NY Performing Arts Library Awarded $1-Million Grant

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has awarded a two-year, $1 million grant to The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to support the preservation of performing arts works and related oral histories through the audio and visual documentation of jazz, contemporary dance, and theater performances by artists or organizations previously funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; the creation of aural and video histories involving Foundation-supported artists and organizations; and the preservation of recently acquired, fragile, and deteriorating archival material related to the life and work of Martha Graham.

The grant, which commences on February 1, 2008 and continues until January 31, 2010, will enable the Library to record approximately 25 live jazz, contemporary dance, and theater performances by artists or organizations, and conduct and record approximately 45 oral histories with notable performing arts personalities responsible for or related to those performances. Additionally, the Library will preserve 70 hours of oral histories related to the life and work of dancer/choreographer Martha Graham. These tapes, which are already housed at the Library, are in extremely fragile and deteriorating condition. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center is on the Lincoln Center campus at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza.

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts houses the world's most extensive combination of circulating, reference, and rare archival collections in its field. Its divisions are the Circulating Collections, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, Music Division, Billy Rose Theatre Division, and the Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound. The materials in its collections are available free of charge, along with a wide range of special programs, including exhibitions, seminars, and performances. An essential resource for everyone with an interest in the arts - whether professional or amateur - the Library is known particularly for its prodigious collections of non-book materials such as historic recordings, videotapes, autograph manuscripts, correspondence, sheet music, stage designs, press clippings, programs, posters, and photographs. www.nypl.org