Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC), the cultural cornerstone and final public element of the World Trade Center site, will open with its first public performance on Tuesday, September 19, 2023. Led by Board Chair Mike Bloomberg, Executive Director Khady Kamara, and Artistic Director Bill Rauch, the new performing arts center in Lower Manhattan is a dynamic home for the arts, serving audiences and creators through flexible venues enabling the facility to embrace wide-ranging artistic programs. The inaugural year will feature commissions, world premieres, co-productions, and collaborative work across theater, dance, music, opera, film, and more. The vision for PAC NYC first began 20 years ago when Mike Bloomberg, as Mayor of New York City, included a performing arts center as the cultural keystone in the master plan to rebuild the World Trade Center site following 9/11.
PAC NYC’s inaugural season will begin with Refuge: A Concert Series to Welcome the World – a five-night global music series featuring a vibrant mix of acclaimed musicians centered around the theme of refuge.
- NYC Tapestry: Home as Refuge (Sept. 19 at 8 pm) – artists who have come from other parts of the world to make New York their home, including Laurie Anderson, Raven Chacon, Natalie Diaz, and thingNY, Angélique Kidjo, Michael Mwenso, Mwenso and the Shakes, Emel, Wang Guowei, and Forro in the Dark.
- Devotion: Faith as Refuge (Sept. 20 at 8 pm) – artists who use music to express their spiritual traditions, including The Klezmatics, Tanya Tagaq, ÌFÉ, Damien Sneed and Chorale Le Chateau, Innov Gnawa, Arun Ramamurthy & Trina Basu ft. Samarth Nagakar, and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street.
- Playing it Forward: School as Refuge (Sept. 21 at 8 pm) – artists who are educating the next generation, including David Broza, Common, Arturo O’Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, and Mahani Teave.
- Relatively Speaking: Family as Refuge (Sept. 22 at 8 pm) – artists for whom making music is a family affair, including Martha Redbone, Amal Murkus and Firas Zreik, the HawtPlates, Fanoos Ensemble, and Villalobos Brothers.
- Childhood Songs: Memory as Refuge (Sept. 23 at 8 pm) – artists sharing stories and musical traditions from their childhoods, including Michelle Zauner, Shoshana Bean, Alphabet Rockers, Daniel Gortler, Trinity Youth Chorus, and Abigail Washburn.
Beginning September 21 through October 9, 2023, PAC NYC will display “Kishux,” from their foundational alliance partner The Lenape Center. “Kishux” is a newly curated presentation of 12 large-format photographs by Devin Pickering. Photographed over a period of five months and recording time from sunrise to twilight, the images tell the story of the return home of ancestral seeds to Lenapehoking, the name for the Lenape homeland. This exhibit is free for all.
PAC NYC is partnering with the following organizations to further PAC NYC’s commitment to building alliances and collaborations with communities: anchor alliances with the Borough of Manhattan Community College, Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York, Interfaith Center of New York City, The New York Immigration Coalition; and a foundational alliance with the Lenape Center.
PAC NYC’s opening will also include free events for the community: Open House: Arts Community Day (Sept. 27) and Open House: Five Borough Family Day (Sept. 30).
The artistic programs during the inaugural year will range from the world premiere of Laurence Fishburne’s one-man tour-de-force play Like They Do in The Movies to a fabulous reimagining of CATS set in the competitions of New York City’s Ballroom culture and a new multi-disciplinary work Watch Night from the acclaimed artistic team of Tony Award winner Bill T. Jones, poet Marc Bamuthi Joseph, composer Tamar-kali, and dramaturg Lauren Whitehead.
PAC NYC has also partnered with Creative Artist Agency (CAA) and Vanity Fair to present conversations with renowned celebrities Kerry Washington, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Barbara Pierce Bush with Jenna Bush Hager. The space will also host the 2023 Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz International Piano Competition this October, the most prestigious competition of its kind.
Additional programming, including family performances, programming collaborations, and free performances will take place in the lobby on the Vartan and Clare Gregorian Stage.
A complete list of events and performances in the inaugural season is available here.
Architecture and Design
Named for businessman, philanthropist, and benefactor Ronald O. Perelman, the Perelman Performing Arts Center is a 138-foot-tall, cube-shaped building with radically flexible capabilities designed by the architecture firm REX, led by founding principal Joshua Ramus. REX’s design, developed in collaboration with executive architect Davis Brody Bond, theater consultant Charcoalblue, and acoustician Threshold Acoustics, is conceived for an artistic program that will have vast and varied needs to serve New York’s extraordinarily diverse arts community.
Three principal venues – the John E. Zuccotti Theater (seating up to 450 people), the Mike Nichols Theater (seating up to 250), and the Doris Duke Theater (seating up to 99) – can be used independently or by combining them. In all, the auditoria can transform into 10 different proportions that collectively adopt more than 60 stage-audience arrangements with capacities ranging from 90 to 950 seats, and with audience circulation and lobby areas varying to match.
The building is wrapped in nearly 5,000 half-inch thick marble tiles laminated into insulated glass units. The marble has been bookmatched to create a biaxially symmetric pattern that is identical on all four sides of the building. The marble façade allows light to radiate in during the day and glow out during the evening.
David Rockwell and his architecture and design firm Rockwell Group designed the lobby, as well as the restaurant and terrace. A dynamic, glowing ceiling in undulating sapele wood ribbons with integrated LED lighting is visible from the street and creates an inviting entry experience. A small built-in stage with tiered seating provides opportunities for a variety of performances in the southern end of the lobby.
The lobby’s restaurant, Metropolis by Marcus Samuelsson, which includes a bar, outdoor terrace,
and private dining room, offers a new gathering space for the Lower Manhattan community and opens later this fall. Furniture made from walnut, oil-rubbed antique brass, blackened steel, and zinc was designed and selected to ensure comfort for diners, and vintage area rugs add softness and delineate the dining areas.
Visiting PAC NYC
PAC NYC (251 Fulton Street) is free and open to the public seven days a week from 8 am to 11 pm.
Tickets to performances in the building’s theaters begin at $39 at PACNYC.org or by calling 212.266.3000. For more information, visit PACNYC.org.
PAC NYC Memberships start at $10 for the inaugural season and provide early access to purchase tickets and other perks. For more information or to learn how to support PAC NYC, visit PACNYC.org.
The public can sign up for important updates from PAC NYC at PACNYC.org/sign-up.
Citi is the official card and a proud sponsor of PAC NYC.
PAC NYC is grateful for the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies
