After nearly three decades as head of artistic programming at New York’s Lincoln Center, Jane Moss has announced that she will step down on August 1. The center, which comprises the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Ballet, Lincoln Center Theater, and Jazz at Lincoln Center, has been temporarily shuttered because of the Covid-19 pandemic since mid-March. In addition to housing the constituent organizations, the center hosts around two hundred events each year.

“I think that live performance is going to be the most avant-garde aspect of our lives if these devices keep making inroads into how people are relating to the world,” Moss told the Los Angeles Times in a 2015 interview. “It may become the one place left for people to have a collective experience.” Since live performance is currently prohibited in New York City, Moss said that her schedule has become much lighter, giving her time to think about the years ahead. 

“I had begun to consider moving into a new chapter of my life prior to the pandemic,” she said in a statement on Friday. “But the multi-year/multi-track cycle of programming never allowed time for a responsible departure and smooth transition.” The sixty-seven-year-old runs a number of programs including Midsummer Night Swing, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and Lincoln Center Out of Doors—all of which have been canceled this spring—and oversaw the development of Lincoln Center at Home, its new online portal.

On her plans for the future, Moss said: “I am eager to make a new kind of contribution to the life and well-being of New York as we face very challenging times ahead.”