Lincoln Center Turns to Broadway for Its Next Chief

By ROBIN POGREBIN

Published: May 15, 2013

In a sign that the country’s largest nonprofit performing arts center may be taking a page from the world of commercial theater, Lincoln Center has chosen a Broadway producer as its next leader.

Richard Perry/The New York Times

Jed Bernstein.

Jed Bernstein, who for more than a decade led the Broadway League, the industry’s national trade association, and has produced Broadway shows himself, was named on Wednesday as the successor to Reynold Levy, who isstepping down in January after 11 years as Lincoln Center’s president. Mr. Bernstein has raised money from investors for theatrical productions, but this will be his first time leading a nonprofit arts organization, where courting donors is perhaps the most important part of the job. Lincoln Center must raise nearly half its $118 million budget every year.

“He really understands the arts,” Katherine Farley, Lincoln Center’s chairwoman, said of Mr. Bernstein in an interview on Tuesday. In particular, now that the $1.2 billion campus overhaul is complete, Ms. Farley said his entrepreneurial skills would help the center tackle its future priorities: renovating Avery Fisher Hall, home to the New York Philharmonic, and developing new audiences, education programs and its digital presence.

Mr. Bernstein said he was not daunted by the prospect of having to raise large sums, or the need to solicit donations from the prominent New Yorkers who give to Lincoln Center. “I’ve been asking for money for a long time,” he said.

His experience includes pitching costly ad campaigns, and he said that fund-raising doesn’t get much harder than asking people to put money in shows when “you know and they know that four out of five times, they’re never going to get it back.”

Lincoln Center, striving to continue Mr. Levy’s efforts to develop other sources of money in a period of declining government and corporate support for the arts, was clearly attracted to Mr. Bernstein’s background in business and marketing. While at the Broadway League, from 1995 to 2006, Mr. Bernstein established corporate sponsorship programs like making Continental Airlines (now United) the official airline of Broadway and Visa Broadway’s preferred card. He also led the development of the Internet Broadway Database, the theatrical industry information resource; Kids’ Night on Broadway and televised editions of “Broadway Under the Stars” and “Broadway on Broadway.”

During the last seven years Mr. Bernstein, 58, has co-produced Broadway projects, including the Tony-winning revival of “Hair”; “Driving Miss Daisy” with Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones; “Equus” with Daniel Radcliffe; and “Oleanna” with Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles.

With the Bridge Street Foundation, he also re-established and renovated the Bucks County Playhouse as a stage for live theater, which will present the world premiere of a play by Terrence McNally starring Tyne Daly in June.

With an M.B.A. from the Yale School of Management, Mr. Bernstein started his career in advertising — working for more than 15 years at Ogilvy & Mather, Ally & Gargano and Wells Rich Greene, where he helped create campaigns for corporate clients like American Express, I.B.M., Seagram’s and the New York Stock Exchange.

In his new role, Mr. Bernstein’s biggest challenge may be the renovation of Avery Fisher Hall, which will involve relocating the Philharmonic during construction, redesigning a hall that has been criticized for its acoustics and raising a significant amount of money — a total that Ms. Farley said has yet to be determined, but “is not trivial.” Past estimates have put the project’s cost at more than $300 million.

“Avery Fisher is the last big piece,” Mr. Bernstein said, “not only the mountain that has to be climbed financially, but what is everybody’s hope and dream about that? What do concert halls mean in the twenty-teens? And we need to not muff it.”

Lincoln Center has also charged Mr. Bernstein with building new audiences and continuing to change historical perceptions of the institution as intimidating or elitist — part of what the physical transformation was meant to address by opening up the campus and making it more transparent.

Mr. Bernstein, who will start spending time at Lincoln Center in September and takes over in late January, had some important champions, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

When Mr. Bernstein was at the league, he worked closely with the mayor to end a musicians strike. And Mr. Bernstein and his brother, Doug, were the architects of the mayor’s performance in the annual Inner Circle show.

“He’s got a track record of knowing all sides of the theatrical community — artists, audiences, producers, staff, crew and everyone in between,” the mayor said in a statement. “And he and his brother, Doug, are the only two people that have ever gotten me to wear a Spider-Man costume and silver disco platform boots.”

Still, Mr. Bernstein will have big shoes to fill. Mr. Levy was known as a master fund-raiser, increasing the number of galas to as many as 10 a year, from two. Mr. Levy also helped balance budgets with projects like Fashion Week, a new studio for Channel 13, new restaurants, a publishing imprint and a new performing arts consulting business — with China as the first client.

For his part, Mr. Bernstein said he was excited to work at a place that has long been part of his life.

Raised on the Upper West Side, Mr. Bernstein said he was taken as a 6-year-old to the Metropolitan Opera to see Leontyne Price in “Aida.”

“It was a transformational moment,” he said. “It was a time in New York when middle-class people did that.”

To some extent, Mr. Bernstein said he would like to return Lincoln Center to that role, as a place where just about anyone would come to see Tiler Peck dance or Nathan Gunn sing.

“We need to be approachable,” Mr. Bernstein said. “There should be nothing ivory tower about it — except the stone.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 15, 2013

An earlier version of this article, using information from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s press office, misidentified the color of the boots Mr. Bloomberg wore at an Inner Circle show. They were silver, not gold.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 15, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the month in which Reynold Levy, the current president of Lincoln Center, is stepping down. It is January, not December.