“We very much came with an agenda, which was we were going to tell a different kind of story about Lincoln Center,” said the Manhattan cultural institution’s President and CEO, Henry Timms, “to fundamentally shift the institution in terms of who leads it, who represents it, who’s on our staff, who’s on our stages, who’s in our audiences.”
Lincoln Center’s efforts to expand and diversify who’s in those audiences are highlighted in a new profile of Timms in the New York Times. Through a yearslong partnership and landmark grants, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) has been proud to support Lincoln Center’s work to expand its welcome to its New York neighbors and visitors from around the world while reimagining what public space can do. This endeavor involves both physical transformations of the space to open up access and programming that creates a sense of belonging for all.
SNF has supported Summer for the City, a popular series of free events that recently wrapped up, as well as the Legacies of San Juan Hill project, which shares stories of the vibrant neighborhood Lincoln Center supplanted. The SNF-LC Agora Initiative formed an ongoing link with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) in Athens to promote global cross-cultural exchange.
Timms, head of Lincoln Center since 2019, spoke at SNF Nostos, the Foundation’s signature summer event, in 2019 and 2022.