“There’s a huge amount of material documenting the center,” he said. “So the question is, how do you organize and select the material, and what kind of framework or filter can you devise to help you make selections and then organize all the material in a coherent fashion?”

Thomas Mellins, Curator. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

He ultimately devised seven key themes that encompassed and illuminated Lincoln Center’s rich contributions during a half-century: urban renewal, commerce and media, architecture and the visual arts program, the use of technology, education, performers and performances. The exhibit is eclectic, but its themes bridge decades.

Eileen McMahon, senior director of publicity and publications at Lincoln Center, praised Mellins for shepherding the project since 2007.

“We feel he has done such a superb job of organizing the history of Lincoln Center into seven different categories of focus,” she said. “And we really feel that people who come to the exhibit and go through the exhibit will come away with a much better understanding of Lincoln Center and its contribution, not just to the West Side, but to New York and the performing arts all over the world.”

Mellins has a commanding knowledge of New York City history (he co-authored New York 1880, New York 1930 and New York 1960), and he fused his erudition and experience with characteristic panache in orchestrating Lincoln Center’s first major exhibition. The exhibit will include the actual construction hard hats used during Lincoln Center’s original construction, correspondence, photographs, props, costumes and a giant 15-foot-high set piece of “a cook’s head” from Maurice Sendak’s design for Prokofiev’s The Love of Three Oranges.

Because the performing arts are at the core of Lincoln Center’s mission, Mellins made video recordings a central component. Continuous loops showcase major productions, while other footage focuses on history, including footage of President Dwight Eisenhower breaking ground with a shovel on May 14, 1959.

An Upper West Sider for about 30 years, Mellins and his wife, Judy Weinstein, live with their son in the neighborhood. He said that curating the Lincoln Center exhibition was a sentimental experience.

“I have been coming to Lincoln Center since I was a small child,” he said. “I have a childhood memory of seeing a production of The Merry Widow at the New York State Theater shortly after it was constructed and completed. My history doesn’t encompass the entire history that I am documenting, but it does embrace the lion’s share of it.”

Wynton Marsalis may have been raised in New Orleans, but his heart is now firmly rooted in New York. An Upper West Sider since he came to study music at The Juilliard School three decades ago, Marsalis has become a giant of the music world and the leading public figure of jazz. He goes by many descriptions these days—trumpeter, composer, impresario, writer and educator, to name a few—but mostly he is known as an ardent advocate of jazz tradition and the only artistic director Jazz at Lincoln Center has ever known.

Curiously, despite such a legacy of achievement in music, Council Member Gale Brewer remembers Marsalis primarily as a basketball player. Brewer first met Marsalis years ago when she headed to the courts for some pickup with co-workers. That’s where she encountered a jump shooter with a deft touch who everyone else

Wynton Marsalis has released more than 45 recordings, won nine Grammy Awards and received the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Photo By: Andrew Schwartz

referred to as “the famous man.” It was only when Brewer went to a Lincoln Center concert years later that she made the connection.

“Not only does he head up Jazz at Lincoln Center but he also plays basketball on the various city courts on the West Side,” Brewer said.

So it turns out Marsalis has some game. But it’s doubtful his chops are as good with a basketball as they are with a trumpet. This is the guy, after all, who began playing with jazz legend Art Blakey when he was only a teenager.

Since then, he has released more than 45 recordings, won nine Grammy Awards and received the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his oratorio Blood on the Fields. He also helped found the jazz program at Lincoln Center in 1987, shepherded it first to full constituent status and then to its expansive, current home at the Time Warner Center. But Marsalis is an equally well-known teacher.

“He does a wonderful job of arts education,” Brewer said. “I’ve seen him at middle schools, the Apollo Theater, Brandeis High School. He has a touch for getting kids involved with jazz and interested in listening to it.”

Musically, Marsalis is known mostly for bringing jazz back to its roots by forming a neotraditionalist movement after a fuzzy era of fusion and the avant-garde. But it is hard to place his efforts within strict limits. Marsalis has made plenty of classical recordings and composed nearly as many works for dance, including several efforts for the New York City Ballet.

His most recent efforts include a live album of blues with Willie Nelson and a heavily political rap song, Where Y’All At?, that calls out, among others, “All you ’60s radical and world beaters/Righteous revolutionaries and Camus readers.”
As Brewer said, “There’s only one Wynton Marsalis.”

When the Central Park Conservancy closed the historic Naumburg Bandshell in 1989 with intentions of tearing it down, it proved a lucky thing that Christopher W. London happened to be not only a Naumburg descendent but also an art and architectural historian.

London, who splits his time between his apartment on Central Park West and the family home in Westchester, grew up attending the Naumburg orchestral concerts every summer. So when the conservancy ruled to tear down the structure, which had been donated in 1923 by London’s great-grandfather, Elkan Naumburg, London was ready to fight back. His background (he has a bachelor’s degree in art history from Connecticut College, a master’s in art history from Williams College and a doctorate from Oxford University) made him “well prepared to speak [about preservation] at public meetings,” he said.

Christopher London is working to restore the Naumburg concert series to four full orchestral concerts each summer. Photo By: Andrew Schwartz

“I disagreed with their approach and I thought, if I disagreed, I had to do something about it. I guess that’s the kind of person I am,” he said.

When a full-scale public education campaign failed to persuade those in charge of park preservation that the bandshell, a half-dome neoclassical structure near West 72nd Street, was anything more than a blight, London refused to relent.

“I decided the only way was to sue because they were not interested in my efforts to dissuade them from knocking it down,” he said.

A legal battle began, with London raising $40,000 for the initial effort and relying on pro bono assistance from Lawyers for the Arts for the rest. The case dragged on through two appeals, but eventually London’s side won: the bandshell would stay.

Teri Slater, who has worked with London on historic preservation in New York, was impressed with his tenacity.
“It was a real fight,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for Christopher and his determination, there would be no Naumburg bandshell and the city would have thrown away one of its most valuable gifts.”

Though London is helpless to fight the dilapidated physical state of the bandshell—since the structure was a gift, it’s under the conservancy’s jurisdiction—he spends a big part of each winter writing grants and otherwise fundraising for Naumburg Orchestral Concerts, the nonprofit he presides over.

“I feel artistically we’re in a good place,” he said. “The concerts are solid and we have an audience who likes what we do.”

Today, London is researching his fourth book about British architecture in India, and serves on the boards of preservation groups. He is also working to restore the Naumburg concert series to four full orchestral concerts each summer and to build up the group’s endowment for the future.

Betty Cooper Wallerstein, another friend who is also involved in historic preservation, added, “I am a devoted fan of the Naumburg Bandshell and a fan of Christopher London.”

If William Shakespeare could walk through Central Park on a midsummer’s night, he might happen upon a dreamlike spectacle: actors in costumes strolling under trees, reciting his own words—and around them, a spellbound crowd of women, men and children.

The Bard would surely approve. Over the past decade, theater director Stephen Burdman has brought the works of Shakespeare and other classics to tens of thousands of New Yorkers by mounting free performances throughout Central and Battery parks.

Burdman’s New York Classical Theatre, the nonprofit he founded in 2000, attracts one of the most diverse audiences in the city, said board chairman Jon Lukomnik.
“We give access to everybody from bike messengers and ladies-who-lunch to European tourists who spent their budget on Broadway the night before,” Lukomnik said.

Ginny Myers Lee, an actor who has performed with the company for two seasons, praised Burdman for staying true to a centuries-old concept.

Stephen Burdman, a computer science major, developed his approach of bringing theater to the masses in his college drama club. Photo By: Andrew Schwartz

“Stephen has taken the idea of bringing theater to the masses and realized it in much the same way as it was done in Shakespeare’s time,” Lee said. “The audience is part of the play, they feel like they’re allowed to participate, and that creates a wonderful relationship between audience and actors.”

Burdman brings the performers and audience together using his own staging method, known as “panoramic theater.” Characters enter or exit using hills or trees, and viewers are free to sit or stand wherever they want—even behind the actors. The effect of this 360-degree approach is, as one regular said, that the spectator feels like “a fly on the wall,” a living, breathing piece of the action.

The goal is to make the theater experience no work and all play. Instead of buying tickets, audience members simply gather at a designated spot at the appointed time. Passersby are always drawn in, causing the audience to double or even triple over the course of an evening to up to a thousand people.

Burdman, 42, who is originally from Los Angeles and started out as a computer science major, first developed his theatrical approach as an ardent member of his college drama club.

“We were constantly brainstorming, ‘How do we get more people into the theater?’ So we took scenes and performed them in the lobbies of dorm rooms,” he said. “All people had to do was come down in their sweats and see a play.”

Today, people of all ages and backgrounds can watch his stagings of the classics in the park. So far, more than 55,000 have seen New York Classical Theatre’s shows, not counting those who attend free rehearsals and pre-show workshops. The company’s mailing list contains more than 400 unique ZIP codes, further proof of the widespread support Burdman and his colleagues enjoy.

“I’m still amazed that people show up and move with us every summer,” Burdman said. “We even get fan mail for Shakespeare!”