Performing Arts: Brooklyn Academy of Music Receives $1 Million Grant To Build Online Digital Archive

From Gallerist NYC:

The Brooklyn Academy of Music, which is in the midst of celebrating its 150th anniversary, just announced that it got another feather in its cap. It received a four-year grant of $1 million from the Leon Levy Foundation to create a new digital archive to launch in May 2015.

More From the Official Announcement (PDF)

The Leon Levy BAM Digital Archive will make materials from the BAM Hamm Archives widely available via a searchable online portal to a comprehensive selection of its catalog and digital assets, permanently hosted on BAM.org and scheduled for launch in spring 2015. “Not only will the Leon Levy BAM Digital Archive enable us to showcase BAM’s amazing collection in a more far-reaching way than ever before,” says BAM Hamm Archives Director Sharon Lehner. “But it will also allow us to share our newfound expertise with a growing community of performing arts archives in the process of building their own digital collections, thereby making a meaningful contribution to this emerging field.”
The BAM Hamm Archives documents the history of the oldest performing arts center in the US through materials and artifacts chronicling the artists, works, and cultural movements that define contemporary performance. The collection, containing approximately 3,000 feet of materials dating from 1856 to the present, is an important record of the contemporary performing arts and the borough of Brooklyn. In addition, BAM’s comprehensive institutional files—including the papers of BAM’s President Emeritus Harvey Lichtenstein, who led the institution from 1967 to 1999—document BAM’s continued cultural importance. BAM was unable to establish a formal archives until 1995; years of improper storage and fluctuating environmental conditions led to the deterioration of some rare materials. But, over the course of the past three years, and thanks to the support of the Leon Levy Foundation, BAM has been able to preserve and expand its collection, as well as make its holdings more accessible to researchers and the general public.

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