Nestled at the foot of One World Trade Center is a cube, sitting slightly askew at the edge of the plaza facing the 9/11 memorial, and clad in glowing, deeply veined Portuguese marble. It is the Perelman Center for the Performing Arts—PAC NYC—which opens to the public this week. The façade, a simple cube, belies the complex architecture of the interior, which has three main stages that can be configured in a mind-bending 62 different ways to accommodate everything from theater in the round to stadium seating. In addition to the main stages where ticketed performances will occur, the striking lobby includes a stage where free performances will happen on a regular basis.
The lobby also includes a restaurant—Metropolis—by the uber-talented and world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelson, opening later this month. The center is designed by Rex Architecture, with the lobby and restaurant spaces by David Rockwell and his firm, Rockwell Group. In the lobby, a dynamic, glowing ceiling in undulating sapele wood ribbons with integrated LED lighting is visible from the street. The restaurant includes a bar, outdoor terrace, and private dining room, and offers a new gathering space for the Lower Manhattan community. The richly glowing finishes in the space include walnut, oil-rubbed antique brass, blackened steel, and zinc, vintage area rugs to add softness and delineate the dining areas.
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. The inaugural season will begin on Tuesday, September 19, 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.
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 the center’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.
At the opening ceremony last week, local and state power players showed up in force to welcome the center as a beacon of culture and light in a booming Downtown. Governor Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Roberts, former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, members of the 9/11 Memorial Committee, and Ronald Perelman—for whom the center is named—spoke passionately about bringing this project to fruition. Mayor Bloomberg opened the event by saying, “Today we inaugurate the last major piece of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, and one that will help us to open a new chapter in the history of Lower Manhattan. From the beginning of the rebuilding process, our administration believed that alongside the memorial, museum, housing, and commerce, a center for culture and creativity also belongs here, and that the arts would not only bring new life to the site but help us to build a brighter future for Lower Manhattan and our whole city.”
Photography by Iwan Baan.
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