Music To My Ears, Art To My Eyes, An Insider’s Look at Lincoln Center
Discover New York’s Best Tour of Lincoln Center
Discover New York’s Best Tour of Lincoln Center: Learn the Behind-the-scenes story of Lincoln Center, hear all the latest cultural news, and then discuss it with friends, old and new, over lunch or dinner.
| Who: | Performing & Visual Art Lovers, and Architectural Buffs. |
| What: | Insider Access to something special! Experience one of the world’s most important arts complexes with exclusive Lincoln Center experts. You never know what might happen. Possibilities include viewing a rehearsal, taking a turn onstage . . or meeting a bonafide Star. |
| Where: | Lincoln Center |
| When: | 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM Monday – Sunday or 3:30 PM – 8:30 PM Thursdays |
| Why: | Learn the history of the world’s leading performing arts center, uniting twelve world-renowned performing arts and educational organizations |
Our, Four-hour programs include:
- Expert guide for interactive discussions and backstage dish about Lincoln Center.
- Choose from either The Art and Architecture Tour that includes works of art by such greats as Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Lee Bontecou, Henry Moore, Jacques Lipschitz, and Elie Nadelman or the Spotlight Tour. Learn how integral they were to the creation of America’s largest performing arts complex. Exclusively explore the buildings, theater interiors, and public spaces designed by visionary architects Philip Johnson, Eero Saarinen, and others, in the 1960s and 1970s.
- Get the inside information on Lincoln Center’s new critically acclaimed redevelopment project, encompassing innovative concepts and designs by the architectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro (think NYC’s High Line) as well as Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. Get to know the LC campus’s expanded public spaces, including the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Lawn.
- Highlights include viewing important artworks by Jasper Johns, David Smith, and Louise Nevelson, commissioned especially for Lincoln Center. The tour includes visits to up to three of these renowned theaters: the Metropolitan Opera House, Avery Fisher Hall, the David H. Koch Theater (previously the New York State Theater), the Vivian Beaumont Theater, and the dramatically transformed Alice Tully Hall.
- Insider’s Access allowing a sneak peek at a rehearsal or setting foot on a stage whenever possible. Exclusive access to handle select objects associated with well-known performers and artists, for example a signed toe shoe by NYCB principle dancer, Wendy Whelan, or touching samples of the site-specific felt wall in the David Rubenstein Atrium by acclaimed artist Claudy Jongstra. These were fabricated to be part of an eco-friendly wall using wool from her own flock of endangered sheep and home-grown vegetal dyes.
- Bragging Rights over lunch or dinner at Atlantic Grill –Who can tell, name the most pieces of art commissioned in the complex?
- All taxes and gratuities included
Not included:
- Transportation is additional upon request since all programs are designed for walking rain or shine
- Alcoholic beverages may be paid individually at the end of the meal
Neighborhood Background:
A consortium of civic leaders and others led by, and under the initiative of John D. Rockefeller III, built Lincoln Center as part of the “Lincoln Square Renewal Project” during Robert Moses’s program of urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s. To paraphrase John D. Rockefeller III, the idea was to bring the arts to the many and not the few and ensure that the arts would be central to life versus on its periphery.
In the early part of the 1900s, the area south of 67th Street was heavily populated by African-Americans and supposedly gained its nickname of “San Juan Hill” in commemoration of African-American soldiers who were a major part of the assault on Cuba’s San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War.
By 1960, it was a neighborhood composed primarily of tenement housing, the demolition of which was delayed to allow for exterior shots in the movie musical West Side Story. Thereafter, residents were relocated to improved housing units and the construction of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts began with a formal groundbreaking in 1959.
Respected architects were contacted to design the major buildings on the site, and over the next thirty years the previously blighted area around Lincoln Center became a new cultural hub. Rockefeller was Lincoln Center’s inaugural president from 1956 and became its chairman in 1961. He is credited with raising more than half of the $184.5 million in private funds needed to build the complex, including drawing on his own funds; the Rockefeller Brothers Fund also contributed to the project.
The original architects who designed buildings at Lincoln Center include:
- Max Abramovitz: Avery Fisher Hall
- Pietro Belluschi: The Juilliard School (including Alice Tully Hall)
- Gordon Bunshaft: The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
- Wallace Harrison: Lincoln Center master plan & Metropolitan Opera House
- Philip Johnson: New York State Theater, now known as the David H. Koch Theater
- Eero Saarinen: Vivian Beaumont Theater
1-2 minimum: $785 per person
3 people $568 per person
4 people $457 per person
5 people $391 per person
6 people $348 per person
7 people $319 per person
8 people $305 per person
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