Lincoln Center Chooses Hearst Chief as Next Board Chair

Lincoln Center faces a series of challenges in the coming years: recovering from the pandemic, reaching new audiences and making its campus more welcoming to the public.

Now it will have a new board chair to help tackle those priorities: Steven R. Swartz, president and chief executive of Hearst, whom the center announced on Thursday would replace Katherine G. Farley, the longtime chair, in June.

Swartz, who has been a Lincoln Center board member since 2012, said in an interview that he would continue the vision of Farley and Henry Timms, the center’s president and chief executive, who have worked to broaden its appeal beyond classical music and ballet into genres like hip-hop, poetry and songwriting.

“We’ve really done an amazing job of making our campus and our programming open and accessible and inclusive,” he said. “We just want to keep it going.”

Farley, who took over as board chair in 2010, said in an interview that she thought it was time for a change after the $550 million renovation of David Geffen Hall, the home of the New York Philharmonic, which reopened last fall, a year and a half ahead of schedule.

Farley was a major force behind the renovation, a project that had languished for years, working with the leadership of the New York Philharmonic, including its president and chief executive, Deborah Borda, and the chairmen of the Philharmonic’s board, Peter W. May and Oscar L. Tang. She secured a gift of $100 million from Geffen, the entertainment mogul, in 2015 to help kick-start the renovation. (Lincoln Center, the nation’s largest performing arts complex, owns the hall and is the Philharmonic’s landlord.)

“The hall is finished, all the money’s been raised, our budget is balanced,” Farley said. “It just seemed like this was the right time to pass the baton.”

During her tenure, she worked to bring more racial and gender diversity to Lincoln Center’s executive ranks, helping create a fellowship to build a pipeline of board members for the entire campus.

She also faced criticism during her tenure, including during a turbulent time in the mid-2010s when the center endured leadership churn and financial woes.

Swartz praised Farley, describing her tenure as an “extraordinary chairmanship.” She will remain on the board’s executive committee.

He said that under his leadership the center would try to reach the broadest possible audience.

“Now as the city looks to recover from the pandemic,” he said, “I think the arts give us hope and give us inspiration, and they give people across the city, from all walks of life, just much-needed entertainment.”