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    BAM Announces Artistic Director and Fall Season Lineup

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    BAM, which has faced cutbacks in recent years, unveiled a reorganization as it announced its Next Wave Festival for the fall.The Brooklyn Academy of Music, a haven for international artists and the avant-garde that has been forced to reduce its programming and lay off workers in recent years, unveiled plans for a reorganization on Thursday as it announced its fall season.The institution said that Amy Cassello, who has been with BAM for more than a decade, would officially become its artistic director, a position she had been holding on an interim basis. And it announced a new strategic plan that calls for programming more works that are still in development, establishing more partnerships with other presenting institutions and hiring a new community-focused “resident curator.”BAM executives said they hoped that the plan would help usher in a new era for the institution after an exceptionally difficult period.Like many nonprofit arts organizations, BAM has struggled financially since the pandemic, and its annual operating budget dropped. It has also been buffeted by leadership churn in recent years after decades of stability in its senior leadership ranks.“I’m feeling really confident about our future,” said Gina Duncan, BAM’s president since 2022. “We were able to gain alignment across all of BAM’s communities and really arrive at a point in which we had a shared understanding of our history and what the future holds for us.”The upcoming Next Wave Festival in the fall will have 11 events, up from eight in 2023, a difficult year when BAM laid off 13 percent of its staff to help fill what officials called a “sizable structural deficit.” But it will still not be as robust as it was in earlier eras, when the festival regularly staged many more programs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Brooklyn Academy of Music Lays Off 13 Percent of Its Staff

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      The organization, which made Brooklyn a destination for pathbreaking performances, is reducing programming next season as it seeks to rebound from the pandemic.The Brooklyn Academy of Music, one of the most important cultural organizations in New York, has laid off 13 percent of its staff members and reduced its programming as it seeks to plug a “sizable structural deficit” during a challenging time for the arts, officials confirmed on Monday.BAM moved last week to eliminate 26 positions, according to a letter sent to staff members by the organization’s president, Gina Duncan.In the letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times, Ms. Duncan said that the changes were necessary in part to help BAM to “weather the downturn in charitable giving for the arts, and address an outdated business model that heavily relies on a shrinking donor base.” She said that the organization faced a “sizable structural deficit” each year.“This is us putting on our oxygen mask so that we can continue to fulfill our promise to be a home for adventurous artists, audiences, and ideas,” she wrote in the email.Ms. Duncan noted that the academy had already pared down its Next Wave Festival scheduled for this fall and added that programming for next season as a whole would be reduced. (The festival, often a highlight of the city’s cultural year, will feature seven programs this year, down from 13 last year.)“These difficult decisions were made after a rigorous organizational review process,” Ms. Duncan wrote in the memo.“We cannot spend our way out of a deficit, and we cannot present programming beyond what we can afford,” she added.The year before the pandemic, in April 2019, BAM obtained a $2.8 million loan from Bank of America, according to its financial papers. The papers said that the balance, more than $2.4 million, would come due next June.Megan Grann, a union representative of Local 2110, which represents technical, office and professional workers, said that 17 of the people who lost jobs had been in the union. She said that at least three had been offered “possible new positions” within the arts institution.“We are really just not happy with this development, to say the least,” she said. “Our primary goal right now is to try to mitigate the damage as much as possible.”The layoffs come as BAM, which began presenting work in 1861, finds itself having to navigate the post-pandemic challenges that many arts organizations around the country are facing. Earlier this month the Center Theater Group, a flagship of the Los Angeles theater world, laid off 10 percent of its work force and halted productions at one of its three stages, the Mark Taper Forum.But BAM is facing those difficulties while also experiencing significant leadership turnover after many years of relative stability.David Binder, the institution’s artistic director, is expected to step down next month after roughly four years at the helm. His two predecessors, Joseph V. Melillo and Harvey Lichtenstein, each spent more than three decades at the institution.On the executive side, Ms. Duncan took over as president in 2022, after the departure of Katy Clark, who held the job for five years (and was permitted to keep an apartment that BAM helped her purchase). Clark had succeeded Karen Brooks Hopkins, who spent 36 years at the institution, including 16 as president.Nora Ann Wallace took over as chair of BAM’s board in 2020, after the death of its previous board chair, Adam Max.Like other arts organizations, BAM has also had to contend with headwinds generated by the pandemic, which shuttered live performance for months. While many organizations survived the shutdown with the help of federal aid, once they reopened many found that it had become more difficult to attract audiences and donors alike.When Mr. Binder announced this year that he was leaving, the institution had 222 full-time staff positions, down from 256 before the pandemic. Most recently, the number of such positions had dwindled to around 200, and the latest round of cuts are expected to move the number below that threshold. More

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      BAM Artistic Director David Binder to Step Down in July

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      Binder, who was a Broadway producer before joining the nonprofit in 2019, plans to return to theater’s commercial sector.David Binder, the artistic director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, will step down in July, as the venerable institution faces ongoing turnover and the challenge of pandemic-era rebuilding after decades of stability in its leadership team.BAM, which began presenting work in 1861 and describes itself as the nation’s oldest performing arts center, long played a key role in New York’s cultural life, presenting adventurous theater, film, music and dance from artists around the world. But the institution was quieter than some at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, and Binder’s departure will follow the 2021 exit of the institution’s president, Katy Clark, and the 2020 death of its board chairman, Adam Max.Binder joined BAM as artistic director in 2019, making his tenure significantly shorter than those of his two predecessors, Joseph V. Melillo, who spent 35 years at the institution, and Harvey Lichtenstein, who led BAM’s artistic work for 32 years.Similarly, on the institution’s executive side, Clark left BAM after five years in the post (keeping an apartment the institution helped her purchase); she had succeeded Karen Brooks Hopkins, who had spent 36 years at the institution, including 16 as president. BAM’s current president is Gina Duncan, who started just last year, after a year in which that position was vacant.Binder, who had been producing Broadway shows as well as arts festivals before joining the institution, said he was leaving voluntarily and is planning to return to commercial producing after leading the nonprofit’s artistic programming through the upheaval of the pandemic as well as the change in the organization’s executive staff.BAM said Binder would continue to consult for the organization until next January as it searches for a new artistic leader. Binder began working with Melillo when his appointment was announced in early 2018.“I feel like I’ve accomplished what I set out to do there, and I want to get back to making work and producing work,” Binder said in an interview. “I want to keep growing.”Duncan characterized the transition similarly, saying, “David decided to move on, and I appreciate him letting me know now.” She added, “We have a strong team in place, and I have time to do a search and find someone to be my artistic partner.”Binder’s departure comes as many performing arts institutions around the nation are seeing turnover at the top — New York’s theater leaders have tended to hang on longer than most, which is a source of criticism as well as stability, but there is wholesale change unfolding in San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere.Binder, who is 55, has drawn some buzzy work to BAM, which primarily presents shows developed by other companies.Last year’s pandemic-delayed production of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” which starred James McAvoy and transferred from London, was both a critical and a popular success, becoming the best-selling show in the history of the BAM Harvey Theater. And this month, BAM was the only institution with two shows on The New York Times’s list of things critics are looking forward to this year: the theater critic Jesse Green wrote about anticipating a production of “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” with Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan in the starring roles, and the dance critic Gia Kourlas wrote hopefully about BAM’s U.S. premiere of Pina Bausch’s “Água,” a piece created two decades ago in Brazil.Binder arrived at BAM saying he wanted to bring in new artists — his first Next Wave festival there, in 2019, featured only artists who had not previously performed there. Over the course of his tenure, Binder said he will have presented more than 50 debuts of artistic companies as well as solo performers.Ticket sales during his time have generally exceeded projections; BAM says it is attracting new audiences, and there have been multiple programming highlights: Simon Stone’s “Medea” adaptation, produced by BAM, starring Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale; a new spring music series, curated last year by Hanif Abdurraqib and this year by Solange; and an annual artist residency program.“Through the pandemic and through the leadership changes, I feel that the team and I at BAM have stayed focused on putting fantastic work on our stages, and when we couldn’t do it on our stages, we did it outdoors or site-specific or virtually. And the work we’ve done has been really successful,” he said. “We always tried to mix it up: We had the National Theater of Korea’s opera of ‘Trojan Women,’ and ‘Kiki and Herb Sleigh’; we had the Lithuanian opera ‘Sun & Sea,’ which won the Golden Lion at Venice; and we also hosted the world premiere of Madonna’s ‘Madame X’ tour.”In the commercial arena, Binder is best known as the lead producer of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” which won the Tony Award for best musical revival in 2014. Binder said that he would soon announce that “Hedwig” was “finally coming to the West End in a big way.”Beyond “Hedwig,” Binder is among a handful of commercial producers who have continued to focus on the production of plays, which tend to be riskier than musicals. He says he plans to resume work on his longtime effort to bring the German director Thomas Ostermeier’s production of “An Enemy of the People” to Broadway. (Last fall, Binder brought Ostermeier’s “Hamlet” to BAM; that production was in German, but “An Enemy of the People” would be presented in English.)Binder said he was also working with the innovative British director Jamie Lloyd, who helmed the “Cyrano” revival at BAM, to develop a new play that he was not yet ready to describe.BAM, like other arts organizations, shrank during the height of the pandemic, but is now nearly back to where it was, according to a spokeswoman: Its current annual budget is $56 million, up from $55 million prepandemic; it has 222 full-time staff positions, down from 256; its most recent Next Wave festival had 13 shows, down from 16 prepandemic; and last spring, BAM presented 17 shows, up from 16 during the final prepandemic spring.“I think we’re doing as well as one can, given the circumstances of the world,” Duncan said. “We’ve had some success in audience growth, and our membership numbers are starting to increase again. Everything is heading in the right direction, and now it’s a matter of time.” More

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      BAM Taps Former Leader of Its Film Program as Its Next President

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      Gina Duncan, who had been working at the Sundance Institute since 2020, will return to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to lead it out of the pandemic.After a turbulent two years that has forced the Brooklyn Academy of Music to navigate the coronavirus pandemic, budget woes and leadership upheaval, the organization said Tuesday that it was turning to a veteran of its film wing to become its next president, filling a position that was left vacant more than 12 months ago.Gina Duncan, who previously served as BAM’s first vice president of film and strategic programming, has been selected as the organization’s new president, the institution announced. She will take over a multifaceted performing arts behemoth with a $50 million operating budget.Ms. Duncan, 41, who has never held the top job at an arts institution, will be tasked with stabilizing and reinvigorating BAM, an important cultural anchor and incubator known for presenting an eclectic array of cutting-edge artists and performers. Her first day as president will be April 11. She returns after a stint at the Sundance Institute, where she worked as its producing director.“Coming back to BAM feels like returning home,” Ms. Duncan said in a telephone interview. “The other day I went down to see Annie-B’s ‘The Mood Room.’ And it was the first time I had been back in BAM since we all fled our offices in March 2020. And I just was overwhelmed.”“I came back for BAM — the artists, the staff, the audience,” she added. “They’re my people.”The selection makes Ms. Duncan the first person of color to lead the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In choosing her, the academy’s board selected a candidate with whom they were familiar, after previously tapping an outsider in Katy Clark — a violinist-turned-arts-executive — who left BAM after less than six years in January 2021. Ms. Clark’s predecessor, Karen Brooks Hopkins, spent 16 years as BAM’s president, and a total of 36 years at the organization.Ms. Duncan joined BAM’s executive team in January 2017 as an associate vice president for film — a newly created role in which she oversaw the organization’s Rose Cinemas and its repertory film program. Under her leadership, BAM’s repertory programming began to focus more on underrepresented voices in cinema.She was promoted in 2019, with her role expanding beyond film to include responsibility for the organization’s archives and its lectures, classes and discussions; she helped integrate programming across the institution. She also helped move programs online during the early months of the pandemic, officials said.She left BAM in September of 2020 for the Sundance Institute, and now will return after roughly 18 months away.The chairwoman of BAM’s board, Nora Ann Wallace, said in an email that Ms. Duncan’s “leadership skills are immediately evident to anyone who works with her.”“Her ability to inspire a group of people — be it staff, audiences, donors, or our board — is vital to this moment in BAM’s history,” Ms. Wallace said. “The board saw those skills when she was at BAM in her previous leadership role.”Ms. Wallace noted that in addition to her background in film, Ms. Duncan has produced theater and arts-centered community programming for many years. “Gina is a gifted strategist who excels at assessing the bigger picture,” Ms. Wallace said.Ms. Duncan said that her vision for BAM involved ensuring it is “vital and visible across Brooklyn and beyond.” During her initial tenure with the institution, she said, she had worked to ensure that its film program both served local audiences and became part of a “larger national conversation.”“I see an opportunity to do that with BAM across all the different art and rich cultural programming that we present,” she said.When Ms. Duncan’s predecessor, Ms. Clark, left BAM, questions were raised about the housing bonus she had received to purchase an apartment in Brooklyn, which she was allowed to keep when she left the position.Ms. Wallace did not disclose Ms. Duncan’s salary, saying only that her pay is “in line with other performing arts organizations of similar size.” Ms. Duncan’s compensation does not include an apartment or housing allowance, Ms. Wallace said.Ms. Clark’s departure created something of a leadership vacuum at BAM; the board’s previous chairman, Adam Max, died in 2020 and an internal team was appointed to lead the institution temporarily as the pandemic created a crisis for the performing arts. With live performances impossible, BAM was forced to slash its operating budget, lay off some employees and furlough dozens more, cut the pay of top executives and dip into its $100 million endowment for special distributions.Ms. Duncan will have the advantage of taking over at a time when cultural institutions, including BAM, are starting to find their footing again. The academy’s first full season since the start of the pandemic focuses on the artists of New York City.“The industry remains really tenuous,” Ms. Duncan said. But at BAM, she said, she has a “strong foundation to start from.”“An institution is its people,” she said. More