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Avery Fisher Hall to Become David Geffen Hall After $100M Gift

By Emily Frost | March 4, 2015 3:24pm
 The acclaimed performing arts space was renamed after a $100 million gift from Geffen. 
Avery Fisher Hall Renamed David Geffen Hall
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UPPER WEST SIDE — Lincoln Center announced Wednesday that music and film executive David Geffen made a $100 million gift to the performing arts center to help fund a major renovation of its largest concert hall, Avery Fisher Hall

As of September 2015, the concert venue will be known as David Geffen Hall. 

The children of the deceased Avery Fisher, for whom the hall was named in 1973, agreed this past November that the hall could be renamed, officials said.

Work on the hall, which is home to the New York Philharmonic, will begin in 2019 and cost $500 million, but details regarding the reconstruction designs were not available. 

The revamped concert hall will feature a new Lincoln Center Hall of Fame that will pay homage to artists from the performing arts and film. Officials did not say whether it would be free to the public or charge an entrance fee. 

"The new David Geffen Hall will be a superb venue for classical music and a place that will inspire innovations in how audiences enjoy music for years to come," said Jed Bernstein, president of Lincoln Center, in a statement. 

Geffen, who is a native New Yorker, added that “to be involved with such a beloved and iconic institution is deeply satisfying."

The concert hall will not be the first institution named after the executive. In 2002, after a major donation to UCLA, the university renamed its medical school the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.