New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Originally the collections that formed The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (LPA) were housed in two buildings.
These concerts were often held in conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Juilliard School, and the program grew to include Lectures from New York University staff.
After Lincoln Center was incorporated in 1956, an early mention of a possible "library and museum of the performing arts" appeared in June 1957.
As built, the Theater forms the central core of the building, the first and second floors occupying the southern and western sides, and the third-floor research collections providing a roof.
The second floor included a children's performing arts collection as well as the Hecksher Oval, an enclosed space that could accommodate story-telling.
The Shelby Cullom Davis Museum spaces included small and separate areas in the Dance, Music, Sound archive and Theater research divisions.
The renovation also created a Technology Training Room, with twelve desktop computers for users and one for a teacher, as well as a projection screen.
A small area near the Lincoln Center Plaza entrance houses caricaturist Al Hirschfeld's desk and chair.
[14] Edmund Morris characterized the Special Collections reading room as "a charmless space...[which] exudes a dispirited air of neglect.
[17][18] According to The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, the library has particular strong manuscript holdings in jazz, These include 400 of Benny Goodman's arrangements, and the arrangements made by Sy Oliver for musicians including Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, and Tommy Dorsey.
[20] The Library has been collecting theatrical materials for years prior to 1931, when the executors of David Belasco's estate offered the producer's holdings on the condition that a division be created.
It is now the largest research division at the library, with holdings primarily on the theatre, and increasing on film, with some collections on the related subjects of vaudeville, magic, puppetry, and the circus.
In addition to live performances, commercial recordings of theater-related films, documentaries, and television programs are also included in the collection.
[24] Acquisitions were augmented by gifts of papers of Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and Hanya Holm.
[24] Due to its subsequent growth and increasing importance, the collection was formally recognized as a separate division on January 1, 1964.
Endowed with a gift from Jerome Robbins, this archive collects and preserves moving images of dance, making them available to researchers.
[27] Though not technically a part of the Research divisions, the Reserve Film and Video Collection (formerly the Donnell Media Center) is serviced from the third floor.
For film and video that must be viewed onsite, there is a screening room (large enough for classes) equipped with a 16 mm projector.
Successive gifts by record companies and individuals led to the formal creation of a separate division with the opening of the building at Lincoln Center in 1965.
[29] Carleton Sprague Smith envisioned the purpose of the sound archive as "stimulating interest among recording and broadcasting executives, as well as other arts institutions that had potential for playing a cooperative role.
The beginnings of the circulating music collection are due in great part to its first head librarian, Dorothy Lawton.
Servicemen could request selections of their choice and could also participate in playing chamber music with instruments that had been loaned to the Library.
[35] Upon Lawton's retirement in 1945, chief music critic of The New York Times Olin Downes complimented her on the development of the 58th Street Library, and remarked on her achievements such as attracting donors and enlisting the concern and help of professional musicians.
The museum component of LPA takes the form of exhibitions in its two main exhibition spaces, The Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery and the Vincent Astor Gallery, as well as a walled area in the plaza entrance, and additionally display cases distributed throughout the building.
Among the purposes of the exhibitions is to show to all visitors that the millions of items belonging to the library are not for the exclusive use of scholars but for anyone who walks in the door.
Public programs are free of charge and take place in the 202-seat Bruno Walter Auditorium located on the lower level.
