70,000 Brooklyn Academy of Music Playbills and Posters Now Available Online

The Brooklyn Academy of Music has made tens of thousands of playbills, posters, and other ephemera dating back to the 1860s available online, The New York Times reports.

The Leon Levy BAM Digital Archive launched on June 20 and contains more than 70,000 archival materials from the modern era back to the institution’s founding in the 1860s, covering some 40,000 artists.

The collection includes advertisements for speakers like Frederick Douglass, Helen Keller, and Amelia Earhart; playbills for performances by artists like famous pianist Van Cliburn; mid-century photos of dancers like Bertram Ross; posters for film festivals held at BAM throughout the years; and tickets for productions and symphony concerts dating back decades. The online archive contains photos and audio recordings from recent productions, too, including ones with celebrities like Alan Rickman and Ian McKellen. You can search specific collections (like, say, programs and playbills from the 19th century) or aggregate all the images related to one artist, like all the work related to Alan Rickman’s performances.

Explore the archive here.

[h/t The New York Times]