The Alchemist at Lincoln Center
Lincoln Kirstein, The Alchemist
By Marian Horosko
First Orpheus, 1946 with Maria Tallchief and Nicholas Magallanes // Photo: George Platt Lynes.
“The Alchemist” exhibition, at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, focuses on five dance companies that Lincoln Kirstein helped found, several with George Balanchine: The School of American Ballet (1934), American Ballet (1935), Ballet Caravan (1936-41), Ballet Society (1946), and New York City Ballet (1948). He was also a contributor to the dance collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center through his enormous gifts of rare books, prints, designs and more than three thousand items known as the Lincoln Kirstein Collection.
Co-curators, Nancy Lassalle and Madeleine Nichols, with Michelle Potter, curator of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, have done a magnificent job of displaying Kirstein’s alchemy though prints, photos, film, costume and set designs, as well as contributions from the Billy Rose Theatre Division and additional material from private collections. The exhibit remains through January and is free to the public.
Be sure to visit the libraries throughout the United States that preserve large dance collections. They are: Harvard Theater Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Library of Congress, James Madison Memorial Building, Washington, D.C., Harry Ramson Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, San Francisco Performing Arts Library, 401 Van Ness, San Francisco, California, The Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois, National Museum of Dance and Hall of Fame, Saratoga Springs, New York.