One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.
—SOPHOCLES
The voluntary routine of rising every morning at 4:45, no matter what time I fell asleep and without the benefit of any alarm clock, and arriving at the office no later than 6:15 a.m., was beginning to take its toll.
I enjoyed the solitude of that early hour. Uninterrupted time to read and write and to respond to incessant e-mails. The space to think about how best to manage the day, the week, and the month ahead most effectively. You can accomplish a lot between 6:15 and 9:00 a.m., not least reaching important people who are also at their desks before their assistants arrive.
If that was the start of most days, at least four nights a week, often five, there were fund-raising prospects and visiting dignitaries to be hosted by me at dinner and then a show. Most often I chose what to see, and with the help of staff members I’d select a dozen or so couples to invite. Generally, three to four were available, making for a party of eight to ten.
Spending all of an evening in such company was a terrific way to come to know donors and donor prospects and what they are about. The aim was to puzzle out how Lincoln Center might entice each to contribute a significant first gift or renew and enhance a previous commitment. Part of what made the job at Lincoln Center so much fun was meeting new and intriguing people. Their professional and personal lives, their interests, opinions, and convictions, were almost always engaging. And one thing I learned for sure. People generally love, and those who do not love do not mind, talking about themselves.
Done well, the beginning and the end of every day, not to mention what happened in between, demanded my full and undivided attention. In between deskwork at dawn and social duties in the evening, I found myself motivating, energizing, supporting, and directing staff colleagues, on whom many psychic calories were spent. Embracing trustees and volunteers loaded with ideas and eager to make their mark, to leave an impression on Lincoln Center, also fell largely to me.
The job description did not end there.
Cultivating corporate and foundation donors, coping with the seemingly endless expressed needs of Lincoln Center’s constituents, who treated the “mother ship” as an endless supply of resources with demands that ranged from the serious to the petty. Dealing with appointed and elected officials at all levels of government from around the city, state, country, and world. Responding to requests from outside Lincoln Center for meetings, speeches, and counseling sessions. Launching a start-up consulting practice for Lincoln Center. Helping staff and trustees in need of a reference, a recommendation, a nominating letter, a good word to an admissions officer, a co-op board, or a hospital trustee.
Managing expenses down and revenue up. Recruiting and retaining best-in-class staff and trustees. Keeping one eye on the operating budget and the other on Lincoln Center’s balance sheet. And communicating, consistently, about Lincoln Center’s priorities, goals, and mission.
After some eight nonstop years of all this and more, I longed for a respite. A truly huge undertaking, the campus renovation, was almost all done, with just a couple of elements left to complete. It was 2010, and I had overdelivered on my promise to the Lincoln Center search committee to serve at least five to seven years in office.
That new theater for which Andre Bishop longed, the Claire Tow Theater, was to be opened soon. And a sculpturally expressive pedestrian bridge across 65th Street was also on the drawing board. The bridge was perhaps the most challenging piece of the entire redevelopment project, as Liz Diller and her team had to satisfy the very different requirements of her Lincoln Center clients and the Department of Transportation, the Department of Buildings, the City Planning Commission, and the Design Commission, among others. All but $75 million of the $1.2 billion needed to pay for the massive renovation and supplemental endowment funds had been raised.
Programs were flourishing. Staff and board ranks had been replenished, both the beneficiaries of energetic, persuasive recruitment.
I felt like it was time to step down and bid Lincoln Center good-bye. But the advice I received from friends and colleagues was almost uniformly to stay for another two or three years. They advised me to try to enjoy the ride and revel in the ribbon cuttings. Why not spend some time actually enjoying all that I had helped make possible?
That turned out to be sound counsel. Not the part about easing the pace. Having Lincoln Center move from strength to strength after my departure was very important to me. That meant the smoothest possible handoff to my successor. Transitions are delicate. Getting it right takes time. I fully intended to race against the clock, not run it out.
I could not have anticipated how pleasant bidding Lincoln Center farewell would be. Its gracious and generous chair, Katherine Farley, her Lincoln Center trustee associates, my professional colleagues, and friends from all walks of life gathered in various configurations and settings on separate occasions to offer fond good-byes. Their odes and gifts were very touching.
At the Lincoln Center Gala held in my honor on May 9, 2013, Bryan Lourd, the managing director and cochair of Creative Artists Agency, brought with him as guests Anne Hathaway and Jimmy Fallon. Anne had recently seen in Alice Tully Hall the American premiere of the film Les Misérables, for which she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2013. She marveled at how fine were the sightlines, the visual acuity of the film images, and most of all, the sound.
Alice Tully Hall was best known for projecting unamplified sound: the human voice, solo instrumentalists, choruses, and chamber ensembles. Projecting classical music requires a reverberant hall, one that invites clarity and timbre. Film needs the exact opposite: sound that is dampened. It is no accident that Alice Tully Hall serves both ends and does so very well. Only weeks before Jeff Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks, had told me that he knew of no other concert hall in the world as good for watching a movie.
Lourd, well aware that it had been my life’s ambition to become a stand-up comic, introduced me to Jimmy Fallon. He too commented on the excellent reports he had heard about Lincoln Center’s physical redevelopment in general, and particularly about Alice Tully Hall. He asked me whether I would be good enough to spend some time on the phone advising him about the acoustics of the new Rockefeller Center studio being built for him. In less than a year, by February 2014, he was scheduled to succeed Jay Leno and bring the Tonight Show back to New York City, forty years after Johnny Carson had left town for Los Angeles.
Did I have time for JIMMY FALLON? Oh, my.
So we arranged a call. It went something like this:
Reynold: “Jimmy, rest assured, Lincoln Center can recommend an excellent acoustician to help the NBC in-house team. The challenge, though, often has to do with the client, namely, you.”
Jimmy: “What do you mean?”
Reynold: “Well. When you sit down to dinner at a first-rate restaurant and tell the waiter or sommelier that you would like a good red wine, he is likely to ask you questions about what you mean by good. Fruity? Aromatic? Smooth? Complex? Questions like that. We should talk about what you want in studio sound. That process can take some time.”
Jimmy: “Reynold, I beg to differ. The answer is simple. I know exactly what I want.”
Reynold: “Oh you do? Tell me.”
Jimmy: “Well, there are 350 seats in the studio. I will tell a joke. 35 members of the audience will laugh. I WANT IT TO SOUND LIKE 350. Just deliver to me an acoustician who can make that happen.”
After promising to do so, I reminded Jimmy of my own aspirations and asked whether he would indulge me by listening to just two jokes and assessing my potential for comedic stardom. He readily agreed. And I reported for weeks to everyone I knew that Jimmy Fallon loved my jokes and that he thought I had a future in stand-up comedy.
Memorable, no? This whole incident was scrapbook worthy. A keeper. One of the many farewell scenes I cherish.
AT THE INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE, I learned anew why it is that I am so enamored of so many donors. There are many reasons to fall madly in love with them. Some are obvious. Others less so. In the surprise category is the fact that most benefactors think about the institution or cause you represent in a simpler and more penetrating way than many who work full-time in the organization.
One winter afternoon in the middle of my six years of tenure at the IRC, I accompanied my chairman, John Whitehead, the former cochair of Goldman Sachs and deputy secretary of state in the Reagan administration, on a solicitation call to Arthur Ross.
We met over lunch at the highly exclusive Links Club right off Madison Avenue on 62nd Street. It is not identifiable, except for the address, and its membership is confined to the wealthy.
In my experience, most clubs in New York City offer pretty mediocre food, and the service leaves a lot to be desired. The Links is an exception.
John and Arthur didn’t agree with this observation entirely. In fact, lunch began with both bemoaning the limited selection of white wine, as neither cared for chardonnay and the sauvignon blancs available by the glass apparently left a lot to be desired.
Arthur and John were good friends, so John asked about Arthur’s place in Jamaica, how his golf game was faring, and what his prognosis was for the stock market in the next quarter. As members of the Board of Directors of the United Nations Association, they bemoaned the UN’s slow and steady deterioration.
With the entrée consumed and coffee on the way, Arthur turned to me and said, “Reynold, I strongly suspect that John has brought you here for a reason, so tell me a little bit about the International Rescue Committee.”
I mentioned that refugee organizations were generally divided into two types. There were hundreds in our country that provided relief services to refugees outside of the United States. And there were about a dozen and a half that helped to resettle refugees from around the world in America. The IRC was the only NGO that performed both functions.
“So, Arthur, which of the two areas would you like most to be briefed on?”
He chose resettlement.
Trying to be as concise as possible, I told Arthur that there were essentially two legal justifications for refugees coming to the United States. They needed to prove that they were either fleeing from persecution in their home country or were reuniting with family members in the country of resettlement. The IRC helps refugees advance their case for entry into the United States on either or both of these grounds with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Once the IRC succeeds, the refugees are then flown to the United States, where they are met by IRC staff and volunteers, who arrange for housing, for US financial and social service support, and for cultural orientation services.
“Arthur, the results are amazing. Within ninety days, 90 percent of the heads of refugee households are fully employed, many even before they have learned to speak much English.”
“Let me see if I have got this right, Reynold. I think I can describe what you have said in one sentence. The IRC takes refugees from the INS to the IRS in less than three months!”
There you have it. Arthur compressed pages of the IRC’s description of resettlement into fifteen words. I have been plagiarizing them shamelessly ever since.
It is a mark of donor influence that I can’t recall precisely how much Arthur pledged to support the IRC’s resettlement work that afternoon. Memory may not serve. But I am reasonably certain it was no less than $100,000. What I am crystal clear about, however, is how Arthur so quickly penetrated to the essence of what the IRC’s domestic mission is all about.
Donors have that uncanny ability to get to the heart of the matter.
TO MY DELIGHT, the board of directors voted to name that footbridge after me. In a ceremony with Katherine Farley presiding, Mayor Bloomberg crossed that span with me behind him, each of us hand-in-hand with a School of American Ballet student. It was a splendid, well-planned event, and when a banner was removed from each side of the bridge revealing these words, “The President’s Bridge: In honor of Reynold Levy, October 1, 2012,” I was truly moved.
There I was, up there in the ranks of Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, George Washington, and 59th Street. A New York City bridge, named after me!
To reconcile the differing views of so many city agencies and her client, Diller had prepared dozens upon dozens of conceptual designs for the bridge, which I was given as a keepsake of the final product that carried my name. Appropriately, it is entitled The Book of Bridges, and it has found a proud place in my home library. By the way, there are over one hundred concept designs of bridges contained in it. I kid you not.
Before our maiden bridge crossing, in my own remarks recognizing the accomplishments of the staff, donors, and government officials assembled to celebrate the conclusion of this huge and unprecedented capital campaign, I asked all present to think about the tribute to the great English architect, Christopher Wren, who is buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Near his tomb, there is a plaque that reads:
Here in its foundations lies the architect of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived beyond 90 years, not for his own profit, but for the public good. Reader, if you seek his monument, all you need do is look around you. February 25, 1723.
Then I asked everyone present to look around them at the new Lincoln Center. It was, I argued, the product of their benefaction, their dedication, and their civic mindedness. It was, I contended, their monument.
IN THE FOLLOWING YEAR, at the gala held in my honor on May 9, 2013, the very event at which I was introduced to Jimmy Fallon, a record $9.4 million was raised, and one of my very favorite artists offered a concert at Avery Fisher Hall that was aired on public television.
Audra McDonald is in many ways the epitome of what Lincoln Center is about. She is a graduate of The Juilliard School. She has performed on virtually every stage in every venue of our campus. She has won a record six Tony Awards. She is now the host of Live from Lincoln Center, the longest-running program of the performing arts on television. It is produced by Lincoln Center and features presentations staged by the resident artistic organizations on our campus. And she is the first and only artist ever to have been elected to serve on Lincoln Center’s board of directors.1
To have her perform on a night in my honor was very special. Surrounded by friends, supporters, and well-wishers, I indulged myself in reflecting on an accomplishment or two.
The remarks that evening were delivered to some thirteen hundred guests by Bruce Crawford, Frank Bennack, Katherine Farley, and David Rubenstein. Outrageously, Rubenstein compared the physical redevelopment of Lincoln Center to God’s creation of the earth, except that while the Lord rested for one day out of seven, I rarely, if ever, had been able to take time off, for any reason. Rubenstein also reflected wryly that God never had to raise money; attend committee, subcommittee, or task force meetings; select architects or contractors; or deal with multiple layers of government.
Rubenstein proposed that I next take on such challenges as Middle East peace or balancing the federal budget. He even suggested that after leaving Lincoln Center I could successfully move on to the highest calling humankind had to offer: private equity.
I was amused, bemused, flattered, and embarrassed all at once.
My remarks focused on two groups: professional and trustee colleagues and generous attendees who had resources to spare.
For the Lincoln Center family of organizations, I distilled down to its essence all that we did together, always aspiring to the highest professional standards. We produced art. We presented it. We studied it. We commissioned it. We toured it. We televised it and digitally transmitted it. We taught it. We offered it more affordably and free of charge more often than ever before in our storied history.
For the benefactors, I reminded them how important they were and how much Lincoln Center depended on their generosity, since they had built and sustained the most prominent and consequential set of performing arts organizations to be found anywhere. I implored them to nurture, preserve, and protect what they had created and never to take that unique achievement for granted.
I closed with Sophocles’s observation that “one must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.” Well, my evening had arrived, and I could say that I had enjoyed many truly splendid days at Lincoln Center.
ON THE CHARLIE ROSE SHOW, I was asked whether at the end of a very successful tenure at Lincoln Center I would have done anything differently. At that time I essentially demurred. I won’t now.
I do not have many reservations, and I will not run the risk of burying the lead. Lincoln Center enjoyed a pretty darn good run during my tenure, just shy of thirteen years.
But regrets, I guess I have a few.
I left Lincoln Center with the uneasy feeling that in our zeal to create an encouraging environment for constituent artistic organizations to cooperate on their physical redevelopment and on other business and artistic arrangements, such as celebrating our fiftieth anniversary, we may well have sent an unintended message. Lincoln Center was very generous in the interpretation of what constitutes public space, and therefore, of how much money it would raise. Lincoln Center also absorbed costs for redevelopment services for a period of time well beyond what was originally anticipated. It erred on the side of design excellence, and the cost of materials and quality construction rose accordingly. Lincoln Center also liberally interpreted the purposes for which constituent fund-raising was matchable. The consequence of these expressions of leadership generosity is that Lincoln Center may unintentionally have encouraged an unrealistic and excessive dependence on the parent body.
By indulging the unanimity principle and working around it rather than facing it head-on, we may have reinforced the view that in matters small and large, consequential and otherwise, everyone’s assent was required. The law of unintended consequences was at work.
My wife Elizabeth’s analysis seemed exactly right. In her view, Lincoln Center was hardly a landlord in the classic sense.
First of all, none of our constituents paid rent, except $1 a year.
Second, the conditions of tenancy were determined not by Lincoln Center but jointly between the so-called landlord and the so-called lessee.
As a result, Liz concluded that I wasn’t the president of a real estate concern, but rather the chairman of a co-op board. Lincoln Center was governed like other prestigious cooperative apartments on the Upper West Side, like the San Remo, the Dakota, and the Beresford.
We all had strict criteria for the admission of new members.
We all set high standards for capital improvements.
But when they would be done, how they would be done, who would finance them, and under what terms and conditions resulted in a pile of multilateral and bilateral written agreements. They were extraordinary in their complexity and in the tediousness with which they had to be negotiated and recorded.
Liz concluded her analysis by saying that with the possible exception of the mayor of the city of New York, there was no assignment more dreaded, or tedious, or demanding than being the chair of a co-op board.
In the interest of overcoming passive and active resistance on the part of more than a few constituents to the physical redevelopment of Lincoln Center, had the so-called landlord yielded too much, too often?
AFTER THE FALL of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the setback to the American economy was enormous. It was experiencing the most severe downturn since the Great Depression. Few at Lincoln Center, least of all my chair Frank Bennack, were in any mood to solicit gifts for our capital campaign. He and his colleagues thought that doing so was a fool’s errand. I was less certain.
As is always the case, some saw opportunity in crisis and created or embellished a fortune. Others were not adversely affected, and even for those who were struggling, keeping in touch was important, because when their businesses bounced back, Lincoln Center did not wish to be forgotten or placed on some backburner. I know that I annoyed Bennack and some others by continuing to press for meetings and failing to take no for an answer. In retrospect, perhaps I should have “harassed” my superiors somewhat more frequently, or at least more persuasively. As was the case with almost all nonprofits, our capital campaign was at a virtual standstill for almost eighteen months. And in any such effort, the passage of time is almost always an enemy, never an ally.
IN AN OTHERWISE highly laudatory and extensive New York Times piece on July 14, 2006, about my performance as Lincoln Center’s president, Robin Pogrebin opened her story this way:
Understandably, perhaps, some concert goers were not pleased by the sight of a man floating in a glass tank, smack dab in the heart of Lincoln Center Plaza, as crowds and television cameras looked on for a full week in May.
By 2012, I was prepared to admit that I agreed with her. So eager had I been to demonstrate Lincoln Center’s accessibility to a wider public, to turn it inside out, and especially to invite in those who normally would not consider themselves welcome, that I had succumbed to the blandishments of David Blaine, who offered to set a record for living in an aquarium, underwater, at Lincoln Center.
The spectacle drew a television audience of millions, on ABC, nationwide, in prime time. My chair, Frank Bennack, had approved. Nonetheless, if I had to do it over again, I would decline. As my close colleague Bernard Gersten, the executive producer of Lincoln Center Theater, observed, Blaine’s presence created a carnival-like atmosphere. His tricks are not to be confused with the values that an institution like Lincoln Center should symbolize and project. Lesson learned. If New Yorkers want water, they can go to the beach.
AND THEN THERE was the one that got away.
During my term in office, Lincoln Center completed one of the most admired physical transformations in New York City. The success of this bold renovation—architecturally, civically, acoustically—is demonstrable. A once-imposing design now encourages exploration and engagement; a once-failing infrastructure is now robust; formerly inhospitable public spaces are now inviting, lively, and green; dated venues and facilities now welcome the most established and avant-garde artists with ease; serpentine and forbidding passages are now bright and easily navigable; and a shunned and walled-off cityscape is wholly embraced.
Public space expansion and modernization, like the creation of the David Rubenstein Atrium, have been accompanied by the development of new artistic facilities, all extremely well received.
As a result, Lincoln Center can be found where cultural experience meets social discourse, where artistic programming meets dining and relaxation, where event-driven attendance meets a destination in and of itself.
In short, the new Lincoln Center is one of New York City’s best calling cards. Ask anyone.
The singular exception is Avery Fisher Hall. Ask anyone.
Avery Fisher Hall was the first venue to open its doors at Lincoln Center; home to the acclaimed New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bern stein, and Gustav Mahler; home to countless world-class musicians, composers, and conductors; home to classical music lovers from around the corner and across the globe; and home to Beverly Sills, whose first Lincoln Center performance was on its stage.
The history of Avery Fisher Hall and the memories it holds for generations of audiences are to be admired. But physically, Avery Fisher Hall’s best days are long gone. The artist and patron experience is woeful. The stage is inflexible. The seating plan is archaic. The acoustics can be improved. Physical access is forbidding. The backstage facilities offer “amenities” basically unchanged since the 1960s.
The building is simply worn down, well past its useful life. While this reality was widely known, we could not bring the renovation of the auditorium in Avery Fisher Hall to a successful conclusion.
On reflection, the failed attempt to get this done was the single most frustrating and baffling exercise of my tenure.
Lincoln Center tried everything.
We offered an extremely generous fund-raising division of labor to the New York Philharmonic. In essence, Lincoln Center expressed a willingness to raise no less than 75 percent of the total bill for a new auditorium. To clear away a potential obstacle, we also reached an understanding with the Fisher family that the existing building would continue to be named Avery Fisher Hall. However, Lincoln Center is free to acknowledge a major capital pledge by naming the auditorium inside the building for someone else, not unlike the Isaac Stern Auditorium in Carnegie Hall. Such a lead mega-gift could help launch a fund-raising campaign in fine fashion.
We worked at length, together with the New York Philharmonic, on reaching a common understanding of the objectives for a brand-new, twenty-first-century venue in the existing structure. We shaped consensus on the major changes in the auditorium configuration required to realize them.
Lincoln Center commissioned a new stage installation for use by the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. It incorporated some of the design intent of the planned eventual overhaul of that 2,750-seat space. It worked. Well regarded for intimacy, immediacy, and sound quality, the portable stage, its location, and its lighting were applauded by musicians and audiences. Critics wondered why the New York Philharmonic would not wish to adapt something resembling it as part of an enduring, year-round solution.
We supported in every way we knew how the successors to Paul Guenther as board chair and Zarin Metha as executive director, Gary Parr and Matthew Van Biesen, respectively. We encouraged everyone at Lincoln Center to treat the New York Philharmonic’s round-trip to and from Carnegie Hall as a caper. It was time to let bygones be bygones.
The relationship between Lincoln Center and its constituents is governed by a negotiated agreement. The existing document had not much changed since it was originally drafted in 1966. It had expired many times. At the Philharmonic’s request, we granted many extensions. These delays troubled us. In order to jointly occupy a new venue, complicated issues like pricing, scheduling, the process for reserving dates, and many other details of a hall’s operation needed regulation. A new century and a new auditorium necessitated a new agreement.
The best that we could do was sign a carefully negotiated document that took both parties up to but not including operations for when the replacement venue actually reopened. That task was set aside for another day.
At Lincoln Center, to accomplish some goals, one needs a willing and able partner. For more than half of my tenure, when the matter at hand involved committing to the transformation of the auditorium in Avery Fisher Hall, I could be excused for doubting that the New York Philharmonic was either willing or in the least prepared to be that partner.
For roughly the last third of my tenure, the orchestra appeared to be more than willing. Their key leaders actually seemed to be preparing for a major venue overhaul and all that it would entail. How would the New York Philharmonic’s share of the capital funds be raised? How would it reduce or eliminate its persistent operating deficits, enhance its endowment, and fix its pension fund liability? Where would it perform for the two years that the auditorium in Avery Fisher Hall would be closed? Could it proceed in a way that would protect its subscriber and single ticket holder base during that period? It took time for the New York Philharmonic to grapple with these questions. For those of us engaged in planning for the future of the auditorium with the New York Philharmonic since 2002, it was exasperating to watch the slow-motion progress. When it came to redevelopment, the orchestra seemed to play only in adagio.
And yet I left the premises with some reason to be hopeful. An active committee of the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center trustees, staff, and musicians, chaired by the developer Philip Milstein, had been working constructively for the last year and a half of my tenure. Certainly Katherine Farley regarded this huge project as a very high priority. A theater designer and an acoustician had been selected by unanimous agreement after the conclusion of a competitive process, and all looked forward to the selection of a design architect and to detailed campaign planning as the next steps.
I had hoped for more. But the proverbial shovel remained in storage. And it was premature for me to solicit that mega-gift. Time ran out on me.
On Friday, November 14, 2014, Lincoln Center publicly announced that it had successfully negotiated an agreement with the Fisher family. In exchange for a payment of $15 million and a promise of featuring tributes to Avery Fisher in the new lobby of a modernized concert hall, the family agreed to have its name removed from the building.
Now Lincoln Center is free to seek a new, generous benefactor, not only for the overall hall, but also for the transformed auditorium inside of it. Other pertinent facts were disclosed. This comprehensive design and construction project was expected to cost in the vicinity of $500 million. Akustiks had been chosen as the acoustics firm and Fisher-Dachs Associates as the theater designer, with the design architect to be selected in the following months. Both the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center agreed that the reconstruction would begin in 2019.
Lincoln Center was well on its way to answering the six key questions any potential mega-donor might ask: Who? What? Why? When? How? At what cost? Lincoln Center was now in a position not only to reply, but to ask prospects a question of its own: Will you join us by offering a nine-figure gift in exchange for a singular, signature naming opportunity?
Speaking for the family, Nancy Fisher was quoted in the New York Times on this auspicious day about the family’s motivation: “I watched as the campus started to change. It invited the public in, it didn’t look so forbidding and formal anymore. [By contrast, Avery Fisher] Hall was like an old slipper. How could you avoid sensing that?”
If there was any lingering doubt about Lincoln Center’s resolve, the concrete action steps and timetable that had been announced conveyed Katherine Farley’s and the Lincoln Center board’s clear intent.
Only one month later, the New York Philharmonic announced that Oscar Schafer, the chairman of Rivulet Capital, a private investment firm, would succeed Gary Parr as the chair of the board of directors. New York Times reporter Michael Cooper described Schafer as being enthusiastic about realizing a new home for the resident orchestra of what was once called Avery Fisher Hall.
Then, on February 6, 2015, in a startling development, Alan Gilbert announced that he will step down as the music director of the New York Philharmonic when his contract expires in 2017. Suddenly, the “who” became an open question.
Who shall lead an august orchestra is always a weighty and consequential decision. In this case, the identity of Gilbert’s successor will be portentous. Will the board’s search committee recommend a civic leader who appreciates New York City and who understands the urgent desirability of replacing Avery Fisher Hall, after so much delay and so many false starts? Will it choose a musical leader with a flair for performing superbly not just the warhorses of the repertory, but the work of living composers as well? Will it choose an energetic and ambitious leader who recognizes the opportunity to shape the future of one of the world’s leading orchestras? Key decisions beckon.
How quickly can the new conductor take hold? Less than two years after Gilbert’s replacement is identified and on board, the orchestra is scheduled to vacate its home to allow for demolition and construction. Under the best of circumstances, leaving its historic venue for two seasons and keeping an audience with you is a daunting challenge. The new music director will need to accomplish that feat, assist in closing the orchestra’s persistent operating deficits and help raise charitable contributions in unprecedented sums. A very tall order.
The gift of a world-class venue will be worth all of the work and sacrifice required to design, construct, and pay for it. Having demonstrated that Lincoln Center and seven other constituents could raise $1.2 billion in a collective capital campaign, above and beyond the formidable donated sums needed for annual operations, the positive mood of trustee leaders would be fully justified. And not just by a successful Lincoln Center comprehensive capital campaign track record, but also by the economic climate, especially for fund-raising.
When President Bill Clinton was inaugurated in 1993, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 3200. When President Barack Obama was sworn into office for his first term in 2009, that figure had risen to 7200. In the third year of Obama’s second term it exceeded 18,000.
Fortunate New Yorkers have increased their net wealth inordinately. Investors, financial intermediaries like hedge funds, private equity funds, and investment advisory firms are faring well. Commercial and residential real estate developers are in the money. Property values are at record highs. So is the mood of many wealthy people. And why not? For a wide swath of our town, the joint is jumping financially. The so-called 1 percent has never had it so good in New York City and around the nation.
Fund-raising conditions will not always be so favorable. Seize the day. For bold ideas, breathtaking designs, demonstrations of solidarity between Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic, the funds are there. For the asking.
Should the key players from both organizations hear sounds in the distance, it’s just me, cheering them on.
I FOUND IT DIFFICULT to believe that I had served as the president of Lincoln Center for 22 percent of its entire life as an organization.
The Mercury, clocking in at 185,000 miles of travel, had certainly been driven beyond its useful life. I was stubborn about keeping it. Liz was genuinely concerned. She didn’t think it was safe to drive any longer. But like that old favorite sweatshirt and that now thirty-three-year-old raincoat I had purchased in an outdoor flea market in Florence on our honeymoon, I just could not bring myself to give it up.
I had come to believe that my tap-dancing dad was with me whenever I got behind the wheel. I missed him very much. A beat-up old car was a poor substitute for his palpable presence. But better than nothing.
Yet even I eventually came around to admitting that its time had come. In Riverdale, it was not uncommon for homeowners to keep old oil storage tanks buried in their yards. New York City regulation required that they be filled with sand or removed entirely. Liz had long wanted ours hauled away in anticipation of an eventual sale of our home.
Well, as luck would have it, the tank and the car were roughly the same size. Why not, I proposed, bury the car under the front lawn where the tank had been as a lasting tribute to Dad? The look I received from my dear wife was indescribable. I tried a compromise: “Okay, okay. Then why don’t we just cremate it? I can leave an urn of some kind in my study as a reminder of the decade-plus experience with Dad’s car and as a remembrance of him.”
The verdict? Macabre.
Instead, I settled for writing a note to the next owner, imploring him or her to take care of this relic, as if it were a pet collie being left to a new home. Bidding the Mercury good-bye on a trade-in was not easy. I had not been inside a dealer’s showroom for at least a dozen years. I was very rusty. So I turned to the latest special Consumer Reports issue on cars. Following its advice, I bought the highly recommended family car, a 2012 Honda.
On Friday, January 31, 2014, I drove the by now two-year-old Honda out of the Lincoln Center garage onto Amsterdam Avenue. There was no longer a vehicular egress onto 65th Street, much to the relief of pedestrians.
I drove north, hanging a left at 71st Street, to West End Avenue. Traffic on the West Side Highway looked smooth. I then turned left onto 72nd Street and, driving past several dozen formidable condominium, co-op, and rental apartments to the south that did not exist in 2002 when I started at Lincoln Center, made my way home in less than fifteen minutes.
Almost thirteen years had passed. It is estimated that during that short span of time, as many as ten thousand additional residents had found a new home within walking distance of Lincoln Center. America’s first and oldest performing arts center had been transformed. So had I.
Chief executive officers are often judged by what transpired during their tenure. That’s fine as far as it goes. But they should also be evaluated by institutional accomplishment after their departure. Did they build enduring value? Did they leave behind a foundation for sustained success?
In my case, the 92nd Street Y never returned to its forlorn status as a rather underutilized, undercapitalized, neighborhood community center, largely confined in influence to its Upper East Side location. Its reputation and its services continued to grow.
The International Rescue Committee was no longer hemorrhaging cash and in danger of breakdown and dissolution. After almost six years of nonstop professional management and leadership, I left a solid track record on which my successor, George Rupp, the former president of Columbia University, could build. That he did. Today the IRC is larger—in size, in impact, in influence, and in stature—than ever before in its storied history. The excellent staff and trustees recruited during my tenure and the unprecedented private and public financial support that was raised were assets that George could and did enjoy and significantly enlarge.
To witness institutions and causes flourishing after you have left them is like observing a child moving from a state of dependence to one of liberation. Little is more pleasurable.
Driving home, I imagine that Mercury completely overhauled and refinished, its now proud owner offering it a new life.
My reverie also envisages Lincoln Center thriving long after I have left the stage.