Lincoln Kirstein

Lincoln Edward Kirstein (May 4, 1907 – January 5, 1996) was an American writer, impresario, art connoisseur, philanthropist, and cultural figure in New York City, noted especially as co-founder of the New York City Ballet. He developed and sustained the company with his organizing ability and fundraising for more than four decades, serving as the company's general director from 1946 to 1989. According to the New York Times, he was "an expert in many fields", organizing art exhibits and lecture tours in the same years.

Kirstein was born in Rochester, New York, to Jewish parents, the son of Rose Stein and Louis E. Kirstein (1867–1942). His brother was George Kirstein, his sister was Mina Kirstein and his paternal grandparents were Jeanette (née Leiter) and Edward Kirstein, a successful Rochester clothing manufacturer who ran E. Kirstein and Sons, Company. His maternal grandfather was Nathan Stein, a senior executive at the Stein-Bloch & Co., in Rochester. He grew up in a wealthy Bostonian family and attended the private Berkshire School, along with George Platt Lynes, graduating in 1926.

He then attended Harvard, the alma mater of his father, vice-president of Filene's Department Store, graduating in 1930. At Harvard, he founded the Society for Contemporary Art.

In 1927, while an undergraduate at Harvard, Kirstein was frustrated that the literary magazine The Harvard Advocate would not invite him to join its editorial board despite his having published several well-regarded pieces in the magazine. With friend Varian Fry (who met his wife Eileen through Lincoln's sister Mina), he convinced his father to finance the Hound & Horn, a new literary quarterly. After graduation, he moved to New York in 1930, taking the quarterly with him. The publication gained prominence in the artistic world and ran until 1934 when Kirstein decided to focus his energy and resources on the career of George Balanchine and the development of the School of American Ballet.

His interest in ballet and Balanchine started when he saw Balanchine's Apollo performed by the Ballets Russes. Kirstein became determined to bring Balanchine to the United States. In October 1933, together with Edward Warburg, a classmate from Harvard, and Vladimir Dimitriew, Balanchine's manager, they started the School of American Ballet in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1934, the studio moved to the fourth floor of a building at Madison Avenue and 59th Street in New York City. Warburg's father, Felix M. Warburg, invited the group of students from the evening class to perform at a private party. The ballet they performed was Serenade, the first major ballet choreographed by Balanchine in the United States. Just months later, Kirstein and Warburg founded, together with Balanchine and Dimitriew, the American Ballet, which later became the resident company of the Metropolitan Opera. According to Kirstein, this arrangement was unsatisfactory because the opera company failed to provide the ballet company with financial resources and artistic freedom. He died of heart failure on January 5, 1996 in New York City at 88.

Kirstein's theatrical career was interrupted by the United States' entry into World War II. He enlisted in 1943, and before going overseas, started working on a project gathering and documenting soldier art for a prospective exhibit and book titled Artists Under Fire. He was not able to find a major book publisher, but selections from his efforts were published in Life Magazine and exhibited in part at the Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress, and the National Gallery of Art. In the spring of 1944, Kirstein traveled to London for the U.S. Arts and Monuments Commission, and after a month, he was transferred to the unit in France that came to be known as the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) program. The section was devoted to rescuing and preserving European art. In January 1945, Kirstein was promoted to private first class in Patton's Third Army, and his unit moved to Germany. Kirstein was involved with retrieving artworks around Munich and from the salt mines at Altaussee. His article "The Quest for the Golden Lamb" about the quest was published in Town & Country in September 1945, the same month he was discharged from the army.

In 1946, Balanchine and Kirstein founded the Ballet Society, which was renamed the New York City Ballet in 1948. In a letter that year, Kirstein stated, "The only justification I have is to enable Balanchine to do exactly what he wants to do in the way he wants to do it." Kirstein served as the company's general director from 1946 until 1989.

In a 1959 monograph titled What Ballet Is All About Kirstein wrote: "Our Western ballet is a clear if complex blending of human anatomy, solid geometry and acrobatics offered as a symbolic demonstration of manners—the morality of consideration for one human being moving in time with another."

Beginning in 1919, Kirstein kept a diary, continuing with the practice until the late 1930s. In writing a 2007 biography of Kirstein, The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein, Martin Duberman drew on these diaries, as well as Kirstein's numerous letters, to gain insight into Kirstein's personal life.

Kirstein wrote about enjoying sex with various men, including Harvard undergraduates, sailors, prostitutes, and casual encounters in the showers at the 63rd Street YMCA. He had longer affairs with dancer Pete Martinez and artist Dan Maloney. He had both platonic relationships and many that started as casual sex and developed into long-term friendships.

The Saint of Bleecker Street, [Original, Play, Drama, Play with music], Production Supervisor. December 27, 1954, to April 2, 1955

Misalliance, [Revival, Play, Comedy] New York City Drama Company, Managing director. March 6 to June 27, 1953

Billy the Kid, [Original, Ballet], Librettist. Choreography by Eugene Loring, music by Aaron Copland, design by Jared French. Premiered May 24, 1938.

Filling Station, [Original, Ballet, One Act], Librettist. Choreography by Lew Christensen, music by Virgil Thomson, design by Paul Cadmus. Premiered January 6, 1938.