International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts

Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle

Theatre Exhibitions and Their Audience -Facts and Findings

Richard M. Buck (New York)

17. Internationaler SIBMAS-Kongreß / 17ème Congrès International de la SIBMAS / 17th International SIBMAS Congress, 1.-9. September 1988, Mannheim

Bericht / Actes / Documentation. Red.: Liselotte Homering. Mannheim : Städtisches Reiß-Museum, 1990. pp. 90-92

I have been involved in the preparation of 14 exhibitions at The New York Public Library at Lincoln Center during the past 23 years. I curated or co-curated 8 of these. Theatre has been the subject of nearly all of the exhibitions and because of the nature of my interests, most of these have been on 20th century theatre. Some of the topics covered will give you an idea of the wide range of the exhibitions: retrospective exhibits on Richard Rogers and of the Hammerstein "dynasty" (Oscar I through his grandson, Oscar II); the life and career of producer Leland Hayward; the theatre work of artists Boris Chaliapin and Reginald Marsh; the original scenic and costume designs of Boris Anisfeldt and Rouben Ter-Arutunian; the history of the legacy of the fabled Caffe Cino and an epic exhibition on the historic commercial theatres of Broadway, a show which made several kinds of exhibition history.

The Performing Arts Research Center at The New York Public Library at Lincoln Center has the wonderful capability to mount exhibitions from the materials in its own collections of all subjects and types of material in the performing arts, and to augment these from time to time with retrospective shows on the work of one designer or artist, usually one whose collection we hope to obtain. Our philosophy is to illustrate, edify, educate and create atmosphere and enjoyment to the fullest extent possible. Of course, not all exhibitions have succeeded with all audiences equally. Basically we do not have to plan an exhibition program for the research audiences since they have access to all of the collections in the Performing Arts Research Center. Therefore, we can, when we wish, think of a general public interested in the performing arts in only a peripheral way and plan exhibitions that appeal to a wide audience - as it were, be an instrument of mass communication.

Others who have curated exhibitions from materials in the Library's collections, and even from borrowed materials, have tried more to "educate" with little emphasis on the other aspects; I have usually tried to lean more to the atmospheric and entertainment emphasis. Over the years, all of us who work on the exhibition program have learned several lessons in regard to the relationship of exhibitions to the audience.

First, the most successful exhibitions - the ones that arouse the most media excitement and therefore generate the most public awareness - are those with considerable visual content combined with a sense of nostalgia. Since my exhibitions have all concentrated on the 20th century, nostalgia has usually been at a very high level.

Secondly, the audiences that come to our exhibitions are mainly from New York; many of them are of an age to relate directly to the items that are displayed. For example, the viewers are amazed and delighted to see programs, photographs, posters, and other memorabilia from productions that they attended years earlier. They marvel at letters, scrapbooks, contracts and other original material written, prepared and signed by legendary performing artists or creators of the past.

Third, the imaginative display and design of the exhibitions, around a theme or subject, often creates a great deal of interest and educates the audience in an osmotic way - presenting the material in a manner that expresses a point of view or makes a statement without being overwhelmingly obvious about it.

To illustrate these points, I will tell you about three exhibitions on which I worked that were among the most successful from the audience point of view that we have ever mounted. In 1984, I curated an exhibition entitled, Places Please: Broadway's Historic Theatres, in collaboration with the New York City organization known as "Save the Theatres", which was formed after the untimely demolition of the Helen Hayes and the Morosco theatres to make way for the fortress-like bulk of the Marriot Marquis Hotel on Times Square. The Library agreed to do the exhibition under one basic understanding: we would illustrate the history of the present commercial theatre district of Manhattan, through the stories of the theatre buildings themselves, as fact and fact only; the presentation would include famous theatres that had been demolished over the years, that had been converted into movie theatres or discotheques, and that were still in use as legitimate theatres. We would not make a statement anywhere in the show in a caption or a comment that the remaining theatres should be landmarked or otherwise "saved". The result of weeks of research and long agonizing over choices among the great richness of material, was a very large show depicting the great theatrical tradition of the commercial houses of New York City as illustrated through the history of some 57 of these theatres. We used 95 30 x 40" panels of photographs, programs and original material. All the houses except one or two of the converted 42nd Street movie houses had at least one panel; some, such as the Palace and the great beaux arts Center of Carrere and Hastings, had four. There were also special wallcase sections on opening performances in and dedications of theatre buildings which included the contents of the cornerstone of the Ziegfield Theatre (designed by Joseph Urban and since replaced by a nondescript skyscraper), and a visual history of the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award. The exhibition spoke for itself. There was considerable publicity and a very positive audience response from a wide variety of visitors. The idea that the great heritage of the Broadway commercial theatre should continue was quite evident from the content of the show alone - and subliminally we were saying that so much had been lost already that surely no more should be. "Save the Theatres" did use the show in their efforts to achieve landmark status for the Broadway theatres, but our exhibition was educative, informative and wildly nostalgic without being overtly political. I have copies to distribute of my introductory statement for the exhibition and of the rather amusing and illuminating "What's in a Name?" chart that indicates the changes of name through the years of all of the 57 theatre buildings included in the exhibition.

My most enjoyable, challenging, daring and ultimately rewarding curatorial effort so far was called The Caffe Cino and its Legacy, an exhibition that attempted to recreate the actual atmosphere of that cafe on Cornelia Street in New York City in which Joe Cino began the cafe theatre movement that later became the rage of Paris and other continental cities and still lives in the tradition of Ellen Stewart's La Mama. Since the Vincent Astor Gallery at the Library is roughly the same shape as the Cino, and we had available much material that had been saved from the cafe, we were able to recreate the famous collage wall behind the espresso machine (we borrowed an old espresso machine that was almost exactly the same as the one in the Cino in the 1960s), and also to recreate the basic shape and size of the stage, upon which we placed mannequins dressed in costumes from some of the most famous Cino productions, including the original Dames at Sea. We had many of the Cino "alumni" as contributors, lenders, and ad-hoc advisors on the show, as well as a built-in audience. This authenticity brought memories and sometimes tears to those who had been part of the audience during the Cino years, amazed and educated those who had not been there, and delighted everyone. I feel that it was the most successfully designed and executed exhibit that I have ever worked on. The evocation of an era of great theatrical vitality was as complete as it could ever be. The catalog was very like the Cino - very simple, a labor of love and very informative.

Recently, I served as co-curator, or actually initiator, of Epics and Icons of the Silent Film Era, which turned out to be one of the most widely publicized and generally well-received exhibitions that we have ever done at the Library. Because the curator, Barbara Cohen-Stratyner, developed an historical and visual concept, bringing the icon of the female "goddess" and the epic of the biblically based spectacle together toward a culmination in Griffith's towering Intolerance, and along the way illustrating the Library's wide range of film resource materials, both educating and delighting all manner of people, she was able to intrigue and entrance both serious film students and the casual visitor who had never thought much about the themes and purposes of the brilliant creators of the great master-works of the silent cinema.

The audiences for all of our exhibitions are drawn by notices and hopefully reviews in the media; the major piece on Epics and Icons by John Gross in the Sunday New York Times Arts and Leisure section aroused interest in the exhibition in all parts of the US. Many visitors to our galleries simply walk in because they happen to be in the Library building. Since we have no method to have posters or banners outside of the building to entice visitors to the exhibitions, we rely on posters that are designed especially for each show by our in-house museum staff. These are placed strategically inside entrances of the building and on display spaces on the different floors of the Library. Since there are three distinct gallery spaces on two floors quite far from the front entrance to the building on Lincoln Center Plaza, the posters are needed for both locational and content information. The Plaza entrance is also sometimes used as a mini-gallery for small shows, bringing our available spaces to four. Three or four shows a year are done in the larger spaces, but the Performing Arts Research Center is responsible for only the contents of the Vincent Astor Gallery.

For several of our recent exhibitions there, we have used video and audio tape selections to add another dimension. These tapes have all been very successful with audiences, so much so in fact, that many of the visitors to the gallery watch only the videotape over and over and look at little else in the exhibition, probably an example of Heiner Treinen's above mentioned 'active dozing' or 'cultural window shopping'.

To stimulate further audience involvement, we have added a series of lectures/discussIons to several of the exhibitions. This works very well when we are able to engage appropriate speakers or specialists in the field. It was most successful with theCaffe Cino Legacy and Epics and Icons, because the topics of both lent themselves so well to participatory and/or educative sessions, and in the latter case the use of film clips was a most useful and popular further dimension. We had very large audiences for the Cino and the Epics and Icons series. For the Cino, the playwrights, actors, directors and designers who spoke recreated something very special for those who had been "there" and for those who knew the Cino only through the exhibition. My most memorable moment from all exhibit experiences is that evening during the discussion period after a Caffe Cino panel when a very young female audience member shyly spoke up and said that she was new in New York from the midwest, and that a few days earlier she had wandered into the gallery, having lost her way in the Library, and found it to be the warmest, friendliest most wonderful spot that she had found in New York, and how terrible it was that the real Caffe Cino was gone, because she just knew that it would have been a most wonderful place to be in a strange, new city. There was hardly a dry eye in the house, and we knew that we had succeeded in what we were trying to recreate in the Cino exhibition.

In sum, I feel that we have found successful ways to create unusual displays that involve an educative process through nostalgia and discovery of the new - and that often evoke an interest from the media that draws the appropriate interested audience into our galleries.

17th Congress

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