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      Ken Kragen, a Force Behind ‘We Are the World,’ Dies at 85

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      Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones were among the public faces of that 1985 fund-raising record. But behind the scenes, Mr. Kragen made it all happen.The entertainer and humanitarian Harry Belafonte was so inspired by “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” the record released by an all-star lineup of British and Irish musicians in late 1984 to raise money for famine relief in Africa, that he wanted to do something similar with American musicians. But Mr. Belafonte, in his late 50s at the time, knew he had to recruit current stars to pull off the idea.“I needed a younger generation of artists,” he wrote in his memoir, “My Song” (2011), “the ones at the top of the charts right now: Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Kenny Rogers and Cyndi Lauper. When I looked at the management of most of these artists, I kept seeing the same name: Ken Kragen.”Mr. Kragen, after some persuading, latched onto Mr. Belafonte’s vision and became a pivotal behind-the-scenes force in creating “We Are the World,” the collaborative song recorded by a dizzying array of stars (including Mr. Belafonte) and released in March 1985. The song became a worldwide hit and, along with an album of the same name, raised millions of dollars for hunger relief in Africa and elsewhere.Among the participants in the recording of “We Are the World” were, clockwise from left, Mr. Richie, Daryl Hall, Mr. Jones, Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder.Associated Press“When Belafonte called me, the first call I made was to Kenny Rogers,” who was one of his clients, Mr. Kragen recalled in a 1994 interview with Larry King on CNN. “Then I called Lionel Richie. Then I called Quincy Jones. Lionel called Stevie Wonder. Within 24 hours, we had six or seven of the biggest names in the industry.”Soon “six or seven” had snowballed into dozens, with Paul Simon, Bette Midler, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Tina Turner, Willie Nelson and Diana Ross among them. Mr. Jackson and Mr. Richie wrote the song; Mr. Jones conducted the recording session in January 1985, a gathering that became the stuff of music legend.Mr. Kragen, who went on to organize or help organize other formidable fund-raising projects, including Hands Across America in 1986, died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 85. His daughter, Emma Kragen, confirmed the death. No cause was specified.As Mr. Kragen often told the story later, his goal at first on the “We Are the World” project was to recruit two new stars a day. But soon recruiting wasn’t his problem.“Lionel Richie had this line — he says, ‘You are who you hug,’” he told Mr. King, “and the thing is that everybody wanted to hug somebody who was hipper or somebody who was more successful. So the day that I got Bruce Springsteen, the floodgates opened, because he was the hottest artist in America.”At that point, Mr. Kragen went from dialing the phone to answering it — a lot.“I started to get calls from everybody,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1985, just after the recording session. “I tried hard to cut it off at 28 — to this day I don’t know how it got to be 46. Still, we turned down almost 50 artists.”Mr. Kragen was the founding president of USA for Africa, the foundation set up to administer the aid money raised by “We Are the World,” which continues today. According to its website, it has raised more than $100 million to alleviate poverty.Kenneth Allan Kragen was born on Nov. 24, 1936, in Berkeley, Calif. His father, Adrian, was a lawyer who later taught law at the University of California, Berkeley; his mother, Billie, was a violinist.While studying engineering at Berkeley, Mr. Kragen began frequenting local nightclubs and soon became friendly with the Kingston Trio, a fledgling group at the time that often played at the Purple Onion in San Francisco. He began booking the trio at colleges, and when he graduated in 1958, he was asked to manage them; instead he went to Harvard’s graduate school of business. Before starting there, he took a trip to Europe with his parents; when he came home, a new group was getting a lot of buzz nationally: the Kingston Trio.“I just wanted to die,” Mr. Kragen told The New York Times in 1986. “I thought I’d blown the chance of a lifetime.”But once he earned his graduate degree in 1960, he found new opportunities as a talent manager and promoter. He managed the folk group the Limeliters and then picked up the Smothers Brothers in 1964. He and his business partner at the time, Kenneth Fritz, were executive producers of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” which during its three-season run, from 1967 to 1969, was one of the most talked-about shows on television because of its battles with censors.In 1975, he went to work for Jerry Weintraub, a talent manager with a formidable roster that included John Denver, Led Zeppelin and the Moody Blues. (Mr. Weintraub soon became a noted film and television producer.) Mr. Kragen started his own company in 1979, attracting clients like the Bee Gees, Olivia Newton-John and Trisha Yearwood.Mr. Kragen helped organize the fund-raising event Hands Across America and participated in it at Battery Park in Lower Manhattan in May 1986, along with Jean Sherwood and her daughter, Amy.David Bookstaver/Associated PressMr. Kragen produced television movies featuring Mr. Rogers, as well as TV specials for the singer Linda Eder and others. One of his fund-raising efforts was Hands Across America, whose goal was to create a chain of people holding hands that stretched from coast to coast. The event took place in May 1986. The coast-to-coast chain didn’t quite materialize — there were gaps in various places — and though the event raised millions of dollars for hunger and homelessness, it fell short of its $50 million goal. But some five million people participated, including President Ronald Reagan.Mr. Kragen married the actress Cathy Worthington in 1978. In addition to her and his daughter, he is survived by a sister, Robin Merritt.In 2019, Buzzfeed asked Mr. Kragen if he could envision a reprise of Hands Across America. He couldn’t. People, he said, would be too busy documenting their participation with selfies to actually hold hands. More

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      $50 Million Gift to Juilliard Targets Racial Disparities in Music

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      The renowned conservatory will use a grant from a California foundation to expand a training program focused largely on Black and Latino schoolchildren.For three decades, the Juilliard School has sought to bring more diversity to classical music by offering a weekend training program aimed largely at Black and Latino schoolchildren.Now the renowned conservatory is planning a major expansion of the initiative, known as the Music Advancement Program: Juilliard announced on Thursday that it had received a $50 million gift that it would use to increase enrollment in the program by 40 percent and to provide full scholarships to all participants.“This will be transformational,” Damian Woetzel, Juilliard’s president, said in an interview. “It will broaden the pathway to the highest level of classical music education in such a significant way.”The gift is from Crankstart, a foundation in California backed by the venture capitalist Michael Moritz and his wife, Harriet Heyman, a writer, who are longtime supporters of the program.Heyman, in announcing the gift, pointed to the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in American orchestras, where only about 4 percent of musicians are Black or Hispanic. The Music Advancement Program’s “commitment to recruiting underrepresented minorities will help bring new spirit, as well as superb young musicians, to orchestras, concert halls and theaters everywhere,” Heyman said in a statement.Juilliard aims to expand enrollment to 100 students, up from 70. The initiative will also broaden its reach to include younger students. (It currently serves children ages 8 through 18.) And in addition to full scholarships for all students, the gift will be used to create a fund to help them buy instruments.The program includes ear training, instrument lessons and theory classes for its students, who largely come from New York City public schools. Students can enroll for four years. The program costs $3,400 per year, though many students receive full or partial scholarships, currently funded from a variety of sources.While just seven Music Advancement Program students since 2010 have ended up in Juilliard’s undergraduate program, more have entered other prestigious institutions, including the Manhattan School of Music, Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory. And 61 of the students have gained admission to Juilliard’s prestigious pre-college division.Anthony McGill, the New York Philharmonic’s principal clarinet and the artistic director of the program, said the gift would allow Juilliard to reach students who might have been reluctant to apply because of financial considerations.“We needed to make sure there were no barriers to getting more of the students we want into our program,” McGill said in an interview. “We wanted to open the doors, the pathways, to their success.”The program was founded in 1991 as a way of providing rigorous training for promising young musicians at a time when many New York schools were cutting music education classes. The initiative has at times faced financial difficulties. Juilliard almost suspended it in 2009, citing budget cuts and problems raising money. A group of donors, including Moritz and Heyman, eventually came to the rescue. In 2013, the couple stepped up again, giving $5 million.The program’s expansion comes amid a broader push by artists and cultural institutions to address longstanding inequities in classical music. Weston Sprott, who helps oversee the program as dean of Juilliard’s preparatory division, said being a musician of color was too often a lonely experience, and that ensembles should better reflect the diversity of their communities.“Oftentimes, as musicians of color, the reward that we get for our success is isolation,” Sprott, who is Black, said in an interview. “Classical music can’t be the best it can be without these young people that we’re bringing into our programs.” More

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      San Diego Gets Its Answer to the Hollywood Bowl, Just in Time

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      The dazzling new $85 million Rady Shell was intended as a summer home for the San Diego Symphony. But with the coronavirus still spreading, the orchestra plans to stay through the fall.SAN DIEGO — The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, a billowing white sail of an outdoor concert hall along the San Diego Bay, was planned as this city’s answer to the Hollywood Bowl: an $85 million summertime stage for the San Diego Symphony, a project of such architectural and acoustical distinction that it would distinguish San Diego on any national cultural map.But now, its arrival — it opened with a sold-out gala performance Friday night — has turned out to be welcome for an additional reason. With the stop-and-start coursing of the Covid pandemic, the symphony, finally playing before a full audience again, is planning to extend its stay in its new summer home at least through November. It won’t be returning to its regular venue, the downtown Copley Symphony Hall, for a while.“It was planned before Covid, but became prescient with the timing,” said Martha A. Gilmer, the chief executive of the symphony. “We just decided we’re going to stay outside and do the fall concerts outdoors.”And that it did on Friday, inaugurating this new chapter for the state’s oldest symphony with a burst of orchestral music and a dash of electronica that swelled over its six sound-and-light towers and an opening-night crowd of 3,500. The opening fanfare was commissioned from the composer Mason Bates, and it signaled — loudly and dramatically — the musical and sonic ambitions of the San Diego Symphony and the yearning of this city to move on from the pandemic.It had all the trappings of a big event, a welcome contrast after 15 years in which the symphony’s outdoor offerings relied on temporary stages and portable toilets. The new space was heralded with fireworks, and a six-course dinner with champagne for donors. The night began with a suitably dramatic flair, as the projected image of the orchestra’s music director, Rafael Payare, instantly recognizable to this crowd, filled a scrim raised nearly to the top of the 57-foot-high stage. After a few build-up-the-tension moments, the scrim dropped to reveal Payare and the orchestra, ready to play. That drew the first of many standing ovations.The night began with a projection of Payare, instantly recognizable in silhouette to this crowd, that filled a scrim raised nearly to the top of the 57-foot-high stage. John Francis Peters for The New York Times“In the way that Disney Hall solidified the mission and importance of the L.A. Phil and the cultural life of L.A., I think this new venue will do the same for an orchestra that really is on the ascent,” said Steven Schick, a professor of music at the University of California, San Diego, and the music director of the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus. “Those things do happen with new venues.”There were more suits than masks — though not many of either — as people arrived to celebrate this new addition to the San Diego waterfront. It was a dramatic setting: The skyline of San Diego framed the stage on the right, as the masts of sail boats glided past the audience on the left, some dropping anchor to enjoy the show.The venue can hold up to 10,000 people, but its red seats can be removed, making it flexible.  John Francis Peters for The New York TimesPassing boats formed a nautical backdrop for the new concert venue.John Francis Peters for The New York TimesAt the Hollywood Bowl, Gustavo Dudamel, the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, must sometimes contend with the roar of passing helicopters. Here, Payare’s competition was the put-put-putting of boat engines, the blast of an air horn, and occasional “All Right” shouted from a party boat.The opening fanfare by Bates, “Soundcheck in C Major” — with the composer, 44, sitting in the percussion section, playing an Akai drum machine and two MacBook Pros — was cinematic and bracing. It was composed with this sound system in mind, Bates said in an interview, and written to evoke Wagner, Pink Floyd and Techno beats (he is a D.J. as well as a composer). The whirl of electronic sounds he generated flew out across the audience, ricocheting among the sound-and-light towers.There would be more familiar fare before the night ended — Mozart, Gershwin, Stravinsky. Alisa Weilerstein, an acclaimed cellist who is married to Payare, was the soloist for the Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, the pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet was the soloist on “Rhapsody in Blue,” and Ryan Speedo Green, a bass baritone who is a rising star in the opera world, sang several arias. Gladys Knight (without the Pips) took the stage on Sunday night. But the choice of a new inaugural number was a statement by the San Diego Symphony under Payare, who was appointed in 2019.“It shows that the San Diego Symphony is thinking about the future,” Bates said. “They could have opened this with any number of overtures, the Candide Overture. But the San Diego Symphony wanted to show off the capabilities of their space and also make a statement about new art and new work.”Ryan Speedo Green, a bass baritone with an international opera career, sang several arias. John Francis Peters for The New York TimesConstruction on the Rady Shell began in September 2019, and it was supposed to open the following summer. That date was, of course, delayed by the pandemic, which made Friday night particularly welcome after a difficult 16 months for culture in San Diego. “It was decimated, and I’m not exaggerating — particularly the performing arts,” said Jonathon Glus, the executive director of the city’s Commission on Arts and Culture. “A lot of the organizations are still just quasi-opened. I think it’s going to be another two or three years until we truly find out the fallout.”While there were 3,500 people there Friday night, some seated on the red folding seats and others sprawled on the artificial turf, it has a capacity of up to 10,000 seats. And the seats can be removed: It will be a public park when the symphony is not there.From the beginning, the combination of the new space and the new music director was intended to distinguish San Diego in a state with a roster of strong cultural offerings, from San Francisco to Los Angeles. This city’s classical music scene has long existed under the cultural shadow of Los Angeles and Dudamel, and that was a challenge when Gilmer took over as chief executive in 2014.“There were people who felt they had to get on a train or the 5 to go to L.A. and hear music on a high level,” Gilmer said, referring to the highway that runs from here to downtown Los Angeles. “That has changed. Or we hope that has changed.”Payare, like Dudamel, is a product of El Sistema, Venezuela’s famed music-training system. He played principal horn under Dudamel at the Simón Bolívar Orchestra, and was a member of the Dudamel fellowship program for conductors at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Dudamel was in the audience on Friday.Payare, 41, said that the new venue opened up new opportunities. “It is going to be a change not only for classical music, but for guest artists who will be going through California,” he said.The performers who opened the new venue took their bows: Payare, the conductor; Mason Bates, the composer; Speedo Green, the bass baritone; Jean-Yves Thibaudet, the pianist; and Alisa Weilerstein, the cellist. They received a standing ovation. John Francis Peters for The New York Times“The views, they are fantastic,” he said. “The sound is phenomenal. As an artist, that is what you want.”San Diego has always been popular tourist destination, but visitors are more likely to come here for the beach, the weather and Comic-Con than to see the symphony. But in recent years, a number of philanthropists have stepped in to bolster the city’s cultural offerings and raise its profile.The San Diego Opera almost closed in 2014, after 49 years in operation, but it was revived by a coalition of opera buffs, labor union and community leaders who raised money to transform it and keep it alive. The area has one of the nation’s most prominent regional theaters, the Old Globe. In 2002 the Symphony, which was financially struggling, was saved with a record $100 million gift for its endowment from Irwin Jacobs, the co-founder of Qualcomm, and his wife, Joan. And in 2019 the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center opened as the new home of the La Jolla Music Society.The lead donation to this project — $15 million — came from Ernest and Evelyn Rady, two of San Diego’s most prominent philanthropists. Rady is a billionaire who built his fortune in insurance and real estate.“We have always thought of making this a cultural destination as well as a beach destination and weather destination,” said Jacobs, who, with his wife, donated $11 million toward construction of the venue. “There’s a lot here. We don’t get that story out as well as we should.” More

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      17 New York Arts Organizations Are Among Those Receiving $30 Million

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      The Queens Museum, Harlem Stage and 44 other groups were chosen to receive aid from Bloomberg Philanthropies for digital innovation.The Queens Museum is among 46 cultural nonprofit organizations selected for a new $30 million program by Bloomberg Philanthropies that is intended to support improving technology at the groups and helping them stabilize and thrive in the wake of the pandemic. A Bloomberg Tech Fellow is being appointed at each organization, the philanthropies announced Tuesday.Heryte Tequame, assistant director of communications and digital projects at the museum, was chosen as its fellow in what is known as the Digital Accelerator program and will be in charge of developing a digital project of her choice. In an interview she said that in 2020, the museum “realized where we needed to expand our capacity and invest more.”“I think now we’re really taking the time to see what we can do that has longevity,” Tequame said. “And not just being responsive, but really being proactive and having a real future-facing strategy.”The organizations don’t know exactly how much of the $30 million each will receive yet, but Tequame said she wants to use at least some of it on the museum’s permanent collection.Another recipient, Harlem Stage, selected Deirdre May, senior director of digital content and marketing, as its tech fellow.That performing arts center — which largely focuses on artists of color — aims to use the assistance in part to increase accessibility, Patricia Cruz, its chief executive and artistic director, said in an interview. “People who cannot leave their homes, for example, would be able to see some of the finest artistic performances that could be made,” Cruz said, because “that’s the core of what we do.”The 46 organizations selected for the program include nonprofits in the United States and Britain. Among them are 26 in the United States, and 17 of those are in New York City, including the Apollo Theater, the Ghetto Film School and the Tenement Museum. The chief executive of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Patricia E. Harris, said in a statement that when the pandemic hit, cultural organizations had to get creative to keep their (virtual) doors open.“Now we’re excited to launch the Accelerator program to help more arts organizations sustain innovations and investments,” Harris said, “and strengthen tech and management practices that are key to their long-term success.”As Cruz from Harlem Stage put it, “We’re ready to be accelerated.” More

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      Yale Drama Goes Tuition-Free With $150 Million Gift From David Geffen

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      Starting in August, the drama school plans to eliminate tuition for returning and future students, removing a barrier to entry for low-income students and those worried about debt.The billionaire David Geffen is giving $150 million to Yale School of Drama, allowing one of the nation’s most prestigious programs to stop charging tuition.The graduate school, which enrolls about 200 students in programs that include acting, design, directing and playwriting, announced the gift on Wednesday, and said it would rename itself the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University.Yale said it believes the gift is the largest in the history of American theater.The school said that, starting in August, it would eliminate tuition for all returning and future students in its masters, doctoral and certificate programs. Tuition at the school had been $32,800 per year.The move should remove a barrier to entry for low-income students and those worried about incurring high student debt before entering an often low-paying field.“We know, because people have told us, that there are potential applicants out there who think they could never afford graduate theater training at an Ivy League school,” said James Bundy, the drama school dean. He said he hoped that by going tuition-free, that obstacle would diminish.He also said that he hoped that the move would lessen the impact of student debt on the career choices graduates make.“By reducing the debt burden of the average student, we create more resilient artists and managers who are able to make braver artistic choices — they’re able to take that downtown play and they don’t have to have a career selling real estate on the side,” he said. “Not every artist is going to break through at the age of 25 or 26 or 27. Certain kinds of careers take time to build, and entering the professions with less debt is going to make for more interesting and more resounding choices in the long run.”The drama school is home to the Yale Repertory Theater, and its graduates include Meryl Streep, Lynn Nottage and Lupita Nyong’o.It will become the second program at Yale to eliminate tuition; in 2005 the Yale School of Music did so. There are a handful of other tuition-free graduate programs around the country, including N.Y.U.’s medical school.The university’s president, Peter Salovey, said he hoped more schools would follow, particularly in the areas of nursing and public health, where students tend to graduate with high debt and pursue careers that are not highly lucrative.“In general, what should be happening in higher education is an attempt to reduce the financial burden on individuals and families associated with undergraduate education and graduate and professional education,” Salovey said. “I’d love to do this for other programs as well, but it will take the generosity of donors to make it happen.”Geffen, 78, made his fortune in the music and film businesses, and is currently worth about $10 billion, according to Forbes. He has become a major philanthropist with an interest in the arts, previously giving $150 million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, $100 million to Lincoln Center for the renovation of the concert hall where the New York Philharmonic performs and $100 million to the Museum of Modern Art.Geffen, through a Yale spokeswoman, declined to be interviewed, but Salovey said the Yale gift came about after years of conversations between the university and Geffen’s foundation. Geffen once taught a seminar at Yale, in the late 1970s, about the music industry, and Salovey said that experience had been positive for Geffen; Salovey also said the university had been aware of Geffen’s interest in supporting higher education and the arts, and had looked for projects that might appeal to those interests.Geffen has maintained a variety of connections to theater throughout his career: In the 1980s, he was among the producers of the original Off Broadway production of “Little Shop of Horrors,” and in the 1990s, he gave the founding gift for the Geffen Playhouse, a major theater in Los Angeles. Over the years he has been credited as a producer of nine Broadway shows, from “Dreamgirls” to the upcoming revival of “The Music Man.”Salovey said he hopes in the future that Yale will be able to build a new theater that will also house the drama school; that project would have to be financed through a separate fund-raising effort, he said. More

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      Harvey Fierstein Donates $2.5 Million for Public Library Theater Lab

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      The gift from the writer and performer will help create an educational hub at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.Harvey Fierstein may be a multiple Tony-winning performer and writer. But he is also the son of a librarian, who still sometimes heads to the reading room when he needs to do homework.In 2005, when he was preparing to play Tevye in a revival of “Fiddler on the Roof,” he visited the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center to watch a recording of an earlier Broadway revival featuring Zero Mostel, which is included in its famed Theater on Film and Tape Archive.“And don’t tell anyone, but I’ve also used the library,” he said in an interview, dropping his famous Brooklyn molasses-spiked-with-gravel voice, “for pleasure.”Now, Fierstein has donated $2.5 million to create a new “theater lab” at the library’s Lincoln Center campus, a dedicated educational space where students and the general public will be able to attend programs drawing on its vast holdings of photographs, scripts, recordings, set models, costumes and other materials.“Live theater is live theater — you do it and that’s it,” said Fierstein, 67. “Without a library collecting this stuff, our whole history disappears.”The lab, which will be named for Fierstein, is to be built in what is currently a 770-square-foot office space. In a statement, Jennifer Schantz, the library’s director, said it would be “an incubator of creativity” that embodies “the library’s mission to inspire lifelong learning using the theater division’s unparalleled collections.”The performing arts library holds material from shows Fierstein wrote or performed in, including “Torch Song Trilogy,” “La Cage aux Folles,” “Kinky Boots” and “Hairspray.” But as it happens, his personal papers are elsewhere.In 2005, before a home renovation, Fierstein placed his personal archive at Yale University. “So I needed to also do something for the performing arts library,” he said.In addition to the $2.5 million donation, the library has been named a beneficiary of the Harvey Fierstein Trust, which will allow it to receive additional support in the future.Fierstein said he hoped the lab would help people reimagine what theater can be after the pandemic, which shuttered the entire industry. He recalled how over the years, every time he did a revival of “Torch Song Trilogy,” for which he won his first two Tonys in 1983, he would call the downtown experimental theater La MaMa to ask if he could use their rehearsal space, which he described as a kind of spiritual home.“I would ask, ‘Can I borrow your basement?’” he said. “I thought of it as a kind of womb. That’s what I think of this space as — a womb for something wonderful. You just don’t know what’s going to be born out of it.” More

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      A Soaring Arts Scene in Los Angeles Confronts a Changing Landscape

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      Its cultural institutions, buffeted by the pandemic, will have to recover without the help of Eli Broad, the transformational benefactor who died last month.LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an open construction pit these days, surrounded by 12-foot-high wooden fences, with cranes rising across now open skies. Most of its midcentury modernist complex on Wilshire Boulevard was quietly demolished during the Covid shutdown to make way for a wavy $650 million light-filled building spanning the boulevard and designed by the architect Peter Zumthor.LACMA, as it is known, has long been a cultural anchor for Southern California, extraordinarily popular and as responsible as any institution for helping define the region’s cultural identity. “New Galleries. More Art. Opening 2024,” promises a sign in the courtyard. But the success of its next incarnation is hardly assured as the museum seeks to redefine its mission in a smaller building whose design, if adventurous, is not universally acclaimed.It is not only LACMA that finds itself in a moment of transition. Before the pandemic froze California in a wave of shutdowns and disease, Los Angeles had established itself as a cultural capital with its galaxy of museums, galleries and performing arts institutions, defying dated stereotypes of a superficial Hollywood with little interest in art. It now confronts uncertainty across its cultural landscape.Los Angeles institutions share many of the same challenges that their peers around the world face in trying to recover from the pandemic: bringing back wary audiences, confronting the expense and technical challenges of making their spaces safe, and raising money from philanthropists and government in the face of competing demands in a time of economic struggle. They are in precarious financial condition after a calamitous loss of revenue forced many to lay off staff members and abandon leases on theaters and galleries.But they face the added complications of recovering without the help of many of the old guard philanthropists who helped establish the civic and cultural scene here. That was underlined by the death last month of Eli Broad, 87, a billionaire philanthropist who played an outsized role in creating many of the region’s marquee cultural institutions, among them Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Broad, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and one of the buildings left standing at the LACMA complex.The next chapter for Los Angeles’s arts institutions will unfold without Eli Broad, a philanthropist who transformed the city’s cultural landscape who died last month. He is shown here in 2015 outside the Broad, a museum he financed himself to display his art collection. Kendrick Brinson for The New York TimesThere is cautious optimism that the region will return to its upward trajectory as the virus recedes.“Los Angeles, like New York, is a resilient city full of entrepreneurial creative people who will get back up on the horse,” said Ann Philbin, the director of the Hammer Museum, which was also in the midst of an expansion project in Westwood when the pandemic hit.But in many ways the challenges here are more intense and complex, in no small part because the virus hit at a time when so many things were in flux. The next steps — by cultural institutions, wealthy philanthropists, government and audiences — could well determine whether Covid will have derailed, or merely delayed, the city’s ascendance as a cultural destination.For all its wealth, Los Angeles has always been a challenging fund-raising environment. Michael Govan, the director of LACMA, struggled to raise money to build the Zumthor building. The project turned the corner after David Geffen, 78, an entertainment magnate who has become a major arts benefactor, agreed to donate $150 million.A rendering of the new David Geffen Galleries at Lacma, a wavy, light-filled building being designed by Peter Zumthor.Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner/The BoundaryThe death of Mr. Broad has rattled a Southern California arts world already worried about whether donors will come forward to help at a difficult time. Although he stepped down from public life in 2017, leaving the field to a new generation of benefactors, Mr. Broad had a history of being there at moments of need — getting the Walt Disney Concert Hall project back on track after it stalled in the 1990s, and offering a $30 million bailout for the Museum of Contemporary Art when it was on the verge of collapse in 2008.Mr. Broad was a singular figure in many ways — part billionaire philanthropist, part civic bulldozer — and it’s hardly clear who can (or even should) step in to fill in the gap he left. “It’s a little scary to imagine Los Angeles without Eli Broad,” said Donna Bojarsky, the founder of Future of Cities: Los Angeles, a nonprofit civic group.The pandemic was economically ruinous for many cultural organizations. The Los Angeles Philharmonic slashed its annual budget from $152 million to $77 million. Museums lost millions in revenues. The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills had to lay off 30 people.“It will probably take us 12 months to three years to get back to the same level of operation,” said Rachel Fine, the executive director of the Wallis.In addition to the challenge of philanthropy, the sheer difficulty of getting around this city — one sure sign that the recovery is at hand is that traffic has returned to roads and freeways — has long made it harder for theaters, music halls and galleries looking to draw crowds. The transit system is in the midst of a dramatic expansion, funded by a $120 billion mass transit plan. But it will be many years before it is completed.“It’s a wonderful place to live and it’s a wonderful place to work,” said Deborah Borda, who was the president of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 17 years before becoming president of the New York Philharmonic. “And it’s truly a receptive place for the arts. But if you want be there for a 7:30 concert, you really have to leave at 6. I knew people who used to come but stopped: That would be a reason that they would give.”Los Angeles has long been a cultural magnet, and not just for the creative classes who flocked to Hollywood. It has drawn composers like Stravinsky and Schoenberg, writers like Thomas Mann and Joan Didion, architects like Frank Gehry and artists like David Hockney. It took longer for the city to establish institutions: Mr. Broad, who played a key role in establishing the Museum of Contemporary Art, recalled in a 2019 essay that while Los Angeles had long been home to brilliant artists, great art schools and leading galleries, it had lacked a modern or contemporary art museum when he got there.The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, a $482 million complex designed by Renzo Piano, is scheduled to open this year.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesAnd pandemic or not, the next three years promise to be transformative, with a series of openings of major projects that Los Angeles officials believe will dramatically expand the cultural offerings here.The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, a $482 million complex designed by Renzo Piano next door to LACMA, is scheduled to open by the end of the year. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a sprawling futuristic $1 billion building being financed by George Lucas, is scheduled to open in Exposition Park in 2023.“We are slowly climbing back,” Mr. Govan said. “I think the big institutions will survive. It’s been hard. But I can’t be anything other than optimistic.”Chad Smith, the chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, said that as recently as three weeks ago he was resigned to staging a handful of concerts this season at the Hollywood Bowl, expecting to be able to seat only 4,000 people in the 18,000-seat amphitheater. Now, the Bowl is planning 50 events and is hoping to fill 65 percent of capacity, reflecting the dramatic decline of the virus and the lifting of regulations.This is critical because the Bowl, with its diverse mixture of outdoor programming — from Beethoven to Car Seat Headrest — is a major source of revenue for the Philharmonic.“At this point, we see ourselves coming out of this, with these 40 or 50 concerts at the Bowl,” Mr. Smith said. “Our financial situation will improve. It has to improve. We have been relying entirely on contributions.”The arts scene is animated here not only by big institutions but by an estimated 500 small nonprofit arts organizations. Many were forced to abandon leases on performance or exhibition spaces over the past 14 months, and some are now in danger of fading away.The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a futuristic $1 billion building being financed by George Lucas, is under construction in Exposition Park.Alex Welsh for The New York Times“We see a lot of the arts, especially the performing arts, as being the last to recover,” said Kristin Sakoda, the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture. “We know there is a long road to recovery.”In response, a group of philanthropists has created the L.A. Arts Recovery Fund to help theaters, music halls, museums and galleries survive the transition. “For Los Angeles to regain its prowess as a leader in the arts we need to come together,” William Ahmanson, the president of the Ahmanson Foundation, said in a letter seeking contributions.The Recovery Fund set a goal of $50 million, and has already raised $38.7 million. But even before Covid hit, cultural institutions were struggling to compete for philanthropic dollars, and there is concern that this trend will only continue.“The demand for social services and social justice funding is just ramped up so significantly, somewhat at the expense of performing arts,” said David Bohnett, a philanthropist and member of the board of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “That was already happening. But we are coming out of this learning the value of the performing arts to social service and social justice initiatives.”Still, arts executives are hopeful that a soaring stock market has created a new class of donors. “There is enough to support both social services and the cultural sector, and we just need more people to step forward in civic-mindedness,” Ms. Philbin said.Mr. Geffen, an art collector, said he was hopeful younger people who were getting wealthy and buying art would eventually become donors, though arts professionals said that transition has been slow to happen in Los Angeles. “I would think that young people who are making incredible amounts of money in tech,” he said, “will be generous in the future.”Still, he acknowledged the difficulties LACMA had faced before he wrote his $150 million check. “L.A. deserves a world class museum,” he said. “And it didn’t seem like anyone else was stepping up to the plate.” More