Reimagining Histories, Shaping Futures

At a moment of rapid economic decline and demographic change in Brooklyn, the impresario Harvey Lichtenstein took over the leadership of BAM in 1967. Through a series of ambitious and bold programming choices, which included repertories by the controversial Living Theatre and Manhattan’s Chelsea Theater Center, Lichtenstein worked towards making BAM a destination not only for Manhattanites, but international audiences as well. This narrative is known and rightly celebrated. But how did BAM, during its period of transformation in the latter years of the twentieth century, relate to the Brooklyn neighborhoods surrounding it – particularly their Black communities? Can an honest historical portrait of BAM as inextricably grounded in place help us to think differently about the possibilities for its orientation to its surroundings in the present and the future? From the vantage point of the 2020s, can it help us to reimagine BAM’s role as a cultural touchstone and space of care?

Developed by Anneke Rautenbach during a yearlong NYU-Mellon Public Humanities research fellowship in BAM’s archives, this collection looks to the gaps and edges of BAM’s archive to uncover underrepresented or overlooked voices and moments – points of rupture that push back against its abiding institutional narrative, contrasting moments of connection with moments of tension, conflict and contradiction. By no means a comprehensive account, it is intended as an invitation – a trail of breadcrumbs, so to speak – for further exploration and research.

(This collection draws on a variety of external sources, a list of which can be found here. To inspire and orient the reader, an annotated bibliography of theoretical approaches to the archive can be found here).