The disclosure yesterday of new and impressive plans for a $325 million effort to renovate and expand Lincoln Center was an encouraging sign for New York. The Lincoln Center news comes in the context of the expansion of the Museum of Modern Art — a project supported by an $858 million capital campaign. And it comes, as well, as the New York Botanical Garden prepares to dedicate its new visitor center as part of a $200 million capital campaign, and as, on a more modest scale, the Brooklyn Museum opens a new $63 million front entrance.

With the city and state taxpayers struggling to support a tax burden that is higher than anywhere else in the nation, it’s hard to make the case for massive public investment in these sorts of projects. In our view, the higher the percentage of these projects that are privately funded, the better.

Yet we less inclined to carp about funding formulas than to remark on what a wonderful thing it is for the city that private donors are seeing fit to make the huge investments of capital and time that are required to make these projects happen.

Many of these plans have been under way since before September 11,2001,and some of the projects have been slowed or scaled back since then. In some cases, that’s been for the better — at least the plaza at Lincoln Center won’t end up covered with a dome.

But that these projects went forward in the face of the uncertainty that followed the September 11 attacks, with the city’s economy in the doldrums and tourism down, is a signal that New York is determined to hold on to its status as the nation’s cultural capital.