Library for the Performing Arts Receives $60M Donation, the Largest in its History

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center has received a historic $60 million gift that will expand public access to its 15 million item archive dedicated to dance, theater, and music—one of the world’s largest such collections. The donation is the biggest ever to the research library.

The anonymous donor recognized the urgent need to preserve and expand access to the immense cultural heritage within the archives of the Library for the Performing Arts. While the Library has always offered free in-person access to these resources, digitization expands access to a global audience.

This historic gift will do this by kicking off a large-scale digitization, preservation, and cataloging project enabling its treasures to be easily accessed by anyone, anywhere, anytime. It will support a strengthened and modern digital infrastructure with online access to make rare documents, films, and manuscripts accessible. The updated digital infrastructure will further serve as a foundation for expanded digitization across NYPL’s  research centers. 

“LPA is a place where actors and dancers go to prepare for roles by watching footage of the greats that came before them, where choreographers, directors, composers, and other artists go for inspiration. It’s exciting to recognize what far-reaching impact the digitization project will have, both by preserving these valuable materials for future generations and by making them accessible to anyone anywhere around the world,” said the anonymous donor.

“The New York Public Library and our patrons are profoundly grateful for this extraordinary gift. As our donor knows, generosity is contagious and a monumental act of philanthropy like this paves the way for other visionaries to also invest in advancing democracy. Our joint goal is to ensure the public has access to the most important and inspiring art and artifacts of all time, no matter where they live,” said Anthony W. Marx, President and CEO of The New York Public Library.

In conjunction with expanding public access, a top priority of the donor and NYPL is the preservation of fragile physical collection formats in immediate danger of permanent decay, and to offer the public access to collection items that have remained unseen for decades due to their fragile condition.

The initiative will immediately target:

Decaying still photography archives: Millions of historic cellulose acetate negatives, glass plates, and color slides currently recorded only on deteriorating film materials. 

Among them: The White Studio archive, a photography studio that captured over 85% of Broadway’s productions in the early 20th century and pioneering a new technique for a faster and less smoky technology for flash photography.

At-risk audio and moving image holdings: Tens of thousands of rare recordings on fragile lacquer discs and wax cylinders; hundreds of thousands  grooved media – the original analogue – items; and also specialized archives of original oral dance histories and dance and theater performances filmed by the Library for the Performing Arts beginning in 1970.

Among them: Unreleased test pressings from major jazz and pop icons like Dave Brubeck, Chet Baker, and Louis Armstrong—a significant portion of which have not been published. 

Rare manuscripts, prompt books, and 3D Objects: Millions of pages of historic texts, thousands of unpublished prompt books, 325,000 boxes of archival records, and unique 3D items, including original set models for Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, Into the Woods, and Sunday in the Park with George.