Word: lichtensteins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Then in 1967 the Academy appointed a 37-year-old former dancer and fund raiser named Harvey Lichtenstein as its new executive director. Lichtenstein turned out to be one of the best things to happen to Brooklyn since the Dodgers won the World Series. Armed with a $300,000 Ford Foundation grant to stimulate modern dance, Lichtenstein concentrated in his first three years on lining up topflight contemporary dance groups who could not afford Manhattan production prices. He organized regular appearances by more than a dozen companies, including the American Ballet Theater, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Martha Graham, Alwin...
...Arts. Lichtenstein's goal was to revive the Academy as a center for all the arts. In 1968 he persuaded Manhattan's Chelsea Theater Center to be the resident repertory company in the Academy's small (250 seats) fourth-floor theater (the facilities also include a 2,200-seat opera house, a 1,200-seat music hall and a 125-ft.-long grand ballroom). A year later, the Chelsea company's production of LeRoi Jones' Slaveship was so successful that it moved to off-Broadway after its three-week Brooklyn run. The same thing happened...
Last year Lichtenstein hired Composer-Conductor Lukas Foss as director of the Academy's orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonia. Jazz, blues and gospel are heard throughout the year in the Black People's Music program, highlighted each fall by a festival of performing groups from Africa and Asia...
Another thing that Lichtenstein has brought in is people. This season an estimated 700,000 will pay $1,000,000 to see the Academy's offerings, compared with fewer than 100,000 people paying less than $200,000 in 1967. By adding a series of state, federal, foundation and private grants to the box office receipts, Lichtenstein has been able to increase the Academy's budget from $650,000 in his first year to $2.5 million last year...
Half of its audience, Lichtenstein estimates, comes from Brooklyn, and he regards community support as vital. The other half comes from Manhattan and other areas of New York, and that is important in another way. Brooklyn, with a population of 2.5 million, is larger than most U.S. cities, yet Manhattanites tend to regard it as an outlying province...