March 21, 2002 | Read Time: 7 minutes
Reynold Levy was planning a simpler life when the offer came to run Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, in New York.
Rather than recuperate from the high-stress presidency of the International Rescue Committee, a worldwide refugee-relief group, Mr. Levy, who turns 58 next month, will oversee the cultural titan during one of its most sensitive times. Plans for a massive renovation have elicited strong responses — some unfavorable — from many of the 12 organizations that make up the center, and support for the $1.2-billion project in uptown is tenuous as New York rebuilds its downtown in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Starting May 1, Mr. Levy will coordinate a network of what in the performing-arts world amounts to household names, including the Juilliard School, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York City Ballet. The combined budget for the groups at the center is $510-million, and Mr. Levy’s salary as president will be $500,000.
The job will be far more intense than the teaching post he was planning to take at the Harvard Business School before the offer was presented by the Lincoln Center board, but the former head of the AT&T Foundation and the 92nd Street Y says the opportunity was too great to pass up. “Truly the only job that would have diverted me from my plan,” he says, “would have been the presidency of Lincoln Center.”
What is it about Lincoln Center that you find so compelling?
That it is the premier performing-arts center in the country and in the world, and to be in a position of leadership to maintain that pre-eminence in so many art forms and to persist in renewing Lincoln Center for the next generation at a time in New York City’s history when the city has been thrown off kilter and set back and where the citizens need to rally around some of its most important civic and cultural organizations. Those two forces — my love of the arts and my love of the city — combined singularly in this job.
Lincoln Center’s last president, Gordon J. Davis, resigned after nine months on the job. How do your previous positions prepare you for the challenges of running Lincoln Center?
The search committee asked me what I could bring to this job that was special as a candidate. At the 92nd Street Y, I was in charge of an institution that had the only concert hall in the world with a diving board immediately above it. The job of leader is in part to find solutions to problems and to resolve conflicts, and to help to build a future and create a vision that the leadership of the organization can buy into and be committed to. The International Rescue Committee has those challenges of where would we intervene, how and in what sector, were the security conditions too dangerous or not. The method of identifying the problem, clarifying that challenge, assembling the evidence, listening to people with significant experience, weighing the pros and cons, and offering a sound recommendation to the board whenever necessary is the standard stuff of good leadership at complex organizations.
What do you see as your first task?
To get to know the key leaders in the organization. There are 12 constituent companies. All of them have chief executives and managerial staff, all of them have formidable boards of trustees, all of them have distinguished histories — many over a century, some quite new. So building trust, forming relationships, learning what the trajectory of each of those constituent companies is, that’s really my first challenge.
Some of the 12 organizations have competing interests. How will you bridge those interests?
I’ve had some experience with understanding and dealing with very gifted people in a wide variety of fields. And I’ve worked in and around New York City and the federal government — officials who are not known to be without their egos — and I’ve worked for chairmen of companies. The International Rescue Committee has a rather auspicious board of directors as well. I’m accustomed to and enjoy being surrounded by hard-driving, committed, passionate people who are the kinds of folks who get things done.
How will you persuade donors that Lincoln Center’s overhaul is worth supporting?
Lincoln Center will renew itself physically. There is absolutely no question about that. The question is only the timetable and the ambitiousness of those plans.
This interval might be regarded as a tough time for New York City given the city’s budget deficit, but there was lots of moaning and groaning that September 11 would be an irreversible setback — in the immediate aftermath of the event — to charity. I don’t believe that. I was of the view that it would raise the consciousnesses of many people to human needs that they would otherwise not see, and leaders of nonprofit organizations could take advantage of a real teachable moment. The report I’ve received from my colleagues is, Boy, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I am very high on the willingness of Americans generally and New Yorkers in particular to support meritorious causes. Anybody who cares about New York City, about tourism, about economic development, about the arts, about schoolchildren can’t find a better place to invest their resources than in a renewed Lincoln Center.
The public invitation [by the former mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani] to New Yorkers and people in the metropolitan area to resume their daily lives and make visits to arts centers part of them very much helped to revive attendance and animate halls all over the city. Some of the setbacks are real, but as is true of the rest of the economy, as each month passes the reports that we receive are that there are improvements.
How badly does the center need a renovation?
The campus is over 40 years old, and it has had enormous wear and tear, which is a terrific thing. There is the normal overhaul of the performing spaces and the environment, but beyond that there is a vision, and the vision is to create a campus that is as inviting as possible. Reconceptualizing and altering the campus is a kind of metaphor for a genuine outreach to the community at large.
Lincoln Center has faced criticism for favoring classical over modern works. What do you think of the mix?
There has been a major effort to present art of the 20th century. In the last decade Lincoln Center and its constituents have made considerable progress in moving away from this paradigm of classical art to a much more blended programming. Our move to thematic programming that crosses boundaries, that crosses time periods, are reflective of that reality.
ABOUT REYNOLD LEVY, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
Education: Received his bachelor’s degree from Hobart College in 1966; a law degree from Columbia University in 1973; and a Ph.D. in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia also in 1973.
Previous experience: Was staff director of the Task Force on the New York City Fiscal Crisis and executive director of the 92nd Street Y, which offers an extensive array of cultural as well as athletic programming. Joined AT&T in 1984, where he oversaw government relations and served as president of the AT&T Foundation. Became president of the International Rescue Committee, in New York, in 1997. Wrote Give and Take: A Candid Account of Corporate Philanthropy (Harvard Business School Press, 1999).
Charitable interests: Serves on the board of the Center for Global Development, in Washington, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation, in New York. The top recipients of his financial contributions are the International Rescue Committee, El Museo del Barrio, in New York, and the Parks Council, in New York.
