Joshua Prince-Ramus

Manhattan’s great cultural institutions—Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Met, the Guggenheim—all reside uptown. That will soon change with the opening of the ambitious and innovative Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center (naming rights were secured by the business magnate for $75 million in 2016). Designed by architect Joshua Prince-Ramus and his firm REX under the leadership of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the building features three adaptable theater spaces and a translucent white- veined-marble exterior, from the same Vermont quarry as the marble sheathing the U.S. Supreme Court and Thomas Jefferson Memorial. “By day, [it] is an elegant, book-matched stone edifice, whose simplicity and traditional material acknowledge the solemnity of its context,” wrote its architects in their original proposal. “By night, this monolith dematerializes: silhouettes of human movement and theatrical configurations animate the glowing enclosure, an invitingly subtle revelation of the creative energy inside.”