mission of every one of these institutions. I know. Lincoln Center is among them. David served with determination and distinction as the chair of Lincoln Center’s unprecedented capital campaign for the physical redevelopment of the campus.
Even after associating with David for almost nine years and spending lots of time with him, it is still tough to know what makes him tick. He is highly competitive, for sure. He keeps close track of how Carlyle is faring relative to plan and to competitors. No one is a more successful private equity fund-raiser, and no one has logged more miles, delivered more speeches, and pitched more business to more people.
Rubenstein also loves American history and politics. He has purchased original documents like the Emancipation Proclamation and the Declaration of Independence, both on loan to the National Archives. And his knowledge of US presidents before and after the one he served, Jimmy Carter, is breathtaking. But no one I know who is acquainted with David has been able to locate his “off switch.” He seems “on,” always.
For Rubenstein, food is merely fuel to keep him working. I have never seen this teetotaler and vegetarian truly enjoy a meal or spend more than fifteen minutes consuming one. Clothing is just garb, necessary coveralls. David seems to own about a half dozen of the same navy blue pinstripe suits, and he wears them with Hermes ties and white shirts. He treats his clothing as if he were donning a uniform.
For him, sleep is highly overrated, and if you are longing for a very brief conversation, ask him when he last enjoyed a break from work that lasted more than a few days.
I was a weekend guest in Nantucket at the home of Rubenstein and his wife, Alice. It sits on one of the largest and highest pieces of property on the island. Its promontory offers stunning views of the Atlantic below.
As we were treated to a personal tour by David, my wife, Elizabeth, seeing the dock on the property, asked whether David sailed.
“Elizabeth, Jews don’t sail. The instructions are too complicated, it is too much work, and it takes too much time. Besides, I can’t swim very well, and in the highly likely event that I crash into something or capsize the boat, I’ll be in deep water and in deep trouble.”
Ten minutes later, we were shown a gym on the lower level of the main house. My wife asked whether David used the facility, one that any Four Seasons Hotel would be proud to offer its guests.
“Elizabeth, just look at me. Do I look like a guy who does much more than drop in on this place occasionally to see which equipment my kids and their friends enjoy the most?”
“Well,” Liz wished to know, “how about skiing? Your parents tell us you have a place in Beaver Creek, Colorado. Surely you ski?”
“Elizabeth, I wasn’t meant to put those strange contraptions on my feet.”
When approaching David’s home in Nantucket, there is a huge round stone propped up against a majestic tree that guests circle around in order to arrive at his front door. On the stone is handwritten in paint these words:
“Honest, I’d rather be working.”
—David
One would be hard-pressed to find a human being who is more austere and self-disciplined or less interested in material comforts. Plain and simple, Rubenstein is an ascetic billionaire, at least six times over. He is also as humble and self-effacing a successful businessman as one is likely to find.
After he joined Lincoln Center’s board, Elizabeth and I offered to accompany him on a couple of evenings out at Lincoln Center. Many of his fellow stars in America’s financial firmament came to Lincoln Center frequently. David, of course, knew of them. And leading executives of Carlyle often worked with their counterparts in the firms they founded, owned, or helped manage, but David and they had never met. It was fun for me to introduce him around to other financial and real estate titans.
David was in typical humble form one evening when I arranged for him to have dinner with Gail and Carl Icahn in the Grand Tier of the Metropolitan Opera prior to seeing a performance at Lincoln Center Theater. Icahn, for all of his notoriety in the press, is really a loner, even in the field of activist investing. Being reasonably sure he had never met Rubenstein and that he might need a reminder about his background, I composed a succinct e-mail on the subject and sent it to him before the event.
Over dinner, Icahn regaled us with his then view of Time Warner. He had bought a substantial position in the company. He was no fan of its stodgy management or of its CEO, Richard Parsons.
I asked a few questions about Icahn’s life and learned that his father was a cantor who didn’t much understand or appreciate what Carl was about professionally. Carl’s father would have preferred that he become a physician, or a musician. Striking to all of us was Icahn’s response to my question about what continued to motivate him to work so hard at the age of seventy-four.
“I’ll stop only when I think my dad would have respected me.”
After Icahn’s extended monologue, his wife Gail suggested that Rubenstein might have a point of view about Time Warner. Carl paused over his second martini to ask, “David, remind me of your background and tell me what you do now.” Clearly, my e-mail had gone unread.
Unfazed and unflustered, Rubenstein summarized his professional life this way: “Well, Carl, I began my career as a lawyer at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind. But after a couple of years, I really wasn’t enjoying it, and when I told the hiring partner that I was thinking of leaving, I noticed that neither he, nor anyone else in the firm, nor my clients, protested very much. On the advice of Ted Sorensen, I then relocated to Atlanta to work on the Carter campaign for president, and after his election found myself with a White House job. That experience didn’t work so well either, as I helped bring the United States an inflation rate of 19 percent, an Iranian hostage crisis, prolonged oil shortages, and infuriatingly long lines at America’s gasoline stations. Ever since, I have been trying to build a business.”
“What kind of business?”
“Well, my colleagues and I search for undervalued firms. We buy them at attractive prices, endeavor to fix them, and find a purchaser prepared to offer a premium or arrange for them to become public companies.”
“And what is the name of that business?”
“The Carlyle Group.”
“Oh. Now I know who you are.”
One tycoon met another that night. David, self-deprecating as always, would probably contend that he is not in Icahn’s league, financially or otherwise. But perhaps David would allow himself to be called a mogulette, or at least a low-single-digit billionaire with aspirations to make something of himself.
I HAD MET Mayor Bloomberg only once before becoming the CEO of Lincoln Center. He was being honored by the International Rescue Committee when I served as its president. Bloomberg’s interest in Lincoln Center began before he became mayor. He was wooed onto the board of directors by Beverly Sills, an extremely close friend. During his service as a trustee, he came to respect Nat Leventhal. He asked Nat to lead in the transition planning as he was assuming office and to help him select key personnel for his cabinet. More than a few other Lincoln Center trustees felt entitled to call the mayor Mike.
As I could add little value to such relationships, I kept my respectful distance from the mayor. That ended in a memorable and disquieting conversation one Wednesday morning about a year and a half after I arrived at Lincoln Center. Michael Bloomberg was on the line.
“Good morning, Mr. Mayor.”
“Good morning. Okay, Reynold, who leaked the specifics of my gift?”
His tone was angry, his manner rough.
“I don’t know, Mr. Mayor.”
“Oh, come on. I am furious. I asked for that gift to remain anonymous, and I am holding you responsible for the public disclosure.”
Days earlier, Robin Pogrebin, the New York Times reporter, had revealed that before he became mayor, Bloomberg had pledged $15 million for the planning and early “soft” costs of Lincoln Center’s physical redevelopment.
“Mr. Mayor,” I said. “Last week, the New York City Police Department, during a search for illegal drugs, broke down the wrong door in an apartment house in Harlem. A fifty-nine-year-old African American mother and grandmother, shocked by the suddenness of the forced entry, died of a heart attack, on the spot. Immediately you, who knew nothing of the whys and wherefores of the police action, apologized to that woman’s family on behalf of the entire city of New York.
“Well, I feel similarly. You pledged the gift in question to Beverly Sills over two years ago. I have no idea to whom she may have spoken, or who inside Lincoln Center knew the details. But I wish to sincerely apologize to you. And, of course, as the president of Lincoln Center, I assume full responsibility for what could have been an unauthorized disclosure from someone working or volunteering here.”
Understandably, the mayor wished to prevent letting trustees of other arts and culture institutions in town with which he was also associated know the details of his generosity to Lincoln Center. Why have his friends and colleagues who served on the boards of other institutions “complain” that they were less favored by his benefactions? For that reason, and others, I am sure, he wished to maintain some semblance of privacy.
Much to my relief, I think the mayor was surprised by the firmness of my reply, disarmed by the analogous reference to his own recent praiseworthy act, and pleased that I took full responsibility for the disclosure.
Evasions, circumlocutions, and running away from rather toward problems are not part of Bloomberg’s character. He certainly does not admire these traits in others. The conversation then shifted. He recalled his own service as a trustee of Lincoln Center and how frequently matters discussed in the boardroom somehow became public knowledge, rather quickly.
“The place has always leaked like a sieve,” he acknowledged.
The conversation ended far less coldly than it began, but fell considerably short of the mayor warmly accepting my apology.
In general, Bloomberg’s relationship to Lincoln Center was extremely positive. Beverly Sills was his very close friend, one of only a handful of people annually invited to his small private birthday parties. The physical redevelopment of Lincoln Center was to be a massive undertaking and would not have happened without Bloomberg’s $15 million pledge.
In fact, Bloomberg, not given to off-the-cuff humor, regularly used these lines on the campaign trail while running for election to his first term in office:
Some people think that my spending $75 million is a lot of money to run for mayor.
But what they do not know, is that I served on the board of Lincoln Center and might have succeeded Beverly Sills as its chair.
And if that had happened, it would have cost me a hell of a lot more than $75 million.
As well as leading by his own example, Bloomberg stuck to an agreement reached by Lincoln Center and his predecessor at the very end of Mayor Giuliani’s second term in office. In rough outline, it committed $240 million of city capital funds to a Lincoln Center campuswide physical redevelopment campaign.
It was the first campuswide capital investment since Lincoln Center had been created forty-five years before. Mayor Bloomberg was an indispensable partner in seeing this complex set of projects through from inception to completion. While success may have a thousand parents, the private party who was present at the creation with a generous gift and the public sector angel throughout was without doubt Michael Bloomberg.
Greatly influenced by a trusted colleague who was soon to become first deputy mayor, Patti Harris, Bloomberg was conspicuous for his supportive presence at cultural venues in every borough—established and fledgling, general and audience specific—and in all genres: theater, ballet, modern dance, opera, jazz, vocal music, chamber music, orchestral work, and visual art.
Bloomberg viewed arts and culture as good business, part and parcel of his notable success in increasing tourism from twenty-nine million visitors annually in 2001 to fifty-three million by 2013, the last year of his third term.
His enthusiasm for the arts as an engine of economic development and as a magnet that drew creative talent to the city of New York, combined with his personal generosity and his commitment of city capital funds, was responsible for nothing less than a renaissance of unprecedented building projects: the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the New Museum, El Museo Del Barrio, Theatre for a New Audience, the Queens and the Bronx Museums, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, City Center, the Museum of the City of New York, the Manhattan Theatre Club, the Roundabout, the Second Stage, and the Public Theater all experienced major renovation, expansion, or both, backed by the City of New York. As, of course, did Lincoln Center and all of its resident artistic organizations.
Yes, the mayor’s bureaucracy could be confounding. The multiple and staggered city agency reviews of the work of redevelopment at every single stage was costly and time-consuming. I learned that taking on a huge building project in New York City was not an assignment for the impatient or for those with a low tolerance for frustration. And the decline in annual operating support from city tax levy dollars to cultural institutions was worrisome.
But these are quibbles. Bloomberg and his colleagues got the big picture right. Art works on many levels. And nowhere more so than in New York City, the cultural capital of the world. His administration supported arts and culture like no other, as did he.
The city began to attract first-rate architects—Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, Elizabeth Diller and Ric Scofidio, Herzog and de Meuron, Christian de Portzamparc, Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and David Rockwell—to design new and expanded artistic spaces. Stimulated by public support, foundations, corporations, and individuals donated unprecedented sums to complement the commitment of government.
I can think of a few but not many very successful, creative businessmen who have become billionaires many times over within a period of three decades. I can list a handful or two of creative, seminal, philanthropic leaders whose gifts have made a real difference in this world. And I can enumerate some outstanding public officials and mayors. But I cannot identify any figure in the twentieth or twenty-first century who has played all three roles with the determination, drive, and brilliance of New York City’s 108th mayor.
His track record of fidelity to the arts and to Lincoln Center was almost enough for me to accept blame for a disclosure to the press I knew nothing of and had nothing whatever to do with.
A HUNGARIAN REFUGEE, resettled as a teenager by the IRC, Andy Grove took one glance at America and fell in love. He had found freedom. Fate had bestowed on him the IRC. It resettled Andy in a foreign country, the United States of America. It outfitted him with a hearing aid, offered counseling and financial support of all kinds, and advised him that he could enroll as a matriculated student at no cost in The City College of New York.
When I arrived at the IRC, Grove was a world-renowned figure and a modest (very modest, relative to his means) donor. No one from the IRC had endeavored to contact him personally, until I did.
We met in an unpretentious suite in a midtown hotel. He was with his wife, Eva. Andy came across as a no-nonsense, all-business interrogator. America was then in the midst of the Kosovo crisis. Grove asked to be briefed.
“The IRC is one of only four NGOs present in Kosovo when the NATO bombing began,” I started.
During the half hour that followed, Andy asked many probing questions. I had but one request of him. Would he join the IRC’s board of directors?
I was elated when he said yes.
Several years later came another question from me. Would Andy agree to be honored at a gala held in the heart of Silicon Valley?
As the president of the IRC, I was struck by how distant the world of high-tech was from humanitarian refugee causes, even though hundreds of senior executives up to and including CEOs were themselves first- or second-generation immigrants or refugees. Grove provided the chance to break through into this wealthy, scientifically sophisticated, and very influential community.
We were told that Silicon Valley types did not show up at fundraising events. We were informed that those relatively few who live in San Francisco would not trek up to Burlingame, where the event was to be held at a hotel close to the airport and convenient for the landing of corporate jets. We were informed that those who worked in the valley wished to go home at the end of the day and would not assemble in a hotel room for dinner and speeches, even to honor one of their own. To do so was, well, “so New York.”
The naysayers underestimated our bicoastal determination, and they certainly didn’t account for how beloved was Andy Grove, as a founding father not only of Intel but more generally of the high-technology community.
Tom Labrecque, then CEO of Chase Bank and an IRC board member, readily agreed to emcee the event. Bill Gates, then a very active CEO of Microsoft, served as its chair. Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen, at the request of another IRC board member, Henry Kissinger, agreed to be the featured speaker.
But the centerpiece was Grove, who spoke of the kindness of strangers. About how the IRC helped situate him in a new country with counseling, financial support, and that new, relatively inconspicuous hearing aid. He held it up for all to see, together with his identity card, which he had saved all these years, a precious piece of paper prepared by the IRC that permitted him to be admitted to the country.
Grove offered his heartfelt thanks not only to the organization that had rescued him from his native Hungary during the 1956 revolution through its office in Vienna, but also to his immediate personal family and to his extended professional family, present in that packed ballroom.
The message was simple and powerful. Today’s Andy Grove is not Hungarian. He or she is Cambodian, Vietnamese, Sudanese, Burmese, Bangladeshi, Russian, or Indian. It matters not. America has been blessed by newcomers, brave and ambitious people who flee persecution in their own countries and envision a future for themselves and their children here. Not so long ago, he had been one of those “tired and poor,” a member of the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” He told those gathered in the ballroom that it was up to them to guarantee that the words etched on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty are given new life, generation after generation, not just for the benefit of refugees and immigrants, but for the future vitality and creativity of our country, to which they have contributed disproportionately.
The IRC won many friends that night, and Grove rekindled his own interest in the refugee cause by becoming a major and important contributor of time and treasure.
PERHAPS THE LAST of the generation to legitimately claim to be a founding father of Lincoln Center was Martin E. Segal. I had been proud to call him a friend ever since I had first met him and his wife Edith when I was executive director of the 92nd Street Y. Marty was a confidant, an informal advisor, an indispensable part of Lincoln Center’s intelligent memory.
Born in Russia on July 4, 1916, Segal was a life force. He once told me that his very first involvement in the arts occurred when he was about six years old. He played the role of Spinach in a first-grade play. Rumor has it that he insisted on top billing. His wife of seventy-three years, Edith, the love of his life, overheard him telling this story. She whispered that Spinach was Marty’s first and last nonspeaking role.
Segal progressed from a vegetable that’s good for you to becoming the founding president of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. During his tenure, Marty arranged for Charlie Chaplin’s very controversial return to America to become the first Film Society honoree. The second was Fred Astaire. There were few things that Segal didn’t much like, but going to the racetrack was one, cigars another. To woo Fred, who loved both, Marty smoked from the stands at the Kentucky Derby with Astaire, his host.
With Nat Leventhal as Lincoln Center’s president at his side, Marty chaired its board of directors with consummate skill, finesse, and prodigious fund-raising from 1981 to 1986. After concluding his term as chair, for the next twenty-five years Segal faithfully attended Lincoln Center board meetings and participated fully in the active board emeriti group, serving with distinction and characteristic flair as its cochair.
He could be a stickler for detail. Few acts of omission were as inexcusable to him as failing to show up, as promised, on a gala occasion or at a Green Room Dinner, without at least calling in advance. Whenever that happened, Segal is reputed to have asked his secretary and assistant, Bonnie Zitofsky, who worked closely with him for almost half a century, to follow up with a telephone conversation of her own, which went something like this.
Bonnie: “Hello, is this Mr. Adler’s secretary?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m calling for Mr. Martin Segal, and he asked me to express his grave concern about Mr. Adler’s health and to inquire as to what hospital flowers should be sent, or whether Mr. Adler is convalescing at home.”
“Well, Mr. Adler is perfectly fine, and he is in the office.”
“Oh, I see, I’ll report that to Mr. Segal. I am sure that he will be relieved to learn of Mr. Adler’s good health. And I am also very certain that Mr. Adler will be hearing directly from Mr. Segal very soon.”
Marty Segal loved the arts, and he adored artists. He found it simply magical that a violinist or pianist could walk into a grand space, like Alice Tully Hall, and fill it with beautiful sound. Or that an actor could transport one into another time and place, inhabiting a character as one might wear a custom-made suit or a made-to-order dress. For Segal, there was nothing like a night at the movies or opera, preceded or followed by animated conversation between and among friends about art, politics, current events, and what could be done to help repair our broken world.
Each year, Marty presented to two promising artists the distinguished Martin E. Segal Award, which helped launch or sustain their careers. It was another example of his desire not simply to enjoy established artists, but to nurture the new and the promising.
In addition, Segal knew that world-class art attracted commerce; created jobs; lured tourists; swelled the coffers of restaurants, retail establishments, and hotels; and fed the property tax rolls. Lincoln Center as an engine of economic development, as another reason that talented people are attracted to New York City, as a source of civic pride.
Segal, who was the guy behind the very idea of creating the Cultural Affairs Department in the City of New York, was accustomed to explaining why by asking this rhetorical question: “Do you know anyone who comes to Manhattan to ski?”
Segal was an immigrant who never graduated from high school yet was as well-read as any PhD, and he became the chairman of the board of perhaps the most prestigious intellectual retreat in the world, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University.
This self-educated entrepreneur and shrewd businessman could write a letter as charming and as persuasive as any I have ever received. The sheer elegance and expressiveness of these missives rendered them keepsakes. I treasure the several hundred he sent me.
In the very week of his death, Marty was at our Mostly Mozart Festival Gala celebrating the tenth anniversary of Louis Langrée as its music director. That same week, we met in my office. Ostensibly, I was seeking advice. Really, I just wanted an excuse to see him. He arrived at 10:00 a.m., dressed to the nines, a trademark fresh red boutonniere in his lapel, walking with a cane and seeing through only one eye.
Marty sat down and sipped his coffee. He spoke of a trip he planned to take to London and Paris. He remarked on how amazing Alan Cumming’s one-man Macbeth had been, how splendid it was for Lincoln Center to present the Paris Opera Ballet, and how much he had enjoyed seeing Christian Marclay’s The Clock. He asked me what I was looking forward to most in the fall season to come.
Segal’s secret for life was, in the words of a James Taylor song, “enjoying the passage of time.” He looked ahead with the energy, the optimism, the prodigious work habits of an immigrant who loved America.
This is what Marty believed. That seemingly insoluble problems are really only tantalizing challenges in disguise. That working together, smart people of goodwill can build durable institutions of the highest quality, causes and organizations that matter. That the key to longevity is engaging fully in the life of our great city and country. That private joys and public achievements are meant to be seized.
DANNY MENDEZ AND Chris Ullman mean as much to me as the more celebrated mentors in this chapter. Mendez and Ullman embody the talent and drive of artists. Someone like them is working just around the block from where you live. Such is the ubiquity of performing art.
As the president of Lincoln Center, I enjoyed the authority to present performing arts ensembles in our halls. During the course of my tenure, I rarely offered concrete suggestions to either Jane Moss or Nigel Redden. To my relief, whenever I did, each readily accepted them. Perhaps my ideas had merit, or perhaps I was being rewarded for self-restraint.
Producing and presenting events on a regular basis was not part of my job description. Moss and Redden are world-class professionals. What these veterans needed from me was support, financial and otherwise. What they didn’t need was second-guessing.
While I was having an MRI scan on August 20, 2007, about six weeks after I had an operation on my right wrist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, I found the lab technician in charge knew not only my name, but what I did for a living.
He explained that the MRI would take almost forty-five minutes and handed me a looseleaf notebook in which a single page was devoted to a selection of music in different genres—pop, rock, indie, folk, world music, and the like. He explained that the MRI made something of a racket and that music muted its clatter.
He also suggested that if I didn’t particularly care for any of the choices in front of me, there just happened to be another option.
Danny Mendez, the technician, had formed a rock band in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx, and it had produced a CD. I could always listen to “Danny Mendez and His Latin Project.”
Why not?
The next thing I knew, a conveyer belt was moving me into the MRI contraption accompanied by the beats of that rock band organized by Mendez. Naturally, he seemed as eager to learn my reaction to the music as he was to determine whether my wrist was healing properly.
When the examination was concluded, he asked what I thought of the CD, and I told him the truth—actually, I rather liked it.
He was ready for me. Another copy had been giftwrapped in anticipation of my positive reaction, together with a handwritten letter addressed to Wynton Marsalis. Danny requested that I be the courier of this important missive and the accompanying package!
Any doubt that artists are natural entrepreneurs was dispelled during a meeting I had with the Carlyle Group, one of the largest and most influential private equity organizations in the world.
As I was being introduced to executives, one of them in charge of public relations mentioned in passing that he was also a musician.
“What do you play?”
“I whistle.”
“What do you whistle, and where?”
“Almost anything. Almost anywhere.”
“Would you whistle something for me now?”
“Of course. What would you like to hear?”
“How about Duke Ellington’s ‘Take the A Train’?”
To my astonishment, Chris Ullman whistled a perfectly modulated and spirited version of Ellington’s classic piece. The sounds wafted through the corridors of offices in which, no doubt, at that very moment mega-deals were being discussed and plans to raise the next new fund were being concocted.
I then learned that Chris had performed with the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center and at the National Mall during a July 4 celebration, and I was handed his own vintage CD, The Symphonic Whistler.
It was made clear to me that should Lincoln Center ever have an opening in its concert schedule, I could always reach a talented whistler in Washington, D.C., who would be pleased to drop everything and in a New York minute, take himself to one of Lincoln Center’s famous venues.
Each of the characters profiled here, though situated in different settings and confronting starkly different challenges, showed me how to change the world for the better, in large chunks and small.
All of them taught me lessons about applied energy, selflessness, and ambition. All helped to repair a world in need of mending. None indulged in acquisitive behavior, whether in search of power or material goods.
To remind myself that such role models are all around us, all I have to do is whistle.