The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
Where the Performing
Arts Live
Early History
The roots of the
Library's performing arts collections extend to 1888, when the Lenox Library
(which merged in 1895 with the Astor Library and Tilden Trust to form
The New York Public Library) acquired the music collection of financier
Joseph Drexel, which formed the basis of the Library's Music Division.
In 1931, following a large bequest of items from the estate of producer
and playwright David Belasco, the Library formally established its Theatre
Collection. The Dance Division, now the largest repository for dance
materials in the world, was established as a separate unit in 1944.
A collection of circulating music materials opened at the 58th Street
Library in 1924. In 1965 the Library united all of these collections
in its facility at the newly constructed Lincoln Center complex and also
established the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound
as a separate unit. Since its opening 35 years ago, The New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts has earned a reputation as one
of the world's leading centers for information on the performing arts.
Throughout its history, the Library for the Performing Arts has been the
source for countless discoveries which have affected the development of
important performances or provided information which shaped traditional
historical views. The Library has also been an important innovator
of techniques to document the performing arts, especially with its use
of video to record productions of theatre and dance.
Collections
Today, The New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts in the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman
Center houses the world's most extensive combination of circulating and
non-circulating reference and research materials on music, dance, theatre,
recorded sound, and other performing arts. The collections stand at a
staggering nine million items; notably, only 30 percent of the research
holdings are books. Historic recordings, videotapes, manuscripts, correspondence,
sheet music, set, light, mechanical and costume designs, press clippings,
programs, posters, and photographs constitute the remaining 70 percent.
From a Renaissance court dance to the first edition of "The Star-Spangled
Banner," rap music to set designs for West Side Story, the circulating
and research collections in the performing arts are recognized for their
depth and range.
The Library has been
an invaluable source of information for countless professionals and aspiring
students in virtually all aspects of the performing arts: dancers, singers,
actors, composers, choreographers, conductors, directors, set and costume
designers, critics, and historians. The Library operates, in large part,
as a creative laboratory for performing artists, which is reflected in
the collections. Artists draw inspiration and direction from the materials
to create their work, and the documentation of their process becomes part
of the collections. The library is a free and inviting source of information
on the performing arts for amateurs and interested members of the general
public.
The Library for the
Performing Arts also serves its users in ways that go far beyond traditional
library functions. In addition to being a lending and research library,
it serves as a museum, a video production center, a valued consultant
to the artistic community, and a performance venue, regularly presenting
concerts and theatrical events as well as lectures and seminars. Through
its collections and programs, the Library attracts some 425,000 visitors
a year.
Divisions of
the Library for the Performing Arts
The
Circulating Collections
The New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts maintains the largest circulating collection
in the world devoted to the performing arts. At present, it numbers over
350,000 published items and includes books, periodicals, sheet music,
audio cassettes, compact discs, videotapes, and DVDs. All these materials
are freely available for borrowing.
The
Research Collections
The research collections
of the Library for the Performing Arts are non-circulating, and are separated
into four divisions:
The Jerome Robbins
Dance Division
The Jerome Robbins Dance Division is the world's largest and most varied
archive devoted solely to the history and documentation of dance. Chronicling
dance in all its manifestations -- ballet, ethnic, modern, social, and
folk -- the collection is much more than a library in the usual sense
of the word. The Division preserves the history of dance by gathering
diverse written, visual, and aural resources, and works to ensure the
art form's continuity through an active documentation program.
Founded in 1944 as
a separate unit of The Research Libraries of The New York Public Library,
the Dance Collection is used regularly by choreographers, dancers, critics,
historians, journalists, publicists, film makers, graphic artists, students,
and the general public. Working with the vast holdings of the collection,
a user can, for example, reconstruct an Elizabethan court dance, a 19th-century
Italian tarantella, or a 20th-century Ceylonese devil dance; determine
what makeup Nijinsky wore in Scherherazade; learn the problems
Picasso faced in working on the ballet Parade from letters in his
own hand; or compare the modern dance style of Isadora Duncan and Martha
Graham.
While the Division
contains over 30,600 reference books about dance, these account for only
3 percent of its vast holdings. Other resources include thousands
of manuscripts, costume and set designs, photographs, posters, programs,
recorded interviews, and press clippings. A highlight is the Jerome Robbins
Archive of the Recorded Moving Image, a collection of many thousand Þlms
and videotapes of live dance performances of all kinds. The Library
has become a preeminent archive for the personal papers of dance legends
such as Ted Shawn, Lincoln Kirstein, and Agnes de Mille, and in the last
few years, has acquired archives related to the legendary dance figures
Merce Cunningham, Vaslav Nijinsky, Rudolf Nureyev, and Jerome Robbins.
The Music Division
The Music Division is one of the world's preeminent music collections,
chronicling the art in all its diversity -- classical music, opera, spirituals,
ragtime, jazz, musical comedy, and orchestral, rock, and pop music. While
the Division contains many scores and manuscripts from centuries past,
such as original manuscripts of works by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and
Wagner, its curatorial mandate is an activist one. Major emphasis
is placed on capturing the creative output of contemporary composers,
while the acquisitions program brings in the latest in published music
from many nations. The breadth and scope of these materials foster
a dynamic dialogue across cultures and galvanize an extraordinary range
of musical scholarship and performance activity.
The Music Division
traces its origins to 1888, when the Lenox Library acquired the music
library of Joseph Drexel -- a collection of 6,000 volumes, containing
rare 15th- through 19th-century music. Throughout the 20th century,
the Division built on these core materials, while developing a comprehensive
collection of basic bibliographies, historical editions, and complete
works that supports general research in each field. Particularly noteworthy
is the American Music Collection, with holdings ranging from the Þrst
edition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" to Native American songs to the
extensive collections of composers such as Charles Tomlinson Griffes,
and Louis Moreau Gottschalk, as well as numerous rental scores than would
otherwise be inaccessible for study.
A vital center for
music scholars and students, the Music Division also serves the needs
of a broad professional constituency: singers and instrumentalists in
search of unusual music, writers preparing programs notes for concerts
and recordings, lawyers searching copyrights, television producers and
book publishers in need of illustrative materials, and sociologists studying
popular culture. Printed books, clippings and programs, iconography,
autograph letters, documents, and manuscripts are also among materials
that are available, from significant musical figures such as Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart, Arturo Toscanini, and John Cage. This year alone, the
Division received a range of priceless gifts: among those were 15 of the
first and early editions of scores by Ludwig van Beethoven, conductor's
scores for American musicals which are not commercially available, such
as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Annie, and the estates
of Leo Smit, Ray Green, Charles Schwartz, and André Singer.
The Rodgers and
Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound
Originally part of the Music Division, The Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives
of Recorded Sound was established as a separate unit in 1965, following
a major gift from the Rodgers and Hammerstein Foundation. From Mozart
to Maria Callas to Motown, from symphonic works to presidential speeches,
from radio dramas to television specials, the division is a vital archive
of the aural landscape of our culture. A research facility for performers,
musicians, scholars, critics, and the recording industry, the collection
also plays a leadership role in developing technology that allows for
the transfer of sound from obsolete to accessible formats. Through
special recording projects -- often pursued cooperatively with other archives
and record companies -- the Archives' collection and preservation efforts
ensure that the spoken and musical sounds of the century will resonate
for current and future generations.
The Archives contain
more than 500,000 recordings and more than 8,500 printed items, and the
scope of these collections draws users from many disciplines. Critics
compare multiple recordings of a musical selection, opera singers or actors
prepare for unfamiliar roles, instrumentalists study a new piece, and
filmmakers search for topical songs for soundtracks. Rare items such as
pre-Glasnost underground videos of Russian rock groups, Fiorello La Guardia's
"Talks to the People" radio broadcasts, the Mapleson Cylinders (wax roll
recordings of Metropolitan Opera performances made from 1901 to 1903),
and private recordings of Tennessee Williams reading from his own works
draw researchers and historians from many fields.
The Billy Rose
Theatre Collection
The Billy Rose Theatre Collection was formally established in 1931, following
a gift to The New York Public Library of thousands of items from the estate
of producer and playwright David Belasco. It was officially named the
Billy Rose Theatre Collection in recognition of a major gift from the
Billy Rose Foundation. While it houses an extraordinary array of traditional
reference materials, the Collection's strength and unique quality lie
in its unparalleled collection of theatre ephemera, as well as its pioneering
efforts to document theatre on videotape and film.
The Collection is
a comprehensive archive of some 5 million items devoted to the theatrical
arts in all their forms and manifestations, and includes scripts and promptbooks,
programs, personal archives and scrapbooks, clippings, production designs,
prints, photographs, and posters, as well as books and periodicals. Its
collections illuminate virtually every type of performance, from streetcorner
to stage to studio, and include drama and musical theatre, film, television,
radio, and popular entertainment, such as circus, magic, vaudeville, and
puppetry. Users can, for example, peruse costume designs from the film
version of The King and I, analyze a video of A Chorus Line,
read multiple drafts of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,
or read scripts from current television hits. In recent years, the Theatre
Collection acquired the archives of famed theatrical producer Joseph Papp
and the great theatre and screen star Lillian Gish.
Through its documentation
and conservation efforts, the collection preserves and promotes the theatre,
playing a dynamic role in the national and international theatre communities.
Notably, the collection includes the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive,
known as TOFT, the only organization authorized by all of America's theatrical
guilds and unions to videotape live theatre performances from across the
United States. More than 4,500 tapes include Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional
theatre productions, theatre-related television programs, films, and documentaries;
and interviews with distinguished theatre professionals. The work
of notables such as Rosemary Harris, Derek Jacobi, James Earl Jones, Nathan
Lane, Kevin Spacey, Meryl Streep, and Sam Waterston are preserved for
posterity, as are new plays and musicals, classics and revivals, ranging
from Kiss Me, Kate to Proof. In 2001, TOFT received a special
Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre, one of many awards the division
has received for its contribution to American theatre.
Exhibitions
and Public Programs
The New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts engages both audiences and the artistic
community in a regular series of exhibitions and public programs. These
activities are a vital part of the Library's mission to preserve and promote
the performing arts in all forms.
The Library's exhibition program, known as the Shelby Cullom Davis Museum,
presents rotating displays drawn primarily from the archival collections
in the Library's newly renovated Oenslager and Astor galleries. During
recent seasons these exhibitions have included The House I Live In:
American Performance in the Era of Blacklisting; Screams on Screen:
100 Years of Horror Film; Jazz; and Balanchine.
Each year, more than
200 free concerts, play readings, dance events, lectures, films, and panel
discussions are presented by the Library. Past presentations have included
concerts devoted to the music of France, Norway, Mexico, and Asia; a seminar
on Spanish dancing in New York; and symposiums on Isadora Duncan and Lillian
Gish. Arthur Miller, John Guare, and Susan Sontag are among the writers
who have participated in the library's popular Reading Room Readings series,
which offers playwrights an opportunity to have works-in-progress performed
before a live audience. Major artists such as James Levine, Irene Worth,
Cherry Jones, Kim Hunter, Steve Ross, and Frank Langella have recently
appeared in Library programs.
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10-05-01
