Karen Brooks Hopkins, Member of the BoD at the Onassis Foundation, travels back in time, through her book about her days at BAM
In her new autobiographical book, Karen Brooks Hopkins talks about the 36 years she spent at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), her position as president of BAM, as well as the Academy’s resident artists who left an indelible mark on her memory.
"BAM… and then It Hit Me,” published by House Books and made available on March 1, 2022, is a book that contains personal stories, successful fundraising strategies that can encourage the art scene to meet their wishes, but also some informal moments he had at BAM. As she puts it, “Raising money is like a military mission.”
"The odds are always against you. It’s going to be 90 percent rejection with many ‘casualties’ along the way, and you must constantly shift your strategy to find new ways forward.” Hopkins, aged 70, who joined the organization as a 29-year-old development officer in 1979, became its president in 1999, and discovered early on that she had “the fundraising gene.” During a long tenure (she retired in 2015), her tenacity and ability to raise money for ambitious experimental projects was a vital element in establishing the academy as a cultural force and a hub for must-see work by artists like Peter Brook, Laurie Anderson, Ivo van Hove and Pina Bausch.
