Culture Chronicle

Hopkins Gets More BAM for the Buck
The Wall Street Journal - May 7, 2010
By Pia Catton

With a New Theater and Education Facility on the Way, Brooklyn's Premier Arts Organization Is Looking Up
For any arts administrator, a shovel going into the ground is cause for equal measures of hope and fear. Karen Brooks Hopkins, the president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, has reason to be optimistic.

On Saturday, BAM will celebrate the ground-breaking of the Richard B. Fisher Building, a $45 million theater and education facility that is set for completion in 2012--and is almost entirely paid for. BAM is also two years and $175 million into its five-year Next Stage campaign to raise $300 million.

Such expansion and fund-raising goals have been daunting during the economic downturn, but Ms. Hopkins, who joined BAM in 1979 and became president in 1999, puts it in the context of the venue's history: Until 1992, BAM had no endowment at all. Thanks to her reliance on the long view, she carefully positioned the organization to be able to survive a recession. That said, BAM is still facing the reality of cutting costs, developing new markets and fund-raising in a tight market. For the full article, click here