ROBERT WILSON

WILSON--Robert. BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) honors the iconic theater-maker Robert Wilson, who passed away July 31, 2025. In 1969 Harvey Lichtenstein (in his second season as BAM's executive producer) was searching for exciting new genre-defying artists and works. That same year, BAM presented Wilson's layered dance and theater piece, The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud, establishing a prolific alliance that brought to life some of the most ambitious, collaborative, and interdisciplinary work to appear in New York City for more than 50 years. As Wilson cultivated an audience for cross-genre, visionary work, BAM was becoming one of the first true homes for it. His landmark revival of Einstein on the Beach - created with Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs - was a defining moment of the Next Wave Festival in 1984. Later productions such as The Temptation of Saint Anthony (with Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, 2004), Shakespeare's Sonnets (with Rufus Wainwright, 2014), and The Old Woman (with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Willem Dafoe, 2014) further cemented his BAM legacy. Other groundbreaking works included Time Rocker (with Lou Reed, 1997) and The Black Rider (with Tom Waits and William S. Burroughs, 1993). Wilson's influence on BAM was profound. He was a visual artist, performer, and director who moved between classical theater and experimental performance. Always seeking to expand the possibilities of live performance, his precision with movement, light, and visual composition became a benchmark for artistic excellence. His willingness to take risks - epic in scale, radical in form - mirrored BAM's own ethos, helping to define its identity on the world stage. All of us at BAM - past and present - will miss him deeply. From the production teams and stage crews who realized his meticulously detailed visions, to the administrators and curators who collaborated with him over the years, he leaves behind colleagues who were inspired, challenged, and forever changed. Robert Wilson's legacy lives on in the institution he helped shape, and in the generations of artists and audiences whose imaginations he expanded.