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When David Binder was asked
to apply for the position of artis-
tic director at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music—a sprawling,
three-theater arts complex with
annual revenue of $50 million—he
didn’t think he had a shot. “Who
wouldn’t want it?” he says. But
unlike colleagues up for the job,
Binder hadn’t spent decades work-
ing in an arts institution.
Instead he’d worked as a pro-
ducer of Broadway hits including
Hedwig and the Angry Inch, orga-
nized the High Line festival (with David Bowie as curator), and
guest-directed the London International Festival of Theatre.
But for a 158-year-old institution with 700,000 annual visi-
tors and 260 employees, a fresh perspective was crucial. BAM
is in the middle of an ambitious expansion, adding a visual arts
space and updating its theaters, as it competes in an increas-
ingly crowded field for New Yorkers’ time and money. The
Shed, a $475 million multidisciplinary exhibition-performance
space, opened at Hudson Yards this year, and the lionlike
Lincoln Center—with its world-class venues for theater, dance,
music, and opera—continues to be the city’s standard-bearer.
So when Binder’s appointment was announced in February
2018, he was put in the position of charting a new, and every-
one hoped unique, direction for BAM’s artistic future.
“To do this job, you have to have enormous cultural curios-
ity across just about every discipline,” says Katy Clark, BAM’s
president. “One of the things that stood out about David was
his ability to go across genres and be open-minded.” His assign-
ment: Hew to the institution’s original mission to be the home
“for adventurous artists, audiences, and ideas,” all while bring-
ing stars and fresh talent to a local and international audience.
Binder started 18 months ago on a part-time basis, shadow-
ing outgoing executive producer Joseph Melillo, who’d been
there for 35 years. When BAM’s fall season kicks off on Oct. 15
with the Next Wave festival, Brooklynites, and anyone else,
will get to see Binder’s vision in action. “I always want to find
the widest audience for my work,” he says. The strategy is
simple: variety. At Next Wave—co-sponsored by Bloomberg
Philanthropies—Irish choreographer Michael Keegan-DolanTHE ARTS Bloomberg Pursuits October 7, 2019will present his acclaimed 2016
interpretation ofSwan Lake, an
ebullient production that draws
on Irish folklore; a month later
the festival will premiere a theat-
rical version ofThe End of Eddy, a
coming-of-age novel by Edouard
Louis that scandalized France with
its tales of poverty, homophobia,
and bullying.
What that audience looks like,
or should look like, is a trickier
question. BAM’s mission priori-
tizes “engaging both global and
local communities.” But even as it pursues diverse patrons
with subsidized ticket sales, increased accessibility, and out-
reach programs, the surrounding community has gentrified.
Thirty years ago, Downtown Brooklyn and Fort Greene,
BAM’s neighborhood, were predominantly low-income. (The
latter was the backdrop of the 1986 Spike Lee filmShe’s Gotta
Have It.) But in the past decade, in tandem with the Brooklyn
Cultural District development project, luxury condominiums
and rentals have sprung up around BAM’s campus. One new
building in Fort Greene, 475 Clermont, has two-bedroom
apartments that ask $5,995 a month; 230 Ashland, which
will soon house the BAM Strong exhibition space, has a two-
bedroom condominium listed at $1.4 million. “Of course it’s
great to welcome new, affluent people to Brooklyn,” Clark
says. “But that doesn’t change our aspiration to be a place
for everyone.”
Binder’s solution is to present “the most exciting, adven-
turous artists who leave an impression on us long after we’ve
experienced their work and who make us experience the world
differently,” he says. That could involve Simon Stone’s con-
temporary rewrite of Euripides’Medea, or a film series that
explores contemporary Arab cinema, both of which might
appeal to those who’d initially come to BAM for, say, Madonna’s
Madame Xtour, which runs through Oct. 12. “Hopefully, if
you’re a theater person, you end up coming to see dance. Or
maybe you’re a dance person, and you end up seeing film.
“We can speak to a lot of different audiences,” Binder adds.
The trick is to get “different communities to be in the same
room for the same things.” <BW>David Binder wants to awaken new audiences to a
158-year-old outer-borough cultural institution. By James Tarmy
Photograph by Alec KuglerWhen the Stage Is Brooklyn
Binder outside BAM