If music can calm the savage breast, Emanuel Ax may have been just what the doctor ordered. Around noon last Wednesday, in a 10th floor aerie above West 65th Street overlooking the sprawling campus of Lincoln Center, about 100 guests nibbled on dainty sandwiches and sipped white wine while listening to Ax perform a Schubert Impromptu and Liszt's Petrarch Sonnet.
But it was hard to stay focused on the music with so many people nervously checking their BlackBerrys for updates on Wall Street's hellish week of manic-depression.
The luncheon, where dozens of culture reporters from around the world mingled with Lincoln Center administrators, was held to announce plans for a year-long series of events commemorating the institution's 50th anniversary, which kicks off in May. With the way this city was roiled last week, May seems like a lifetime away.
Which is partly why, when it came time for Lincoln Center chairman Frank Bennack to offer his thanks to Ax, he noted, in language as tortured as the economy, "I think most of us, not only in this city but in this country, have not lived through a more frightening or tumultuous week. I couldn't help but think how important what artists and culture bring to our lives at times like this, maybe more than ever, and the comfort, the tranquillity, that comes from appreciation of, and from being participants in, the arts."
Earlier in the week, about a mile south, as television satellite trucks lined Seventh Avenue with their cameras trained on the Lehman Brothers worldwide HQ, limousine drivers admitted they didn't know how they were going to make up the loss of a deep-pocketed, dependable client. Delis and steak houses in the area enjoyed a brief surge of business from the TV crews and tourists coming to poke at the embers of Wall Street's sudden combustion, before falling silent.
On Wednesday, the principal of an exclusive downtown school reached out to parents in an unprecedented e-mail noting that, if their financial situations had recently suffered a downturn, they should feel comfortable getting in touch to discuss options for their $30,000 tuition payments.
This is a city gripped by panic, and not just down on Wall Street. Last Friday, Crain's newspaper reported that traffic at some liquor and wine stores had shot up. Therapists are saying they're sensing widespread shell-shock that reminds them of the days after Sept. 11.
Bennack and those in the patron's circle may insist art is necessary to help people through uncertain times, but the city's culture sector, which depends on the largesse of the very people and institutions that are reeling, is holding its breath.
Last week, the Jewish Museum opened a highly anticipated exhibition on the Dead Sea Scrolls; but after the show's sponsor AIG received an $85-billion lifeline, it's hard to imagine the company backing any such shows in the near future. Lehman Brothers is a member of Lincoln Center's 50th anniversary "corporate council," which is helping to raise $6-million for the celebration. And the firm's philanthropic foundation, which annually supported more than 100 educational and cultural programs, had pledged $5-million over five years to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center, a pledge which now seems unlikely to be fulfilled.
A round of phone calls to some of the major museums and other cultural institutions last week met with stony silence. "Things are very much in flux," responded one museum publicist, "and it is far too soon to tell what any impact will be."
"I think it's very scary times," said Holly Hotchner, the director of the Museum of Arts and Design, which this Saturday will open its resplendent new headquarters on Columbus Circle. MAD has another $8-million to go before its $113-million capital campaign is complete, but Hotchner is confident it will meet its goal. "We have irons in the fire. Don't forget, the kinds of people who have money to give, a lot of their money is in their foundations already. But I can tell you, I would not want to be starting a campaign, I would not want to be in the middle of a campaign right now."
Reynold Levy, the president of Lincoln Center, said he'd been inundated with phone calls from the press - seven different reporters from the New York Times alone - about the state of the city's cultural philanthropy. He insisted there's no need for panic. (But then, he needs to be optimistic: Lincoln Center is only about halfway through the fundraising for its $1.4-billion restoration.) He pointed to the book he'd just written, a guide to philanthropy called, smartly, Yours for the Asking.
"The book suggests that philanthropy is very elastic," he said. "We have untold levels of affluence in this country: The Dow Jones closed at 11,100 yesterday; it was 2900 when Clinton was inaugurated; the Nasdaq has tripled; the S&P has gone up 300 per cent, commodity prices have shot up; gold is now at $800 an ounce. A lot of people made a lot of money, and saved it.
"Most people who give significant assets, they don't give them from their incomes, they give them from their assets. Those assets are there, and they're unaffected, by and large, by a Lehman bankruptcy. So I have no doubt there'll be a setback, and I have no doubt fundraising will be somewhat tougher, but I don't think it will be nearly as significant as the headlines suggest."
Okay, so everything's going to be fine. But there's one thing that I can't get out of my mind: The deputy director of one mid-sized museum told me last week that he'd just heard from a board member who was on his way to his Lehman money manager to discuss his holdings. The board member said he'd call him back, but so far there had been no news.
For years, New York's creative community has been in despair over the skyrocketing costs of real estate and the culture of privilege among the city's wealthy. They've prayed for a shakeout that would wipe the sneers off the faces of all those obnoxious investment bankers and hedge funders.
The artists may get what they wished for. And an awful lot that they didn't.
Simon Houpt