Reimagining the Archive as a Generative Space for Cultural Institutions: A Brooklyn Case Study

The institutional narrative of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is widely touted: at a moment of rapid economic decline and demographic change in Brooklyn, the impresario Harvey Lichtenstein took over its leadership in 1967. Through a series of ambitious and bold programming choices, he successfully made BAM a destination for Manhattan audiences and internationally. Less evident is how BAM, during the latter years of the twentieth century, related to the transformed neighborhoods surrounding it, particularly their Black communities. This article reflects on a yearlong research fellowship in BAM’s archives, an inquiry which looked to the gaps and edges of BAM’s records to uncover underrepresented voices and moments, and argues that an honest historical portrait of BAM as inextricably grounded in place better orients the institution to the publics it serves. Informed by Saidiya Hartman’s concept of “critical fabulation,” as well as Diana Taylor’s notion of the relationship of the archive with embodied repertoire, this article identifies points of rupture that push back against BAM’s abiding institutional narrative, drawing upon contemporary examples of archival praxis and artistic responses to archives to consider how this public-facing cultural institution might engage, critically and creatively, with its histories and their traces.