What you can find is limited to the boundaries of your imagination. The resources are all here,” a librarian said recently of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, which reopened last October following a three-and-a-half year renovation. The statement has been true since the library first opened in 1965, and the recent $38 million modernization has returned to the public an old treasure in new and technologically updated packaging. Though many of the improvements made on the facility have truly ushered it into the new century, some things might have been better left unchanged.
Reopened as the Lewis B. Cullman Center, its third floor is still the home of the most important performing arts research library in the United States. Under a single roof one finds the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (TOFT) and its catalogue of videotaped Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional performances; and the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archive of Recorded Sound, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, the Billy Rose Theatre Collection, exhibition galleries, and a music division.
Historians, performers and avid fans can peruse the Marcella Sembrich Collection, which includes correspondence, photographs and manuscript books of candenzas by the early 20th Century Metropolitan Opera soprano. They can peruse the annotated vocal scores belonging to American contralto Louise Homer, and a vast collection of opera scores with original notes and corrections once managed by Harry Schumer, librarian for the Metropolitan Opera from the 1930s until the 1950s.
Those interested in opera’s more visual aspects will not be disappointed either. One need only browse the photographs, design sketches and letters of Metropolitan Opera set and costume designer Richard Rychtarik, or scan the collected photographs of renowned New York City Opera and New York City Ballet photographer Fred Fehl.
Originally intended to be a library and museum, the facility also functions as concert and exhibition space. The 200-seat Bruno Walter Auditorium has benefited thoroughly from its redressing. The new seating, improved acoustic panels, carpeting and backstage facilities make it a much more inviting space to performers and audiences.
The Oenslager Gallery, a first-floor exhibition space that greets spectators as they enter from the plaza, is superb in its towering glass panels that divide it into a maze of tastefully lit displays. What is most spectacular, however, is the content of the exhibits themselves, which offer substantial proof of why the Lincoln Center is unparalleled as a musical historical resource.
“Transformations: A Celebration of the Creative Spirit in the Performing Arts,” the gallery’s inaugural exhibit, was an interdisciplinary feast. Rounding each corner, visitors encountered original cylinder recordings from Metropolitan Opera productions, set designs from the company’s early efforts, and the costumes of award-winning designer Patricia Zipprodt.
From February 8 to May 4, visitors were able to explore the world of Kurt Weill through an examination of recordings, films, scores, posters, and photographs. Thanks to the recently extended hours of operation (the Cullman Center is now open until 8pm, Monday-Friday), the Oenslager Gallery makes a perfect pre-concert stop. Be sure to allow at least 30 minutes per visit, as you will not want to rush.
If the Oenslager Gallery is instead a momentary stop on your way to the restored third-floor research library, you may find yourself let down on reaching your final destination. The thought and foresight that went into the Oenslager Gallery and the Bruno Walter Auditorium were lacking in planning the Resource Collection reading room. While certain aspects of it are visually appealing—the addition of skylights and windows give the room a warmer, more open appearance, and the newly installed climate control system provides the perfect atmosphere to public and storage areas—its appearance and ease of use have, in other ways, suffered.
One central reading room has been made out of what were once four separate research rooms for the music, recorded sound, and dance and drama divisions. Though the original intention was to merge the four divisions into a unified interdisciplinary research area, what has resulted is a noisy and distracting den of activity. Somehow, the redone walls seem to act as sound amplifiers and reflectors. The quietest conversation in one corner of the room can be heard in the opposite corner.
Along one wall is a row of elevators, a coat and bag check, and security checkpoint, all of which act as a source of additional noise. At the room’s center is a materials request and retrieval station run by as many as six librarians. From this hub extends a sea of approximately 50 computers used for catalog searches, playback of recordings, and general research. The building now holds a total of 213 computers, compared to the single digit total before the renovation.
Between the noises of entering and exiting elevator passengers, security guards sending visitors back to the bag check, and the requests for materials at the librarians’ desk, the space sounds like anything but a library. Amid this activity, patrons are expected to read and listen. The intimacy normally associated with any library—desks and workspaces separated by wooden dividers, places of retreat for quiet study and analysis—no longer exist.
Of the reasons for renovation, Jacqueline Z. Davis, executive director of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, explained that the collections that “have grown exponentially since (the 1965 opening) to nine million items that require more than seventeen and a half miles of shelves.
“In addition,” Davis added, “technology has completely changed the way materials are stored and accessed. The reconfigured space will allow us to provide better service in a more pleasing environment that can comfortably accommodate continued collection processing and preservation work. It also gives us the opportunity to make significant improvements to our staff work areas.”
Despite Davis’s encouraging words, space for patrons and workers has actually decreased in size and the promised “pleasing environment” does not exist. The reading room has a lower ceiling and less square footage dedicated for public use. An area of office space on the floor was completely eliminated when the ceiling of the room below it was raised.
According to a source at the Cullman Center, one of the renovation’s guiding principles—creating more space for the storage of an expanding collection—eventually gave way to the thirst for technology. Perhaps those in charge of the project sought to please wealthy donors with a shining and sparkling tribute to millennial technology and in doing so, lost sight of the need for functionality in serving the estimated 425,000 people who use the library each year.
Space needed for the wiring of many new computers soon came out of the allotment for office and inventory. What appears to be a lower ceiling in the research room actually is the result of a raised floor. Beneath it lays a morass of cords for the bevy of new machinery.
To its credit, the new and improved floor boasts 46 video playback stations, 12 audio stations, and 30 computerized workstations. TOFT users who once waited several days to sample items from the collection can now do so immediately because of the increased number of workstations. This is one significant improvement.
Still, because of reduced space, 50,000 items such as books and scores have been moved to an offsite storage facility. Requests for these items can take up to 48 hours to be filled. Within a year or so, patrons will be able to order these items through an online request service.
What also remains impressive is TOFT’s continuing mission to aid choreographers in copyrighting their work through the taping of performances. It has always been difficult, if not impossible, for choreographers to protect their work. Though most of the library’s taped productions are of the Broadway genre, operatic productions are also filmed and catalogued when they feature the work of well-known choreographers.
Another very helpful innovation is the Cullman Center’s The Treasures of the American Performing Arts, 1875-1923. Funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, users are given access to 16,000 digital items, accessible from outside the library through the Internet or from workstations within the building. A variety of items will be available in the form of digital reproductions: sheet music, theater photographs, silent films, and news clippings. Not only will this project eliminate the handling of extremely fragile items, but it will also make the library’s resources instantly available to a much larger public.
The Cullman Center is also making an attempt to help those who are uncomfortable with the new system. The Orientation Center, located on the building’s main floor, helps visitors use the new equipment, and directs them to the many resources and collections.
The Circulating Division on floors one and two fared better through the renovation than did its upper neighbor. Reading rooms are more spacious and better equipped with computers and listening equipment. Patrons can borrow books, magazines, sheet music, and recordings in various formats. The enormous inventory of record albums once available has been replaced by 25,000 CDs, along with more than 7,000 videotapes. All of the furniture is brand new, as is the case on the third floor.
In spite of the many improvements, problems in the Research Collection pose a frustrating obstacle to visitors and workers. Though technology has helped bring an invaluable historical resource collection into the present, it has also eliminated past features that will be greatly missed.
