Join us for a rare evening with Harvey Lichtenstein, a leader in the New York arts community for fifty years. During his long tenure as the executive director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lichtenstein cultivated such talents as Merce Cunningham, Twyla Tharp, and Philip Glass, and helped cement Brooklyn’s status as an indispensable laboratory for the arts.

Harvey Lichtenstein was born in Brooklyn, in 1929, and is a graduate of Brooklyn College. He studied dance with Sophie Maslow and Martha Graham and performed with them before turning to arts management, in 1954, as a Ford Foundation administrative intern at the New York City Ballet. In the 1960s, he went on to develop subscription audiences at both the ballet company and the New York City Opera. During his tenure at BAM, from 1967 to 1999, he expanded it into a major New York City venue, supporting the work of Merce Cunningham, Twyla Tharp, Eliot Feld, Bill T. Jones, and Pina Bausch. He also brought landmark productions to BAM, such as Peter Brook's epic stage version of the Mahabharata. In 1999 President Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts. After retiring, Lichtenstein became director of the BAM Local Development Corporation, a multimillion-dollar project to create a new cultural district in the area surrounding BAM. John Rockwell, writing in the New York Times, described Lichtenstein as "the most innovative and influential performing arts administrator New York has known." - See more at: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/News,-Events,-Public-Programs/Calendar/Detail?id=20759#sthash.dOidDdEY.dpuf

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