Photo by Doug Duvall
After announcing last week that the Lincoln Theatre would play host to a four-week run of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Mayor Vince Gray and other District officials held a press conference today on their grand visions for the 90-year-old venue, which on Jan. 1 will be under the control of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
Judith Terra, the art collector and Gray fundraiser who chairs the commission, spoke briefly on her hopes that the Lincoln, under city stewardship, would help “make Washington the capital city of the U.S.” A peculiar way to phrase it, but I think she meant “arts capital.”
The commission’s director, Lionell Thomas, spoke next, talking about building a “plan for sustainability” and longterm operations. Thomas said that there would be meetings in the coming months between his office and various stakeholders in the arts community and the neighborhood around 13th and U streets NW about what should be done to revitalize the Lincoln.
Thomas didn’t deny that District officials have a lot to learn about how to fix an arts venue, especially one that a few months ago appeared to be heading toward bankruptcy.
“We don’t have this completely figured out yet,” Thomas said. Standing behind the podium while Thomas spoke was Michael Kaiser, the Kennedy Center president and so-called “turnaround king.”
Gray and Kaiser said the Kennedy Center was interested in staging some of its programming at the Lincoln, but it won’t happen just yet given the physical upgrades that the Lincoln needs.
One of the immediate questions, then, was over what will take over the Lincoln after a month of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which opens wide tonight and tomorrow afternoon at the Lincoln. (Our review will be up later today.) Right now, it appears that nothing is scheduled after David Fincher’s adaptation of the Steig Larsson bestseller closes, though Thomas said to expect programming that respects the Lincoln’s nine-decade history. (It wasn’t lost on a reporter from The Afro-American to follow up by asking if any of that programming would focus on black culture or history, to which Gray said “the theater will be there for anyone who wants to come.”)
Victor Hoskins, the deputy mayor for planning, also praised the city’s new theater ownership. He also gave a brief update on the District’s quest to spur on the construction of a new movie theater east of the Anacostia River, a topic I covered for City Paper. Hoskins said last week he took representatives of Landmark Theatres, the cinema chain that booked Dragon Tattoo for the Lincoln, on site visits to Skyland Town Center and St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.
“They hadn’t been [east of the river] before,” Hoskins said about the group, which included Landmark CEO Ted Mundorff. “They’re creative thinkers.”
