Spotlight On Lincoln Kirstein

This year, Lincoln Kirstein, a man who spent most of his life behind the scenes, will finally get his time in the spotlight.

Few individuals have had a greater influence on the arts in New York City — and therefore in the country as a whole — than Kirstein (1907–1996). Yet Kirstein, whose centennial is being celebrated this year, is hardly a household name. He is much less famous than George Balanchine, with whom he founded the New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet. And his contributions in other fields than dance — to the acceptance of modernism in the fine arts in this country, and of photography as an art form — are even less known. But a raft of events this year, including the publication of the first biography of Kirstein, promise finally to bring him the recognition he deserves.

Today, SAB is officially dedicating its new studios to Kirstein. This Saturday, NYCB will present an evening called "Tribute to Kirstein," which includes two Balanchine classics and a new ballet by Christopher d'Amboise.

NYCB's entire spring season, which begins April 24, is dedicated to Kirstein's centennial. NYCB dancers and SAB students and faculty will perform in a world premiere of a production of "Romeo and Juliet," created in Kirstein's honor by NYCB Ballet Master in Chief and SAB Artistic Director Peter Martins. An exhibition about Kirstein, assembled by former company manager Eddie Bigelow, will be on display in the New York State Theater. And, to honor Kirstein's wish that seats be available at affordable prices, seats in the fourth ring will be reduced to $15 from $30.

In recognition of Kirstein's contribution to the fine arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art is mounting a show, opening April 25, which will focus on three visual artists whom Kirstein supported: the painter Pavel Tchelitchew, the sculptor Elie Nadelman, and the photographer Walker Evans. The wall text will be drawn primarily from Kirstein's own writings about the artists.

Although Kirstein largely worked behind the scenes, he was not what you would call unassuming. To begin with, he was physically imposing, tall and broad-shouldered, with a huge, shaved head. And, from an early age, Kirstein seemed to have known what kind of influence he wanted to wield in the arts.

As a freshman at Harvard, he and his friend Varian Fry, after being rejected from the Advocate, launched their own journal, Hound and Horn. It would go on to publish the early work of writers like Katherine Anne Porter, Allen Tate, Edmund Wilson, E.E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, and James Agee, as well as photographs by Walker Evans, of whom Kirstein would be an important supporter.

Kirstein also, with two friends, John Walker III, the future director of the National Gallery, and Eddie Warburg, started the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, which became a direct precursor to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Opening in February 1929, in a two-room gallery over the Harvard Coop, the group put on groundbreaking exhibitions of modern art. MoMA opened in November, with Alfred Barr Jr., who was a tutor of Kirstein's at Harvard, as its director. Among his first four shows, Barr reproduced two that had originally been mounted by the Society for Contemporary Art. Kirstein was appointed a member of MoMA's prestigious Junior Committee.

Kirstein's greatest legacy, of course, is in the field of dance. Early on, he fell in love with ballet and decided that someone needed to bring it to America. While Americans had seen touring productions of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and other companies, there was no homegrown ballet movement. In 1933, Diaghilev was dead, and his former company had split into two competing ones. Kirstein, then 26, invited Balanchine, one of Diaghilev's star choreographers, to come to America and found an American ballet.

With help from friends like Warburg, and occasionally from Kirstein's father, a partner in Filene's, Kirstein and Balanchine founded the School of American Ballet (1934) and a series of professional companies that eventually led to New York City Ballet.

"Kirstein had the stick-to-it-iveness to persevere," Kirstein's biographer, Martin Duberman, said, "though the odds were terrible and money was always an issue." Kirstein put much of his own money into the company and the school, and late in life, sold art from his collection in order to funnel more money into SAB and NYCB. "He's described often as a rich young man, but he was not rich rich," Mr. Duberman said. "His father kept a tight control over the purse strings. What limited funds Lincoln had, he spent, whether it was in support of the ballet, or helping individual artists — painters and sculptors — to keep them from literal starvation."

Appropriately for a man with such a wide sphere of influence, the activities honoring him this year are happening all over town, largely coordinated by a director emerita at NYCB and the secretary of the board of SAB, Nancy Lassalle. In the fall, Ms. Lassalle will co-curate an exhibition at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; the Library will also present public programs.

Also in the fall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art — to which Kirstein gave many gifts including 60 or 70 photographs by Evans, his collection of Japanese prints, a bronze sculpture of Diana by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and paintings by his brother-in-law Paul Cadmus, including his "Seven Deadly Sins" series — will hold a Saturday afternoon panel discussion, focusing on Kirstein's influence in the dance world and on his writing.

"He was a real pioneer in writing and publishing dance history," a former City Ballet dancer and now the director of research at the George Balanchine Foundation, Nancy Reynolds, said. Kirstein published a short history of dance in 1935. In the early 1940s, he founded and edited a scholarly journal about dance called Dance Index. Ms. Reynolds edited Kirstein's 1970 book, "Movement and Metaphor," which has been republished as "Four Centuries of Ballet."

The exhibition at the Whitney was the inspiration of a guest curator, the photographer Jerry Thompson, who got to know Kirstein through photographing his art collection. Mr. Thompson said it will be "a starting point" rather than the defining statement on Kirstein's influence in the field of visual arts.

Mr. Duberman's biography, "The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein" will be released by Knopf on May 4, which is Kirstein's birthday. The Eakins Press Foundation will release a complete bibliography of Kirstein's published writings in May, as well as, in the fall, a compilation of his program notes for NYCB and its predecessor companies, edited by the president of Alliance for the Arts, Randall Bourscheidt.

"They give you an insight into his relationship to Balanchine and the other choreographers," Mr. Bourscheidt said. "He set the work that they did in its larger cultural context: He talked about the music or the scenic design or the milieu, the historical moment."

Mr. Duberman's biography gives scope to the incredible complexity of Kirstein's life, which included affairs with both men and women. "He was remarkably casual about it, given the times, which were far more deeply homophobic than today," Mr. Duberman said. "He never self-identified as a gay person."

His friends and acquaintances found him both inspiring and difficult. "If he was bored at a dinner party, he'd fall asleep, or just leave," Mr. Duberman said.

"He had a large ego, but not in the sense of talking about his life," Mr. Bourscheidt, who had a 20-year friendship with him, said. "He was not a storyteller, even late in life. He was always looking forward."

Ms. Reynolds said that Jamie Wyeth captured Kirstein's personality in his portrait. The painting shows Kirstein "looking isolated and into the distance, which was very much a stance of his," she said. "He was a visionary, and he was also alone in many ways."