Brooklyn Academy of Music Puts 70,000 Archive Materials Online

Arts | Archives | Digital Humanities

By JOSHUA BARONEJUNE 20, 2017 

The musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson in another archival image, from the production “Empty Places” during the Next Wave Festival in 1989. Credit Linda Alaniz/Martha Swope Associates

Merce Cunningham onstage, with the composer John Cage to the right, in “How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run” in 1970. The image is part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s new digital archives. Credit James Klosty 

 

More than 70,000 playbills, posters and ephemera from the history of the Brooklyn Academy of Music — from as far back as the Civil War era — are now available through the Leon Levy BAM Digital Archive, which opened to the public on Tuesday.

The archive has been in development for several years, paid for by a $1 million grant from the Leon Levy Foundation, the same organization that funded the New York Philharmonic’s digital collection.

 

 

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Do We Really Need Libraries? | New York NOW

Bedford Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library — a gift from Andrew Carnegie, 1905.

New York Public Library

Originally published on May 5, 2015 2:02 pm

In New York City, supporters of public libraries say that respect for — and repair of — the libraries is long, well, overdue.



A new campaign, Invest in Libraries,
puts forth that in the past 10 years, the city government has reduced
funding for public libraries by nearly 20 percent and 1,000 workers or
so have been trimmed from the payroll. The campaign calls on the city to
increase its support in various ways, such as restoring $65 million in
operating funds.



The New York Times reports
that "the city's three public library systems — the New York Public
Library, the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Library — are
seeking $1.4 billion in city funds over the next decade to bring all 217
public library branches up to modern building standards."

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