Einstein’s long march to Brooklyn

Brooklyn, though having lost a famous baseball team (and, before that, an infamous football team), need weep no longer: it now has the up-to-date Brooklyn Academy of Music, the national leader in the presentation of guaranteed media-succulent avant-garde theater-cum-dance-cum-“music” extravaganzas. Indeed, so successful has the institution been under the guidance of Harvey Lichtenstein, its President and Chief Executive Officer, that Blam!—the title chosen for an exhibition of Pop, Minimalist, and performance art at the Whitney Museum this fall—might have been thought to refer not to the famous 1960s (Roy) Lichtenstein cartoon painting but to the 1980s (Harvey) Lichtenstein Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Jokes aside, the Brooklyn Academy’s record in presenting what it has chosen to call the “Next Wave” has been notable. A successful series sailing under...