Sam Brumbaugh has seen firsthand Brooklyn’s cultural renaissance. Twenty years ago, living in Williamsburg, there was nowhere to go if you wanted to go to a show or a reading. You had to go to the Village. Today, he says, Williamsburg is the Village.
“Over the last decade, the city with the strongest music scene, across the board, across the country,Êhas been Brooklyn,” says the author. “I’ve watched it explode all around me.”
Brumbaugh often discussed this borough-wide change with his friend Bronwyn Keenan, associate director of special events at the Guggenheim Museum. So when the Museum was seeking new programming to celebrate its 50th anniversary, Bronwyn proposed "It Came From Brooklyn" – a monthly series at the museum that highlights Brooklyn’s diverse and dynamic offerings across the cultural landscape.
The series launches August 14 in the Guggenheim’s famed Frank Lloyd Wright–designed rotunda, pulling from both emerging and established artists, including indie rockers The Walkmen, the experimental duo High Places, and the Brooklyn Steppers Marching Band, and a reading by Colson “I Write in Brooklyn. Get Over It” Whitehead, with comedian Leo Allen serving as MC. While it’s called “It Came From Brooklyn,” a nod to Peter Guralnick’s book, “It Came from Memphis,” the producers wanted the series’ boundaries to be more fluid.
“Within the art and music scenes, there’s a lot of flux. People come and go. But Brooklyn is a lot of things, and has a lot of strong built-in communities,” says Brumbaugh.
Hence a band like The Walkmen, whose three out of its five members live in Brooklyn, or Allen, who owns Greenpoint’s Black Rabbit Bar and helps run 826 NYC, a Park Slope-based literacy project.
You can’t get more Brooklyn, though, than the Brooklyn Steppers, and the Bedford-Stuyvesant-based youth marching band kicks things off August 14, followed by openers High Places, another Bed-Stuy-based act that’s comprised of a lithography instructor (Rob Barber) and of a classically trained bassoonist (Mary Pearson).
When the Walkmen take the stage, they will surely fill the rotunda, with help from frontman Hamilton Leithauser’s powerhouse of a voice, as they pull from fan favorites as well as a few new ones they’re currently laying down in the studio while they’re home from touring this summer.
“I can’t say enough good things about living here,” saysLeithauser, who recently moved to Clinton Hill himself. “There’s so many places to go, and restaurants to try.”
Between musical acts, Fort Greene-based novelist Colson Whitehead, most recently the author of “Sag Harbor,” will read selections from Walt Whitman, in a nod to Brooklyn’s esteemed literary heritage.
By bringing Brooklyn into the museum each month, Brumbaugh and Keenan hope to broaden the borough’s audience.
“Within the music and lit world, and within the city, the scope, depth and quality of the Brooklyn is well known. But not so much on a national level,” says Brumbaugh.
“The museum,” adds Keenan, “can play that role and provide that platform. (It) is at once global in its scope and very much a local New York institution.”
Get a taste of Brooklyn in Manhattan when theGuggenheim presents “It Came From Brooklyn” August 14 from 8 p.m. to midnight. Tickets are $45 for non-members, $40 for members.
The next installment of the series is scheduled for September 25, with music from Julian Plenti (aka Paul Banks of Interpol) and I'm In You, readings from Rivka Galchen and Hampton Fancher, and comedian Eugene Mirman confirmed as the MC.
For more information, go to www.guggenheim.org/brooklyn or call 212-423-3500. The Guggenheim is located at 1071 Fifth Avenue.
