New Arts Center Opens At Brown University With Jon Batiste-Led Parade This October

Brown University will celebrate the opening of The Lindemann Performing Arts Center on Saturday, October 21, 2023, with a full day of special programs led by Brown Arts Institute (BAI), a university-wide arts research enterprise that serves as a campus resource and catalyst for the arts at Brown.

The Lindemann Performing Arts Center and Brown Arts Institute are both part of the Perelman Arts district. The day of celebration will welcome the campus community and the public to experience the University's new creative hub, curated by BAI and designed by REX/Joshua Ramus. Featuring a parade led by musician, composer, and bandleader Jon Batiste, arts conversations, building tours, pop-up performances, food trucks, and more, the community-wide gathering will mark the launch of a transformative new chapter for the arts at Brown, with the building poised to enable new forms of artmaking and catalyze new opportunities for creative exploration, innovation, and collaboration across disciplines.

“This truly amazing building promises to inspire innovation and experimentation in ways we can't even yet imagine,” said University President Christina H. Paxson. “We're delighted to celebrate The Lindemann with our own campus and the greater community for events that will offer an exciting glimpse at how brilliant performers, artists and scholars will engage with this one-of-a-kind facility to push creative boundaries for generations to come.”

Festivities will kick off at noon with a parade celebrating the research, teaching and art-making that happens in Brown's Perelman Arts District, culminating in a joyful “Love Riot” led by Batiste, where the public is invited to take part in a procession to The Lindemann from the College Green. The afternoon's programs will include guided tours of the building and conversations about the future of the arts with esteemed Brown faculty and alumni. The building's exterior gathering places will provide space for community members to congregate in celebration and conversation, with food trucks available along Olive Street, adjacent to the new center.

The building's exterior gathering places will provide space for community members to congregate in celebration and conversation, with food trucks available along Olive Street, adjacent to the new center. The day's events will close with the inaugural public performance in The Lindemann's main hall by the Brown University Orchestra and the Brown University Chorus, featuring renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman as a special guest artist, and the world premiere of a newly commissioned work by Associate Professor Eric Nathan (composer, Music) and Assistant Professor Sawako Nakayasu (poet, Literary Arts). Itzhak Perlman appears courtesy of Primo Artists.

“A moment that has been years in the making, the opening of The Lindemann Performing Arts Center will unlock new realms of possibility for performance and artistic innovation, further expanding Brown's role as a leading center for creative inquiry,” said Avery Willis Hoffman, Artistic Director of Brown Arts Institute. "We welcome the community with open arms—and doors—to explore this exciting space and all that it has to offer as a crossroads and catalyst for creative exchange.”

The 101,000-square-foot facility takes a radical approach to spatial, acoustic, and technical flexibility, with a main hall that can transform into five dramatically different configurations as well as an array of state-of-the-art spaces for classes, rehearsals, and large- and small-scale performances. The Lindemann will serve as a new hub for artistic expression, research, and experimentation at Brown, acting as a critical resource for the campus community and providing opportunities for visiting artists and scholars to develop new work in residence, collaborate with Brown students and faculty, and present year-round programming for the Providence community.

“The campus arts scene has this unique spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration,” said Thomas Gotsch, incoming student vice president of the Brown University Orchestra. “All the time, you see dancers collaborating with theater directors, visual artists working with audio engineers, music composers creating with choreographers. From its flexible high-tech spaces to its central campus location, The Lindemann has the potential to foster that spirit of collaboration even more, and I'm really looking forward to experiencing the art that emerges after it opens.”

A full schedule for the opening celebrations will be shared in the coming months, with limited public tickets for the orchestra concert available in October.

The events on October 21 will launch IGNITE, a series curated by BAI featuring interdisciplinary, collaborative, impactful projects centered around the possibilities of art as a vehicle for societal change. The inaugural series, launching in fall 2023 and running through fall 2024, is anchored by six large-scale imaginings and collaborative residencies: Carrie Mae Weems (fall 2023); William Kentridge & The Centre for the Less Good Idea (spring 2024); Tanya Tagaq (spring 2024); Chachi Carvalho (summer 2024); Kym Moore, Professor of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies at Brown (fall 2024); and Caridad “La Bruja” de la Luz (fall 2024). IGNITE will also feature work proposed and produced by the arts departments at Brown; Open Call projects by students, faculty, alumni, and Providence based artists; and BAI collaborations with other Brown units, including the Data Science Institute, Brown University School of Public Health, and Carney Institute for Brain Science.

For more information on The Lindemann Performing Arts Center at Brown University, please visit arts.brown.edu/spaces/lindemann.

Brown Arts Institute is a university-wide research enterprise and catalyst for the arts at Brown that creates new work and supports, amplifies, and adds new dimensions to the creative practices of Brown's arts departments, faculty, students, and community. Through year-round programming, research-focused courses, initiatives, collaborations, and partnerships, along with rigorous artistic and academic programs, BAI commissions and presents new work on campus, across Providence, Rhode Island, and beyond, from students, faculty, and on-campus arts groups, as well as in collaboration with forward-focused visiting artists and other performing arts organizations. Learn more at arts.brown.edu.

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