NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Lincoln Center announced Tuesday that it would use a $20 million gift from philanthropists Lynne and Richard Pasculano to help bring back and revitalize opera, jazz, theater and dance on its campus.

The donation will help the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, Lincoln Center Theater and Jazz at Lincoln Center pay for some of their upcoming endeavors, such as the U.S. premiere of the Brett Dean opera “Hamlet” at the Met and the revival of New York City Ballet’s annual art series.

“This fund will be very helpful in making it possible for us to get our doors open as soon and as safely as we can,” said Katherine Farley, chair of Lincoln Center’s board.

Distribution of the donation, over five years, represents an effort by Lincoln Center to forge closer ties with its constituent organizations, which are run independently. The center, which plays the role of landlord but also holds its own events and festivals, has at times competed with the arts organizations it hosts for resources.

Henry Timms, Lincoln Center’s president and CEO, said the gift was part of an effort to encourage more collaboration and innovation across the center.

“As arts organizations, we are going to need support over time to reemerge after the pandemic and also to be creative and to be bold,” he said. “This sort of gift builds creative confidence and allows people to take on things that are more ambitious and more rigorous.”

The pandemic wiped out tens of millions of dollars in revenues across Lincoln Center, the nation’s largest performing arts complex. While the center is planning a return to live performances this fall before fully vaccinated audiences, whether the public will return in large numbers remains unclear.

The donation will help Lincoln Center Theater mount a new opera based on Lynn Nottage’s popular play “Intimate Apparel,” with a libretto by the playwright and music by Ricky Ian Gordon. The opera had been in previews when the pandemic struck. Jazz at Lincoln Center plans to use its share to present family-friendly concerts.

Lynne Pasculano said she hoped the funds would inspire others to contribute to the “social revitalization of New York, which will spur tourism and job creation and help to equitably revitalize our city.”

“To our minds, there is no more important a time to support the arts than right now,” she said. “Our cultural institutions are New York’s very heartbeat.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.