Culture of New York City
Encyclopedia
The culture of New York City
is reflected by the city's size and variety. Many American cultural movements first emerged in the city. The Harlem Renaissance
established the African-American renaissance in the United States, while American modern dance
developed in New York in the early 20th century. The city was the top venue for jazz
in the 1940s, expressionism
in the 1950s, and the home of hip hop, punk rock
, and the Beat Generation
.
The city of New York is an important center for music, film, theater, dance and visual art. Artists have been drawn into the city by opportunity, as the city government funds the arts with a larger annual budget than the National Endowment for the Arts
, and New York is a major center of the global art market
which grew up along with national and international media centres.
, was a New Yorker whose History of New York (1809) became a cultural touchstone for Victorian New York. Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old-fashioned Dutch New Yorker in Irving's satire of chatty and officious localistic history, made "knickerbocker"
a bye-word for quaint Dutch-descended New Yorkers, with their old-fashioned ways and their long-stemmed pipers and knee-breeches long after the fashion had turned to trousers. The New York Knicks
, whose corporate name is the "New York Knickerbockers."
The Harlem Renaissance
established the African-American literary canon in the United States. The zenith of this “flowering of Negro literature,” as James Weldon Johnson
called it, was between 1924, when Opportunity magazine hosted a party for black writers where many white publishers were in attendance, and the Wall Street Crash of 1929
and the start of the Great Depression
. African-Americans of the northward Great Migration
and African and Caribbean immigrants converged in Harlem
, which became the most famous center of Negro life in the United States at that time. A militant black editor indicated in 1920 that "the intrinsic standard of Beauty and aesthetics does not rest in the white race" and that "a new racial love, respect, and consciousness may be created." The work of black Harlem writers sought to challenge the pervading racism
of the larger white community and often promoted progressive
or socialist
politics and racial integration
. No singular style emerged; instead there was a mix ranging from the celebration of Pan-Africanism
, “high-culture” and “street culture,” to new experimental forms in literature like modernism
, to Classical music
and improvisational jazz that inspired the new form of jazz poetry
.
The mid-20th century saw the emergence of The New York Intellectuals
, a group of American writers and literary critics who advocated leftist, anti-Stalinist political ideas and who sought to integrate literary theory
with Marxism
. Many of the group were students at the City College of New York
in the 1930s and associated with the left-wing political journal The Partisan Review
. Writer Nicholas Lemann
has described the New York Intellectuals as "the American Bloomsbury
". Writers often considered among the New York Intellectuals include Robert Warshow
, Philip Rahv
, William Phillips
, Mary McCarthy
, Dwight Macdonald
, Lionel Trilling
, Clement Greenberg
, Irving Kristol
, Sidney Hook
, Irving Howe
, Alfred Kazin
, and Daniel Bell
. The 1940s and 1950s also saw the rise in prominence of Ayn Rand
, who was based in New York for many years and whose novels The Fountainhead
and Atlas Shrugged
were both set in the city.
Parallel and counter to these mainstream groups have been such New York-centered underground movements as the Beat
poets and writers, including Allen Ginsberg
, Jack Kerouac
, Gregory Corso
and others, continuing into the 1980s and beyond with such writers as Kathy Acker
and Eileen Myles
. Various movements down through the years have centered around avant-garde publishing enterprises such as Grove Press
and Evergreen Review
, as well as unnumbered zine
-style pamphlets and one-off literary productions still available in independent bookstores today. At present the underground continues to thrive in the form of small press
literary publishers, including Soft Skull Press
, Fugue State Press
, Dennis Cooper
's Little House on the Bowery/Akashic Press, and many others.
Over the years many literary institutions have developed in the city, including the PEN American Center
, the largest of the international literary organization's centers. The PEN American Center plays an important role in New York's literary community and is active in defending free speech, the promotion of literature, and the fostering of international literary fellowship. Literary journals, including The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books
, n+1
, The New Criterion
, and New York Quarterly
are also important in the city's literary scene.
Contemporary writers based in the city, many of whom live in the Park Slope
neighborhood of Brooklyn, include Norman Mailer
, Barbara Garson
, Don DeLillo
, Jhumpa Lahiri
, Jonathan Safran Foer
, Jonathan Lethem
, Thomas Pynchon
and many others. New York has also been a flourishing scene for Jewish American literature
, as well as for Puerto Rican
poets and writers, who call themselves "nuyorican
s" (a blending of the phrases "New York" and "Puerto Rican"). The landmark Nuyorican Poets Café
is a bastion of the Nuyorican Movement
, an intellectual movement involving poets, writers, musicians and artists of Puerto Rican descent, mostly notably the late Pedro Pietri
and Giannina Braschi
.
While New York State
has an official poet Laureate
, New York City does not. Instead, by tradition it hosts an annual "People's Poetry Gathering", curated by the City University of New York
and city poetry groups, in which ordinary New Yorkers offer their own lines to an epic poem for the city. This technique was also used in the creation of a spontaneous poetic response by New Yorkers to the September 11, 2001 attacks that became a travelling exhibition called Missing: Streetscape of a City in Mourning. The poems, with 110 lines each for the 110 stories of the destroyed World Trade Center towers, were printed on black, billowing cotton banners over 25 feet in height.
The advent of electric lighting led to elaborate theatre productions, and in the 1880s New York City theaters on Broadway and along 42nd Street began to showcase a new stage form that came to be known as the Broadway musical. Strongly influenced by the feelings of immigrants to the city, these productions used song in narratives that often reflected themes of hope and ambition.
Many musicals in New York City became seminal national cultural events, like the controversial 1937 staging of Marc Blitzstein
's labor union opera The Cradle Will Rock
, directed by Orson Welles
and produced by John Houseman
. Originally to open at the Maxine Elliott Theatre
with elaborate sets and a full orchestra, the production was shut down on opening night, and Welles, Housman, and Blitzstein scrambled to rent the Venice Theatre twenty blocks north. The crowds gathered to see the production walked up 7th Avenue, and by nine o'clock the Venice Theatre’s 1,742 seats were sold out. Blitzstein began performing the musical solo, but after beginning the first number he was joined by cast members, who were forbidden by the Actor's Union to perform the piece "onstage", from their seats in the audience. Blitzstein and the cast performed the entire musical from the house. Many who attended the performance, including poet Laureate
Archibald MacLeish
, thought it to be one of the most moving theatrical experiences of their lives. Performances of the musical to this day rarely use elaborate sets or an orchestra in homage to this event.
Houseman and Wells went on to found the Mercury Theatre
and do radio drama
, in which they performed one of the most notable radio broadcasts of all time, The War of the Worlds
.
Many New York playwrights, including Elia Kazan
and Arthur Miller
, became icons in American theater.
Professional Yiddish theatre
in New York, a major cultural influence in the city, began in 1882 with a troupe founded by Boris Thomashefsky
, an immigrant from Ukraine. The plays in the late 19th century were realistic, while in the beginning of the 20th century, they became more political and artistic in orientation. Some performers were well-respected enough to move back and forth between the Yiddish theatre and Broadway, including Bertha Kalich
and Jacob Adler
. Some of the major composers included Abraham Goldfaden
, Joseph Rumshinsky and Sholom Secunda, while playwrights included David Pinski
, Solomon Libin, Jacob Michailovitch Gordin
and Leon Kobrin
.
Concurrently with Yiddish theatre was the development of Vaudeville
(a term thought to be a corruption of the old French word vaudevire, meaning an occasional or topical light popular song), a style of multi-act theatre which flourished from the 1880s through to the 1920s. An evening's schedule of performances (or "bill") could run the gamut from acrobats to mathematicians, from song-and-dance duos and Shakespeare to animal acts and opera. The usual date given for the "birth" of vaudeville is October 24, 1881, the night during which variety performer and theatre owner Tony Pastor
, in his effort to lure women into the male-dominated variety hall, famously staged the first bill of self-proclaimed "clean" vaudeville in New York City. African American
audiences had their own vaudevill circuits, as did speakers of Italian
and Yiddish
. The Palace Theatre
on Broadway, described by its owner, Martin Beck
, as "the Valhalla
of vaudeville" opened with vaudeville shows from the Keith Circuit
and lured the best and brightest in vaudeville. Its shift to a full bill of movies on November 16, 1932 is generally regarded as the death of vaudeville.
Today the 39 largest theatres (with more than 500 seats) in New York are collectively known as "Broadway
" after the major thoroughfare
through the theatre district, and are mostly located in the Times Square
vicinity. Many Broadway shows are world famous, such as the musicals Cats
and The Phantom of the Opera
. Along with those of London's West End
, theaters in New York's Broadway district are often considered to be the most professional in the English language.
Smaller theatres, termed off Broadway and off-off-Broadway
depending on their size, have the flexibility to produce more innovative shows for smaller audiences. An important center of the American theatre avant-garde, New York has been host to such seminal experimental theatre groups as The Wooster Group
and Richard Foreman
's Ontological-Hysteric Theater
.
The subways of New York are also occasional venues for beauty pageants and guerrilla theater. The MTA's annual Miss Subways contest ran from 1941 to 1976 and again in 2004 (under the revised name "Ms Subways"). Past Ms Subways winners include Eleanor Nash, an FBI clerk described by her poster that hung in subway cars in 1960 as "young, beautiful and expert with a rifle." The 2004 Ms Subways winner, Caroline Sanchez-Bernat, was an actress who played a role in Sunday Brunch 4. The 35-minute piece of performance art
was a full enactment of a Sunday brunch — including crisp white tablecloth, spinach salad appetizer and attentive waiter in black tuxedo — performed aboard a southbound A train in 2000. With subway riders looking on, the actors chatted amiably about Christmas, exchanged gifts and signed for a package delivered by a United Parcel Service delivery man who entered the scene at the West 34th Street stop.
Beginning with the rise of popular sheet music in the early 20th century, New York's Broadway musical theater and Tin Pan Alley
's songcraft
, New York became a major center for the American music industry. Since then the city has served as an important center for many different musical genres.
New York's status as a center for European classical music can be traced back to the early 19th century. The New York Philharmonic
, formed in 1842, did much to help establish the city's musical reputation. The first two major New York composers were William Fry
and George Frederick Bristow
, who in 1854 famously criticized the Philharmonic for choosing European composers over American ones. Bristow was committed to developing an American classical music tradition. His most important work was the Rip Van Winkle opera, which most influentially used an American folktale rather than European imitations.
The best-known New York composer, indeed, the best-known American classical composer of any kind, was George Gershwin
. Gershwin was a songwriter with Tin Pan Alley and the Broadway theatres, and his works synthesized elements of many styles, including the music of New York's Yiddish theatre, vaudeville, ragtime, operetta, jazz and the post-Romantic music of European composers. Gershwin's work gave American classical music unprecedented international recognition. Following Gershwin, the next major American composer was Aaron Copland
from Brooklyn, who used elements of American folk music and jazz in his compositions. His works included the Organ Symphony
, which earned him comparisons to Igor Stravinsky
, and the music for the ballet Appalachian Spring
and the Copland Piano Variations
.
The New York blues
was a type of blues music characterized by significant jazz influences and a more modernized, urban feel than the country blues. Prominent musicians from this field include Lionel Hampton
and Big Joe Turner
. In New York, jazz became fused with stride (an advanced form of ragtime
) and became highly evolved. Among the first major New York jazz musicians was Fletcher Henderson
, whose jazz orchestra, first appearing in 1923, helped invent swing music. The swing style that developed from New York's big jazz bands was catchy and very danceable, and was originally played largely by black orchestras. Later, white bands led by musicians like Jimmy Dorsey
and Benny Goodman
began to dominate and produced a number of instrumentalists that had a profound effect on the later evolution of jazz. Star vocalists also emerged, mainly women like the bluesy Billie Holiday
and the scat singer
Ella Fitzgerald
.
Beginning in the 1940s, New York City was the center of a roots revival
in American folk music
. Many New Yorkers took a renewed interested in blues, Appalachian folk music
and other roots styles. Greenwich Village
, in Lower Manhattan, became a hotbed of American folk music as well as leftist political activism. The performers associated with the Greenwich Village scene had sporadic mainstream success in the 1940s and 50s; some, like Pete Seeger
and the Almanac Singers
, did well, but most were confined to local coffeehouses and other venues. Performers like Dave Van Ronk
and Joan Baez
helped expand the scene by appealing to university students, while Bob Dylan
came to national prominence in the local folk music scene in the 1960s.
Disco
music diverged from the funk, soul and jazz of the 1960s, elevating music from the raw sound of 4-piece garage bands to refined music composed by producers who contracted local symphony and philharmonic orchestras and session musicians. A musical idiom that was strongly associated with minority audiences (especially black audiences and gay audiences), discothèques grew popular in the 1970s and began moving to larger venues. Many of the major disco nightclubs were in New York, including Paradise Garage
and Studio 54
. This tradition continued in the 1980s with Area
, Danceteria
, and Limelight
.
In the 1970s, punk rock
emerged in New York's downtown music scene with seminal bands such as the New York Dolls
, Ramones
and Patti Smith
. Anthrax
and KISS
were the best known heavy metal
and glam
rock performers from the city. The downtown scene developed into the "new wave
" style of rock music at downtown clubs like CBGB
's. The 1970s were also when the Salsa and Latin Jazz movements grew and branched out to the world, still creating a huge impact today. Labels like the "Fania All Stars", leaders like Tito Puente, legends Like Celia Cruz and RM&M Record Label Created who passed away this year (2009), Ralph Mercado, all contributed to stars like Hector LaVoe, Ruben Blades and many, many more. The New Yorican Sound, differed somewhat from Salsa that came from Puerto Rico, it was being sung by Puerto Rican Americans from New York City and had the swagger of the Big Apple.
Hip hop first emerged in the Bronx in the early 1970s at neighborhood block parties
when DJs, like DJ Kool Herc
, began isolating percussion breaks in funk
and R&B
songs and rapping while the audience danced. For many years, New York was the only city with a major hip-hop scene, and all of the early recordings came from New York. People like Kurtis Blow
and LL Cool J
brought hip hop to the mainstream for the first time, while so-called East Coast rap
was defined in the 1980s by artists including Eric B. & Rakim
, Kurtis Blow
and Run-D.M.C.
. Major New York stars emerged to go on and produce multi-platinum records, including Puff Daddy
, Jay-Z
and The Notorious B.I.G.
, along with critically acclaimed acts like Wu-Tang Clan
, Nas
, Big L
, and Busta Rhymes
.
New York is also one of only five cities in the United States with permanent professional resident companies in all of the major performing arts disciplines: the New York City Opera
, New York Philharmonic
, New York City Ballet
, and the Public Theater. The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
, actually a complex of buildings housing 12 separate companies, is the largest arts institution in the world. It is also home to the internationally-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center
. Other notable performance halls include Carnegie Hall
, Radio City Music Hall
, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music
.
With nearly 8 million people riding the city's subway system each day, New York's transit network is also a major venue for musicians. Each week, more than 100 musicians and ensembles – ranging in genre from classical
to Cajun, bluegrass
, African
, South America
n and jazz
– give over 150 performances sanctioned by New York City Transit at 25 locations throughout the subway system.
The 1913 Armory Show
in New York City, an exhibition which brought European modernist artists' work to the U.S., both shocked the public and influenced art making in the United States for the remainder of the twentieth century. The exhibition had a twofold effect of communicating to American artists that artmaking was about expression, not only aesthetics or realism
, and at the same time showing that Europe had abandoned its conservative model of ranking artists according to a strict academic hierarchy. This encouraged American artists to find a personal voice, and a modernist movement, responding to American civilization
, emerged in New York. Alfred Stieglitz
(1864–1946), photographer, Charles Demuth
(1883–1935) and Marsden Hartley
(1877–1943), both painters, helped establish an American viewpoint in the fine arts. Stieglitz promoted cubists and abstract painters at his 291 Gallery on 5th Avenue. The Museum of Modern Art
, founded in 1929, became a showcase for American and international contemporary art. By the end of World War II, Paris had declined as the world's art center while New York emerged as the center of contemporary fine art in both the United States and the world.
In the years after World War II, a group of young New York artists known as the New York School
formed the first truly original school of painting in America that exerted a major influence on foreign artists: abstract expressionism
. Among the movement's leaders were Jackson Pollock
(1912–1956), Willem de Kooning
(1904–1997), and Mark Rothko
(1903–1970). The abstract expressionists abandoned formal composition and representation of real objects to concentrate on instinctual arrangements of space and color and to demonstrate the effects of the physical action of painting on the canvas.
New York's vibrant visual art scene in the 1950s and 1960s also defined the American pop art
movement. Members of this next artistic generation favored a different form of abstraction: works of mixed media. Among them were Jasper Johns
(1930– ), who used photos, newsprint, and discarded objects in his compositions. Pop artists, such as Andy Warhol
(1930–1987), Larry Rivers
(1923–2002), and Roy Lichtenstein
(1923–1997), reproduced, with satiric care, everyday objects and images of American popular culture—Coca-Cola bottles, soup cans, comic strips.
Today New York is a global center for the international art market. The industry is clustered in neighborhoods known for their art galleries, such as Chelsea
and DUMBO
, where dealers representing both established and up-and-coming artists compete for sales with bigger exhibition spaces, better locations, and stronger connections to museums and collectors. Wall Street money and funds from philanthropists flow steadily into the art market, often prompting artists to move from gallery to gallery in pursuit of riches and fame.
Enriching and countering this mainstream commercial movement is the constant flux of underground movements, such as hip-hop art and graffiti, which engendered such artists as Keith Haring
and Jean-Michel Basquiat
, and continue to add visual texture and life to the atmosphere of the city.
Long Island City
(LIC) in Queens
is rapidly flourishing art scene in New York City, serving as home to the largest concentration of arts institutions outside of Manhattan. Its abundance of industrial warehouses provide ample studio and exhibition space for many renowned artists, museums and galleries.
Many major artists have created public works in the city, including Jeff Koons
, Louise Bourgeois
, Nam June Paik
, and Jim Power the "Mosaic Man." Anish Kapoor
's Sky Mirror, a highly reflective stainless steel dish nearly three stories tall, was on view at Rockefeller Center in September and October 2006.
In 2005 Christo and Jeanne-Claude
installed The Gates
, a site-specific art project inspired by traditional Japanese torii
gates. The installation consisted of 7,503 metal "gates" along 23 miles (37 km) of pathways in Central Park. From each gate hung a flag-shaped piece of saffron-colored nylon fabric.
The subway system also hosts several public art projects, including intricate tile mosaics and station signage.
Subversive public art trends have also coursed through New York City. Toward the end of the 1960s the modern American graffiti
subculture began to form in Philadelphia, 95 miles south of New York. By 1970, the center of graffiti innovation moved from Philadelphia to New York City, where the graffiti art subculture inspired an artistic style and social philosophy dubbed "Zoo York
." The name originated from a subway tunnel running underneath the Central Park Zoo
that was the haunt of very early "oldschool" graffiti writers like ALI
(Marc André Edmonds), founder of The Soul Artists. The subway tunnel became a scene where crews of Manhattan graffiti artists gathered at night. With greater law enforcement and aggressive cleaning of subway trains in the 1980s and 1990s, the graffiti movement in New York eventually faded from the subway.
The early 20th century saw the emergence of modern dance
in New York, a new, distinctively American art form. Perhaps the best known figure in modern dance, Martha Graham
, was a pupil of pioneer Ruth St. Denis
. Many of Graham's most popular works were produced in collaboration with New York's leading composers – Appalachian Spring with Aaron Copland, for example. Merce Cunningham
, a former ballet student and performer with Martha Graham, presented his first New York solo concert with John Cage
in 1944. Influenced by Cage and embracing modernist ideology
using postmodern
processes, Cunningham introduced chance procedures and pure movement to choreography and Cunningham technique to the cannon of 20th century dance techniques. Cunningham set the seeds for postmodern dance
with his non-linear, non-climactic, non-psychological abstract work. In these works each element is in and of itself expressive, and the observer determines what it communicates. George Balanchine
, one of the 20th century's foremost choreographers and the first pioneer of contemporary ballet
, formed a bridge between classical and modern ballet. Balanchine used flexed hands (and occasionally feet), turned-in legs, off-centered positions and non-classical costumes to distance himself from the classical and romantic ballet traditions. Balanchine also brought modern dancers in to dance with his company, the New York City Ballet
; one such dancer was Paul Taylor, who in 1959 performed in Balanchine's piece Episodes. Another significant modern choreographer, Twyla Tharp
, choreographed Push Comes To Shove for the American Ballet Theatre
under Mikhail Baryshnikov
's artistic directorship in 1976; in 1986 she created In The Upper Room for her own company. Both these pieces were considered innovative for their use of distinctly modern movements melded with the characteristics of contemporary ballet such as the use of pointe shoes
and classically-trained dancers.
New York has also historically been a center for African-American modern dance. Alvin Ailey
, a student of Lester Horton
(and later Martha Graham), spent several years working in both concert and theatre dance. In 1958 Ailey and a group of young African-American dancers formed the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performs annually at City Center Theater in New York City. Ailey drew upon his memories of Texas, the blues, spirituals and gospel as inspiration. Bill T. Jones
, winner of a MacArthur "Genius" Award in 1994, choreographed for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, among others. Another significant African-American dancer, Pearl Primus
, made her debut on February 24, 1943 at the 92nd Street Y
as a social-protest dancer. Her concerns and expression fit into the landscape of the ongoing Harlem renaissance and gained much public support, and was immediately graced with attention after her first professional solo debut. Her dances were inspired by revolutionary African-American choreographer Katherine Dunham
. Primus became known for her singular ability to jump very high while dancing. She focused on matters such as oppression, racial prejudice, and violence.
New York was the birthplace of other dance forms, as well. Breakdance became an influential street dance style that emerged as part of the hip hop movement in African-American and Puerto Rican communities in the South Bronx in the early 1970s. It is arguably the best known of all hip hop dance styles. Popular speculations of the early 1980s suggest that breakdancing, in its organized fashion seen today, began as a method for rival gangs of the ghetto to mediate and settle territorial disputes. In a turn-based showcase of dance routines, the winning side was determined by the dancers who could outperform the other by displaying a set of more complicated and innovative moves. It later was through the highly energetic performances of the late funk legend James Brown
and the rapid growth of dance teams, like the Rock Steady Crew
of the Bronx, that the competitive ritual of gang warfare evolved into a pop-culture phenomenon receiving massive media attention. Parties, disco clubs, talent shows, and other public events became typical locations for breakdancers, including gang members for whom dancing served as a positive diversion from the threats of city life.
, but its billions of dollars in revenue makes it an important part of the city's economy and places it as the second largest center for the film industry in the United States.
New York was an epicenter of filmmaking in the earliest days of the American film industry, but the better year-round weather of Hollywood eventually saw California becoming the home of American cinema. The Kaufman-Astoria film studio in Queens, built during the silent film
era, was used by the Marx Brothers
and W. C. Fields
. As cinema moved west, much of the motion picture infrastructure in New York was used for the burgeoning television industry. Kaufman-Astoria eventually became the set for The Cosby Show
and Sesame Street
.
New York City has recently seen a renaissance in filmmaking; 276 independent and studio films were in production in the city in 2006, an increase from 202 in 2004 and 180 in 2003. More than a third of professional actors in the United States are based in New York.
One of the filmmakers most associated with New York is Woody Allen
, whose films include Annie Hall
and Manhattan
. Other New Yorkers in film include the actor Robert De Niro
, who started the Tribeca Film Festival
after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and the directors Martin Scorsese
, Francis Ford Coppola
, Spike Lee
, Jim Jarmusch, Joel and Ethan Coen, and many others.
While major studio productions are based in Hollywood, New York has become a capital of independent film. The city is home to a number of important film festivals, including the Tribeca Film Festival, the New York Film Festival
and the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, as well as major independent film companies like Miramax Films
. New York is also home to the Anthology Film Archives
, the earliest surviving collective of avant-garde filmmakers, which preserves and exhibits hundreds of underground works from the entire span of film history.
The oldest public-access television
in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network
, well known for its eclectic local programming that ranges from a jazz hour to discussion of labor issues to foreign language and religious programming. There are eight other Public, educational, and government access
(PEG) cable TV channels in New York, including Brooklyn Cable Access Television.
New York City's municipally-owned broadcast television service, NYCTV
, creates original programming that includes Emmy Award-winning shows like Blue Print New York and Cool in Your Code, as well as coverage of New York City government
. Other popular programs on NYCTV include music shows; New York Noise showcases music videos of local, underground, and indie rock musicians as well as coverage of major music-related events in the city like the WFMU
Record Fair, interviews of New York icons (like The Ramones
and Klaus Nomi
), and comedian hosts (like Eugene Mirman
, Rob Huebel
, and Aziz Ansari
). The Bridge, similarly, chronicles old school hip hop. The channel has won 14 New York Emmys and 14 National Telly awards.
in the United States. The city is home to a number of leading comedy club
s including Caroline's
.
was invented in New York City in the early 1930s as a way to cheaply repackage and resell newspaper comic strip
s, which also experienced their major period of creative growth and development in New York papers in the first decades of the 20th century. Immigrant culture in the city was the central topic and inspiration for comics from the days of Hogan's Alley
, the Yellow Kid
, The Katzenjammer Kids and beyond. Virtually all creators and workers employed in the early comic book industry were based in New York, from publishers to artists, many of them coming from immigrant Jewish families in the Lower East Side and Brooklyn.
It can be argued that superhero
es, the uniquely American contribution to comic books, owe their origin to New York, despite the fact that the first superhero, Superman
, was created by two artists from Cleveland, Ohio
. Even when not based explicitly in New York, superhero stories often make use of recognizable stand-ins for the city, such as Metropolis
or Gotham City
(Gotham being a common nickname for New York). The form and narrative conventions of superhero stories frequently dictate New York-sized cities as the settings, even generically.
Marvel Comics
became famous for breaking with convention and setting their stories explicitly in a "real" New York, giving recognizable addresses for the homes of their major characters. Peter Parker, Spider-Man
, lived with his Aunt May
in Forest Hills, Queens. The Baxter Building
, long-time home of the Fantastic Four
, was located at 42nd and Madison Avenue. In 2007, the City of New York declared April 30 May 6 "Spider-Man Week" in honor of the release of Spider-Man 3
. Both of the previous Spider-Man movies made heavy use of New York as a backdrop and included crowd scenes filled with "stereotypical New Yorkers."
New York also served as an inspiration and home for much of America's non-superhero comic books, famously starting with cartoonist and Brooklyn native Will Eisner
's many depictions of everyday life among poor, working-class and immigrant New Yorkers. Today New York's alternative comics scene is thriving, including native New Yorkers Art Spiegelman
, Ben Katchor
and Dean Haspiel
, graduates of the School of Visual Arts
cartooning program (the first accredited cartooning program in the country) and many others.
Meanwhile, New York's comic book history has worked its way into other facets of New York City culture, from the Pop Art of Roy Lichtenstein
to the recent literary production of Brooklyn-based Jonathan Lethem
and Dave Eggers
.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
is one of the world's largest and most important art museums, and is located on the eastern edge of Central Park. It also comprises a building complex known as "The Cloisters" in Fort Tryon Park at the north end of Manhattan Island overlooking the Hudson River which features medieval art. The Museum of Modern Art
(MoMA) is often considered a rival to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Brooklyn Museum
is the second largest art museum in New York and one of the largest in the United States. One of the premier art institutions in the world, its permanent collection includes more than one-and-a-half million objects, from ancient Egyptian masterpieces to contemporary art, and the art of many other cultures.
There are many smaller important galleries and art museums in the city. Among these is the Frick Collection
, one of the preeminent small art museums in the United States, with a very high-quality collection of old master paintings housed in 16 galleries within the former mansion steel magnate Henry Clay Frick
. The collection features some of the best-known paintings by major European artists, as well as numerous works of sculpture and porcelain. It also has furniture, enamel, and carpets.
The Jewish Museum of New York
was first established in 1904, when the Jewish Theological Seminary received a gift a 26 Jewish ceremonial art
objects by Judge Mayer Sulzberger. The museum now boasts a collection 28,000 objects including paintings, sculpture, archaeological artifacts, and many other pieces important to the preservation of Jewish history and culture.
Founded in 1969 by a group of Puerto Rican
artists, educators, community activists and civic leaders, El Museo del Barrio
is located at the top of Museum Mile in Spanish Harlem
, a neighborhood also called 'El Barrio'. Originally, the museum was a creation of the Nuyorican Movement
and Civil Rights Movement, and primarily functioned as a neighborhood institution serving Puerto Ricans. With the increasing size of New York's Latino population, the scope of the museum is expanding.
The American Museum of Natural History
and its Hayden Planetarium
focus on the sciences. There are also many smaller specialty museums, from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
to the International Center of Photography and The Museum of Television and Radio. There is even a Museum of the City of New York
. A number of the city's museums are located along the Museum Mile
section of Fifth Avenue.
In recent years New York has seen a major building boom among its cultural institutions. Long Island City
in Queens is an increasingly thriving location for the arts, home to P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and SculptureCenter for example. SculptureCenter
, New York City's only non-profit exhibition space dedicated to contemporary and innovative sculpture, re-located from Manhattan's Upper East Side to a former trolley repair shop in LIC, renovated by artist/designer Maya Lin in 2002. The museum commissions new work and presents challenging exhibits by emerging and established, national and international artists and hosts a diverse range of public programs including lectures, dialogues, and performances.
In 2006 more than 60 arts institutions spread across the five boroughs, from smaller community organizations like the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts
in Brooklyn to major institutions like the The Morgan Library & Museum, were undergoing or recently completed architectural renovations or new construction. In aggregate the projects represented more than $2.8 billion in investment. The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs budget for building projects was the largest in the city's history: $865 million from 2006 through 2010, up from a $339.6 million planned budget for the 2001-4 period. The Alliance for the Arts, a nonpartisan, nonprofit arts advocacy and research group, reported in 2003 that the economic impact of cultural construction projects in New York — including factors like jobs created and collateral spending in the city — between 1997 and 2002 was $2.3 billion, with an anticipated impact of $2.7 billion for the period from 2003 through 2006.
, is the largest public funder of the arts in the United States. DCLA's funding budget is larger than the National Endowment for the Arts
, the Federal government's national arts funding mechanism. DCLA provides funding and support services to about 1,400 art and cultural organizations in the five boroughs, including 375 museums, 96 orchestras, 24 performing arts centers, 7 botanical gardens, 5 zoos and 1 aquarium. Recipients span many disciplines, including the visual, literary and performing arts; public-oriented science and humanities institutions including zoos, botanical gardens and historic and preservation societies; and creative artists at all skill levels who live and work within the City's five boroughs. DCLA also administers the Percent for Art program, which funds public art at building sites. In fiscal year 2007, DCLA's expense budget, used for funding programming at non-profits, was $151.9 million. Its capital budget, used to support projects at 196 cultural organizations throughout the city ranging from roof replacement to new construction, is roughly $867 million for the period between 2007 and 2011.
To some observers, New York, with its large immigrant
population, seems more of an international city than something specifically "American". But to others, the city's very openness to newcomers makes it the archetype of a "nation of immigrants". The term "melting pot
" derives from the play The Melting Pot, by Israel Zangwill
, who in 1908 adapted Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
to a setting in the Lower East Side, where droves of immigrants from diverse European nations in the early 1900s learned to live together in tenements and row houses for the first time. In 2000, 36% of the city's population was foreign-born. Among American cities this proportion was higher only in Los Angeles and Miami. While the immigrant communities in those cities are dominated by a few nationalities, in New York no single country or region of origin dominates. The seven largest countries of origin are the Dominican Republic
, China
, Jamaica
, Russia
, Italy
, Poland
and India
.
The cultural diversity of New York can be seen in the range of official city holidays. With the growth of New York's South Asian community, Diwali
, the Hindu
Festival of Lights, was recently added to the calendar.
As in many major cities, immigrants to New York often congregate in ethnic enclave
s where they can talk and shop and work with people from their country of origin. Throughout the five boroughs the city is home to many distinct communities of India
ns, Irish
, Italians
, Chinese
, Korea
ns, Dominicans
, Puerto Ricans
, Caribbean
s, Hasidic Jews
, Latin America
s, Russia
ns and many others. Many of the largest city-wide annual events are parades celebrating the heritage of New York’s ethnic communities. Attendance at the biggest ones by city and state politicians is politically obligatory. These include the St Patrick's Day Parade
, probably the top Irish heritage parade in the Americas; the Puerto Rican Day Parade
, which often draws up to 3 million spectators; the West Indian Labor Day Parade
, among the largest parades in North America and the largest event in New York City; and the Chinese New Year Parade. New Yorkers of all stripes gather together for these spectacles. Other significant parades include the Gay Pride Parade
, Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and the Coney Island Mermaid Parade
, all icons in the city’s counter-culture pantheon.
New York City has a larger Jewish population than any other city in the world, larger than even Jerusalem. Approximately one million New Yorkers, or about 13%, are Jewish. As a result, New York City culture has borrowed certain elements of Jewish culture, such as bagel
s. The city is also home to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
, the headquarters of Orthodox Jewish
movements, one of three American campuses of Hebrew Union College
of Reform Judaism
, Yeshiva University
, and the home of the Anti-Defamation League
. Temple Emanu-El, the largest Jewish house of worship
in the world, became the first Reform congregation in America in 1845. It is also the home of such Jewish comedians, as Woody Allen
and Jerry Seinfeld
.
New York, with its many ethnic communities and cultural venues, has a large number of major parades and street festivals. SummerStage in Central Park is one of about 1,200 free concerts, dance, theater, and spoke word events citywide sponsored by the City Parks Foundation
.
The Village Halloween Parade
is an annual holiday parade and street pageant presented the night of every Halloween
(October 31) in Greenwich Village. Stretching more than a mile, this cultural event draws two million spectators, fifty thousand costumed participants, dancers, artists and circus performers, dozens of floats bearing live bands and other musical and performing acts, and a worldwide television audience of one hundred million.
The Feast of San Gennaro
, originally a one-day religious commemoration, is now an 11-day street fair held in mid-September in Manhattan's Little Italy
. Centered on Mulberry Street, which is closed to traffic for the occasion, the festival generally features parades, street vendors, sausages and zeppole, games, and a religious candlelit procession which begins immediately after a celebratory mass
at the Church of the Most Precious Blood. Another festival is held with the same attractions at New York's other Little Italy, in the Fordham/Belmont community in the Bronx
. The streets are closed to traffic and the festivities begin early in the morning and proceed late into the night.
Other major parades include the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
, presented by Macy's Department Store and lasting three hours on Thanksgiving Day
, which features enormous inflatable balloons.
A major component of New Year's Eve
celebrations in the United States is the "ball dropping
" on top of One Times Square
that is broadcast live on national television. A 1,070-pound, 6-foot-diameter Waterford Crystal
ball, high above Times Square
, is lowered starting at 23:59:00 and reaching the bottom of its tower at the stroke of midnight (00:00:00). New York Harbor
From 1982 to 1988, New York City dropped a large apple in recognition of its nickname, "The Big Apple." Dick Clark has hosted televised coverage of the event since 1972 with his show, Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve
. For about four decades, until one year before his death in 1977, Canadian violinist and bandleader Guy Lombardo
and his Royal Canadians serenaded the United States from the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue. Their recording of the traditional song Auld Lang Syne
still plays as the first song of the new year in Times Square.
films, to the hellish and chaotic urban jungle depicted in such movies as Martin Scorsese
's Taxi Driver
, New York has served as the backdrop for virtually every conceivable viewpoint on big city life.
In the early years of film, New York City was characterized as urbane and sophisticated. By the city's crisis period in the 1970s and early 1980s, however, films like Midnight Cowboy
, The French Connection
, Taxi Driver
, Marathon Man
, Cruising
, Dressed to Kill, and Death Wish
showed New York as full of chaos and violence. With the city's renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s came new portrayals on television; Friends
, Seinfeld
, and Sex and the City
showed life in the city to be glamorous and interesting. Nonetheless a disproportionate number of crime dramas, such as Law & Order
, continue to make criminality in the city as their subject even as New York has become the safest large city
in the United States in the last two decades.
An essay appearing in the Arts section of the New York Times in April 2006 quoted several filmmakers, including Sidney Lumet
and Paul Mazursky
, describing how modern cinema shows the city as far more "teeming, terrifying, exhilarating, unforgiving" than contemporary New York actually is, and the consequential challenge this poses for filmmakers. The article quotes Robert Greenhut, Woody Allen's
producer, as saying that despite the increased sanitization of modern New York, "New Yorkers' personalities are different to Chicago. There's a certain kind of vibrancy and tone that you can't get elsewhere. The labor pool is more interesting than elsewhere — the salesgirl with one line, or the cop. That's who directors are looking for."
James Sanders, editor of Scenes From the City: Filmmaking in New York, 1966–2006, is quoted in the article as predicting that future films in New York City will move away from the well-worn setting of upper-middle class Manhattan neighborhoods to the outer boroughs, where they will begin examining the crosscurrents emanating from ethnic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.
Partial list of major international cultural centers in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
is reflected by the city's size and variety. Many American cultural movements first emerged in the city. The Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke...
established the African-American renaissance in the United States, while American modern dance
Modern dance
Modern dance is a dance form developed in the early 20th century. Although the term Modern dance has also been applied to a category of 20th Century ballroom dances, Modern dance as a term usually refers to 20th century concert dance.-Intro:...
developed in New York in the early 20th century. The city was the top venue for jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
in the 1940s, expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
in the 1950s, and the home of hip hop, punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
, and the Beat Generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
.
The city of New York is an important center for music, film, theater, dance and visual art. Artists have been drawn into the city by opportunity, as the city government funds the arts with a larger annual budget than the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
, and New York is a major center of the global art market
Art sale
An art auction is the sale of art works, in most cases in an auction house.In England this dates from the latter part of the 17th century, when in most cases the names of the auctioneers were suppressed...
which grew up along with national and international media centres.
Literature
Several important movements originated in New York City. One of the first American writers to gain critical acclaim in Europe, Washington IrvingWashington Irving
Washington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works...
, was a New Yorker whose History of New York (1809) became a cultural touchstone for Victorian New York. Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old-fashioned Dutch New Yorker in Irving's satire of chatty and officious localistic history, made "knickerbocker"
Knickerbockers (clothing)
Knickerbockers are men's or boys' breeches or baggy-kneed trousers particularly popular in the early twentieth century USA. Golfers' plus twos and plus fours were breeches of this type...
a bye-word for quaint Dutch-descended New Yorkers, with their old-fashioned ways and their long-stemmed pipers and knee-breeches long after the fashion had turned to trousers. The New York Knicks
New York Knicks
The New York Knickerbockers, prominently known as the Knicks, are a professional basketball team based in New York City. They are part of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference in the National Basketball Association...
, whose corporate name is the "New York Knickerbockers."
The Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke...
established the African-American literary canon in the United States. The zenith of this “flowering of Negro literature,” as James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for his leadership within the NAACP, as well as for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and...
called it, was between 1924, when Opportunity magazine hosted a party for black writers where many white publishers were in attendance, and the Wall Street Crash of 1929
Wall Street Crash of 1929
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 , also known as the Great Crash, and the Stock Market Crash of 1929, was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout...
and the start of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. African-Americans of the northward Great Migration
Great Migration (African American)
The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million blacks out of the Southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West from 1910 to 1970. Some historians differentiate between a Great Migration , numbering about 1.6 million migrants, and a Second Great Migration , in which 5 million or more...
and African and Caribbean immigrants converged in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
, which became the most famous center of Negro life in the United States at that time. A militant black editor indicated in 1920 that "the intrinsic standard of Beauty and aesthetics does not rest in the white race" and that "a new racial love, respect, and consciousness may be created." The work of black Harlem writers sought to challenge the pervading racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
of the larger white community and often promoted progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
or socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
politics and racial integration
Racial integration
Racial integration, or simply integration includes desegregation . In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of race, and the development of a culture that draws on diverse traditions, rather than merely...
. No singular style emerged; instead there was a mix ranging from the celebration of Pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism is a movement that seeks to unify African people or people living in Africa, into a "one African community". Differing types of Pan-Africanism seek different levels of economic, racial, social, or political unity...
, “high-culture” and “street culture,” to new experimental forms in literature like modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
, to Classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
and improvisational jazz that inspired the new form of jazz poetry
Jazz poetry
Jazz poetry is poetry that "demonstrates jazz-like rhythm or the feel of improvisation". During the 1920s, several poets began to eschew the conventions of rhythm and style; among these were Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and E. E. Cummings...
.
The mid-20th century saw the emergence of The New York Intellectuals
The New York Intellectuals
The New York Intellectuals were a group of Jewish American writers and literary critics based in New York City in the mid-20th century. They advocated left-wing politics but were also firmly anti-Stalinist...
, a group of American writers and literary critics who advocated leftist, anti-Stalinist political ideas and who sought to integrate literary theory
Literary theory
Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...
with Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
. Many of the group were students at the City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
in the 1930s and associated with the left-wing political journal The Partisan Review
Partisan Review
Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:...
. Writer Nicholas Lemann
Nicholas Lemann
Nicholas Berthelot Lemann is dean and Henry R. Luce professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City.Lemann is from New Orleans and he graduated from Harvard University in 1976, but has never attended a school of journalism. He is a journalist, editor, and author...
has described the New York Intellectuals as "the American Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...
". Writers often considered among the New York Intellectuals include Robert Warshow
Robert Warshow
Robert Warshow was an American author, a critic and essayist, who wrote about film and popular culture for Commentary magazine and The Partisan Review in the mid-20th century...
, Philip Rahv
Philip Rahv
Philip Rahv was an American literary critic and essayist.-Life:...
, William Phillips
William Phillips
William Phillips may refer to:*William Phillips , artilleryman and general officer in the British Army who served as a major-general in the American Revolutionary War...
, Mary McCarthy
Mary McCarthy (author)
Mary Therese McCarthy was an American author, critic and political activist.- Early life :Born in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife, the former Therese Preston, McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the great flu epidemic of 1918...
, Dwight Macdonald
Dwight Macdonald
Dwight Macdonald was an American writer, editor, film critic, social critic, philosopher, and political radical.-Early life and career:...
, Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. With wife Diana Trilling, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review. Although he did not establish a school of literary criticism, he is one of the leading U.S...
, Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg was an American essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century...
, Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol was an American columnist, journalist, and writer who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism"...
, Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook was an American pragmatic philosopher known for his contributions to public debates.A student of John Dewey, Hook continued to examine the philosophy of history, of education, politics, and of ethics. After embracing Marxism in his youth, Hook was known for his criticisms of...
, Irving Howe
Irving Howe
Irving Howe was an American literary and social critic and a prominent figure of the Democratic Socialists of America.-Life and career:...
, Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin was an American writer and literary critic, many of whose writings depicted the immigrant experience in early twentieth century America....
, and Daniel Bell
Daniel Bell
Daniel Bell was an American sociologist, writer, editor, and professor emeritus at Harvard University, best known for his seminal contributions to the study of post-industrialism...
. The 1940s and 1950s also saw the rise in prominence of Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
, who was based in New York for many years and whose novels The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead is a 1943 novel by Ayn Rand. It was Rand's first major literary success and brought her fame and financial success. More than 6.5 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide....
and Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand, first published in 1957 in the United States. Rand's fourth and last novel, it was also her longest, and the one she considered to be her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing...
were both set in the city.
Parallel and counter to these mainstream groups have been such New York-centered underground movements as the Beat
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
poets and writers, including Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
, Gregory Corso
Gregory Corso
Gregory Nunzio Corso was an American poet, youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers...
and others, continuing into the 1980s and beyond with such writers as Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker was an American experimental novelist, punk poet, playwright, essayist, postmodernist and sex-positive feminist writer. She was strongly influenced by the Black Mountain School, William S...
and Eileen Myles
Eileen Myles
Eileen Myles is an American poet who has also worked in fiction, non-fiction, and theater.She won a 2010 Shelley Memorial Award.-Early life and career:...
. Various movements down through the years have centered around avant-garde publishing enterprises such as Grove Press
Grove Press
Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1951. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United States. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the aegis of its...
and Evergreen Review
Evergreen Review
Evergreen Review is a U.S.-based literary magazine founded by Barney Rosset, publisher of Grove Press. It existed in print from 1957 through 1973, and was re-launched online in 1998...
, as well as unnumbered zine
Zine
A zine is most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest usually reproduced via photocopier....
-style pamphlets and one-off literary productions still available in independent bookstores today. At present the underground continues to thrive in the form of small press
Small press
Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...
literary publishers, including Soft Skull Press
Soft Skull Press
Soft Skull Press is an independent publisher founded by Sander Hicks in 1992, and run by Richard Eoin Nash from 2001 to 2009. In 2007, Nash sold Soft Skull to Counterpoint LLC, where it continues to function as a division of the press...
, Fugue State Press
Fugue State Press
Fugue State Press is a small New York City fiction publisher, specializing in the experimental novel. It has published twenty titles to date, including work by Joshua Cohen, Noah Cicero, Shane Jones, Ben Brooks, James Chapman, Prakash Kona, Eckhard Gerdes, André Malraux, W. B. Keckler, Vi Khi...
, Dennis Cooper
Dennis Cooper
Dennis Cooper is an American novelist, poet, critic, editor and performance artist.-Career:Cooper grew up the son of a wealthy businessman in Arcadia, California. His first forays into literature came early, focusing on imitations of Rimbaud, Verlaine, de Sade, and Baudelaire...
's Little House on the Bowery/Akashic Press, and many others.
Over the years many literary institutions have developed in the city, including the PEN American Center
PEN American Center
PEN American Center , founded in 1922 and based in New York City, works to advance literature, to defend free expression, and to foster international literary fellowship. The Center has a membership of 3,300 writers, editors, and translators...
, the largest of the international literary organization's centers. The PEN American Center plays an important role in New York's literary community and is active in defending free speech, the promotion of literature, and the fostering of international literary fellowship. Literary journals, including The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
, n+1
N+1
n+1 is a New York–based American literary magazine that publishes social criticism, political commentary, essays, art, poetry, book reviews, and short fiction. It is published three times each year, and content is published on several times each week...
, The New Criterion
The New Criterion
The New Criterion is a New York-based monthly literary magazine and journal of artistic and cultural criticism, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball. It has sections for criticism of poetry, theater, art, music, the media, and books...
, and New York Quarterly
New York Quarterly
The New York Quarterly is a popular contemporary American poetry magazine. Established by William M. Packard in 1969, Rolling Stone Magazine has called the NYQ "the most important poetry magazine in America."- History :...
are also important in the city's literary scene.
Contemporary writers based in the city, many of whom live in the Park Slope
Park Slope, Brooklyn
Park Slope is a neighborhood in western Brooklyn, New York City's most populous borough. Park Slope is roughly bounded by Prospect Park West to the east, Fourth Avenue to the west, Flatbush Avenue to the north, and 15th Street to the south, though other definitions are sometimes offered. Generally...
neighborhood of Brooklyn, include Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
, Barbara Garson
Barbara Garson
Barbara Garson is an American playwright, author and social activist.Garson is best known for the play MacBird, a notorious 1966 counterculture drama/political parody of Macbeth that sold over half a million copies as a book and had over 90 productions world wide...
, Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo is an American author, playwright, and occasional essayist whose work paints a detailed portrait of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries...
, Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa Lahiri is a Bengali American author. Lahiri's debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies , won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and her first novel, The Namesake , was adapted into the popular film of the same name. She was born Nilanjana Sudeshna, which she says are both...
, Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer is an American author best known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close...
, Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels...
, Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
and many others. New York has also been a flourishing scene for Jewish American literature
Jewish American literature
Jewish American Literature holds an essential place in the literary history of the United States. It encompasses traditions of writing in English, primarily, as well as in other languages, the most important of which has been Yiddish...
, as well as for Puerto Rican
Puerto Ricans in the United States
Stateside Puerto Ricans are American citizens of Puerto Rican origin, including those who migrated from Puerto Rico to the United States and those who were born outside of Puerto Rico in the United States...
poets and writers, who call themselves "nuyorican
Nuyorican
Nuyorican is a portmanteau of the terms "New York" and "Puerto Rican" and refers to the members or culture of the Puerto Rican diaspora located in or around New York State especially the New York City metropolitan area, or of their descendants...
s" (a blending of the phrases "New York" and "Puerto Rican"). The landmark Nuyorican Poets Café
Nuyorican Poets Café
The Nuyorican Poets Café is a non-profit organization in Alphabet City, Manhattan. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement in New York City, USA, and has become a forum for poetry, music, hip hop, video, visual arts, comedy and theatre.-History:...
is a bastion of the Nuyorican Movement
Nuyorican Movement
The Nuyorican Movement is a cultural and intellectual movement involving poets, writers, musicians and artists who are Puerto Rican or of Puerto Rican descent, who live in or near New York City, and either call themselves or are known as Nuyoricans...
, an intellectual movement involving poets, writers, musicians and artists of Puerto Rican descent, mostly notably the late Pedro Pietri
Pedro Pietri
Pedro Pietri , was a Nuyorican poet and playwright who co-founded the Nuyorican Poets Café. He was the poet laureate of the Nuyorican Movement.-Early years :...
and Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel YO-YO BOING! and the poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams , which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States...
.
While New York State
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
has an official poet Laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
, New York City does not. Instead, by tradition it hosts an annual "People's Poetry Gathering", curated by the City University of New York
City University of New York
The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
and city poetry groups, in which ordinary New Yorkers offer their own lines to an epic poem for the city. This technique was also used in the creation of a spontaneous poetic response by New Yorkers to the September 11, 2001 attacks that became a travelling exhibition called Missing: Streetscape of a City in Mourning. The poems, with 110 lines each for the 110 stories of the destroyed World Trade Center towers, were printed on black, billowing cotton banners over 25 feet in height.
Theatre
Many musicals in New York City became seminal national cultural events, like the controversial 1937 staging of Marc Blitzstein
Marc Blitzstein
Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, better known as Marc Blitzstein , was an American composer. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration...
's labor union opera The Cradle Will Rock
The Cradle Will Rock
The Cradle Will Rock is a 1937 musical by Marc Blitzstein. Originally a part of the Federal Theatre Project, it was directed by Orson Welles, and produced by John Houseman. The show was recorded and released on seven 78-rpm discs in 1938, making it the first cast album recording.The musical is a...
, directed by Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
and produced by John Houseman
John Houseman
John Houseman was a Romanian-born British-American actor and film producer who became known for his highly publicized collaboration with director Orson Welles from their days in the Federal Theatre Project through to the production of Citizen Kane...
. Originally to open at the Maxine Elliott Theatre
Maxine Elliott Theatre
The Maxine Elliott Theatre was a Broadway theater located at 109 West 39th Street in New York City. Built in 1908, it was demolished in 1960. The theater was designed by architect Benjamin Marshall of the Chicago firm Marshall and Fox....
with elaborate sets and a full orchestra, the production was shut down on opening night, and Welles, Housman, and Blitzstein scrambled to rent the Venice Theatre twenty blocks north. The crowds gathered to see the production walked up 7th Avenue, and by nine o'clock the Venice Theatre’s 1,742 seats were sold out. Blitzstein began performing the musical solo, but after beginning the first number he was joined by cast members, who were forbidden by the Actor's Union to perform the piece "onstage", from their seats in the audience. Blitzstein and the cast performed the entire musical from the house. Many who attended the performance, including poet Laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.-Early years:...
, thought it to be one of the most moving theatrical experiences of their lives. Performances of the musical to this day rarely use elaborate sets or an orchestra in homage to this event.
Houseman and Wells went on to found the Mercury Theatre
Mercury Theatre
The Mercury Theatre was a theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and John Houseman. After a string of live theatrical productions, in 1938 the Mercury Theatre progressed into their best-known period as The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a radio series that included one of the...
and do radio drama
Radio drama
Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story...
, in which they performed one of the most notable radio broadcasts of all time, The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds (radio)
The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938, and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker...
.
Many New York playwrights, including Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
and Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...
, became icons in American theater.
Professional Yiddish theatre
Yiddish theatre
Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Central European Ashkenazi Jewish community. The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satiric or nostalgic revues; melodrama; naturalist drama; expressionist and...
in New York, a major cultural influence in the city, began in 1882 with a troupe founded by Boris Thomashefsky
Boris Thomashefsky
Boris Thomashefsky was a Ukrainian-born Jewish singer and actor who became one of the biggest stars in Yiddish theatre; born in Tarashcha , a shtetl near Kiev, Ukraine, he emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 12 in 1881...
, an immigrant from Ukraine. The plays in the late 19th century were realistic, while in the beginning of the 20th century, they became more political and artistic in orientation. Some performers were well-respected enough to move back and forth between the Yiddish theatre and Broadway, including Bertha Kalich
Bertha Kalich
Bertha Kalich, was a Jewish actress, born in Lemberg, Galicia...
and Jacob Adler
Jacob Pavlovich Adler
Jacob Pavlovich Adler , born Yankev P. Adler, was a Jewish actor and star of Yiddish theater, first in Odessa, and later in London and New York City....
. Some of the major composers included Abraham Goldfaden
Abraham Goldfaden
Abraham Goldfaden ; was an Russian-born Jewish poet, playwright, stage director and actor in the languages Yiddish and Hebrew, author of some 40 plays.Goldfaden is considered the father of the Jewish modern theatre.In 1876 he founded in...
, Joseph Rumshinsky and Sholom Secunda, while playwrights included David Pinski
David Pinski
David Pinski was a Yiddish language writer, probably best known as a playwright. At a time when Eastern Europe was only beginning to experience the industrial revolution, Pinski was the first to introduce to its stage a drama about urban Jewish workers; a dramatist of ideas, he was notable also...
, Solomon Libin, Jacob Michailovitch Gordin
Jacob Michailovitch Gordin
Jacob Michailovitch Gordin was a Russian-born American playwright active in the early years of Yiddish theater. He is known for introducing realism and naturalism into Yiddish theater....
and Leon Kobrin
Leon Kobrin
Leon Kobrin was a playwright in Yiddish theater, writer of short stories and novels, and a translator. As a playwright he is generally seen as a disciple of Jacob Gordin, but his mature work was more character-driven, more open and realistic in its presentation of human sexual desire, and less...
.
Concurrently with Yiddish theatre was the development of Vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
(a term thought to be a corruption of the old French word vaudevire, meaning an occasional or topical light popular song), a style of multi-act theatre which flourished from the 1880s through to the 1920s. An evening's schedule of performances (or "bill") could run the gamut from acrobats to mathematicians, from song-and-dance duos and Shakespeare to animal acts and opera. The usual date given for the "birth" of vaudeville is October 24, 1881, the night during which variety performer and theatre owner Tony Pastor
Tony Pastor
Tony Pastor was an American impresario, variety performer and theatre owner who became one of the founding forces behind American vaudeville in the mid-to-late nineteenth century...
, in his effort to lure women into the male-dominated variety hall, famously staged the first bill of self-proclaimed "clean" vaudeville in New York City. African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
audiences had their own vaudevill circuits, as did speakers of Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
and Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
. The Palace Theatre
Palace Theatre, New York
The Palace Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 1564 Broadway in midtown-Manhattan.-History:Designed by architects Kirchoff & Rose, the theatre was built by Martin Beck a California vaudeville entrepreneur and Broadway impresario. The project experienced a number of business problems before...
on Broadway, described by its owner, Martin Beck
Martin Beck (vaudeville)
Martin Beck was a vaudeville theatre owner who founded Orpheum Circuit, Inc.-Early Life and Career:Martin Beck was born on 31 July, 1868 at Liptovský Mikuláš, a town in northern Slovakia that at the time of his birth was ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire...
, as "the Valhalla
Valhalla
In Norse mythology, Valhalla is a majestic, enormous hall located in Asgard, ruled over by the god Odin. Chosen by Odin, half of those that die in combat travel to Valhalla upon death, led by valkyries, while the other half go to the goddess Freyja's field Fólkvangr...
of vaudeville" opened with vaudeville shows from the Keith Circuit
Benjamin Franklin Keith
Benjamin Franklin Keith was an American vaudeville theatre owner, highly influential in the evolution of variety theater into vaudeville.-Early years:...
and lured the best and brightest in vaudeville. Its shift to a full bill of movies on November 16, 1932 is generally regarded as the death of vaudeville.
Today the 39 largest theatres (with more than 500 seats) in New York are collectively known as "Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
" after the major thoroughfare
Broadway (New York City)
Broadway is a prominent avenue in New York City, United States, which runs through the full length of the borough of Manhattan and continues northward through the Bronx borough before terminating in Westchester County, New York. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in the city, dating to...
through the theatre district, and are mostly located in the Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
vicinity. Many Broadway shows are world famous, such as the musicals Cats
Cats (musical)
Cats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot...
and The Phantom of the Opera
The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical)
The Phantom of the Opera is a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the French novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Gaston Leroux.The music was composed by Lloyd Webber, and most lyrics were written by Charles Hart, with additional lyrics by Richard Stilgoe. Alan Jay Lerner was an early collaborator,...
. Along with those of London's West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
, theaters in New York's Broadway district are often considered to be the most professional in the English language.
Smaller theatres, termed off Broadway and off-off-Broadway
Off-Off-Broadway
Off-Off-Broadway theatrical productions in New York City are those in theatres that are smaller than Broadway and Off-Broadway theatres. Off-Off-Broadway theaters are often defined as theaters that have fewer than 100 seats, though the term can be used for any show in the New York City area that...
depending on their size, have the flexibility to produce more innovative shows for smaller audiences. An important center of the American theatre avant-garde, New York has been host to such seminal experimental theatre groups as The Wooster Group
The Wooster Group
The Wooster Group is a New York City-based experimental theater company known for creating numerous original dramatic works. It gradually emerged during 1975-1980 from Richard Schechner's The Performance Group and took its name in 1980...
and Richard Foreman
Richard Foreman
Richard Foreman is an American playwright and avant-garde theater pioneer. He is the founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater.-Life :...
's Ontological-Hysteric Theater
Ontological-Hysteric Theater
The Ontological-Hysteric Theater was founded in 1968 by Richard Foreman. According to his website, his aim was-Total Theater:According to his website,-Production history:...
.
The subways of New York are also occasional venues for beauty pageants and guerrilla theater. The MTA's annual Miss Subways contest ran from 1941 to 1976 and again in 2004 (under the revised name "Ms Subways"). Past Ms Subways winners include Eleanor Nash, an FBI clerk described by her poster that hung in subway cars in 1960 as "young, beautiful and expert with a rifle." The 2004 Ms Subways winner, Caroline Sanchez-Bernat, was an actress who played a role in Sunday Brunch 4. The 35-minute piece of performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
was a full enactment of a Sunday brunch — including crisp white tablecloth, spinach salad appetizer and attentive waiter in black tuxedo — performed aboard a southbound A train in 2000. With subway riders looking on, the actors chatted amiably about Christmas, exchanged gifts and signed for a package delivered by a United Parcel Service delivery man who entered the scene at the West 34th Street stop.
Music
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century...
's songcraft
Songwriter
A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...
, New York became a major center for the American music industry. Since then the city has served as an important center for many different musical genres.
New York's status as a center for European classical music can be traced back to the early 19th century. The New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...
, formed in 1842, did much to help establish the city's musical reputation. The first two major New York composers were William Fry
William Fry
William Fry may refer to:*William Henry Fry , American composer*William Fry , Australian politician of Higinbotham Province, Victoria...
and George Frederick Bristow
George Frederick Bristow
George Frederick Bristow was an American composer. He advocated American classical music, rather than favoring European pieces. He was famously involved in a related controversy involving William Henry Fry and the New York Philharmonic Society.-Musical career:Bristow was born into a musical...
, who in 1854 famously criticized the Philharmonic for choosing European composers over American ones. Bristow was committed to developing an American classical music tradition. His most important work was the Rip Van Winkle opera, which most influentially used an American folktale rather than European imitations.
The best-known New York composer, indeed, the best-known American classical composer of any kind, was George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
. Gershwin was a songwriter with Tin Pan Alley and the Broadway theatres, and his works synthesized elements of many styles, including the music of New York's Yiddish theatre, vaudeville, ragtime, operetta, jazz and the post-Romantic music of European composers. Gershwin's work gave American classical music unprecedented international recognition. Following Gershwin, the next major American composer was Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
from Brooklyn, who used elements of American folk music and jazz in his compositions. His works included the Organ Symphony
Organ Symphony
This page lists the best known Symphonies for solo Organ and Symphonies for Orchestra and Organ. Organ concertos are not listed here.- Edward Shippen Barnes :...
, which earned him comparisons to Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, and the music for the ballet Appalachian Spring
Appalachian Spring
Appalachian Spring is a modern score composed by Aaron Copland that premiered in 1944 and has achieved widespread and enduring popularity as an orchestral suite...
and the Copland Piano Variations
Copland Piano Variations
The Piano Variations of American composer Aaron Copland were written for piano solo from January to October 1930. They were dedicated to American writer Gerald Sykes and were originally published by Cos Cob Press in 1932, which merged with Arrow Music Press in 1938 and was taken over by Boosey &...
.
The New York blues
New York blues
The New York blues is a type of blues music, characterized by significant jazz influences and a more modernized, urban feel than the country blues...
was a type of blues music characterized by significant jazz influences and a more modernized, urban feel than the country blues. Prominent musicians from this field include Lionel Hampton
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, bandleader and actor. Like Red Norvo, he was one of the first jazz vibraphone players. Hampton ranks among the great names in jazz history, having worked with a who's who of jazz musicians, from Benny Goodman and Buddy...
and Big Joe Turner
Big Joe Turner
Big Joe Turner was an American blues shouter from Kansas City, Missouri. According to the songwriter Doc Pomus, "Rock and roll would have never happened without him." Although he came to his greatest fame in the 1950s with his pioneering rock and roll recordings, particularly "Shake, Rattle and...
. In New York, jazz became fused with stride (an advanced form of ragtime
Ragtime
Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...
) and became highly evolved. Among the first major New York jazz musicians was Fletcher Henderson
Fletcher Henderson
James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, Jr. was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. His was one of the most prolific black orchestras and his influence was vast...
, whose jazz orchestra, first appearing in 1923, helped invent swing music. The swing style that developed from New York's big jazz bands was catchy and very danceable, and was originally played largely by black orchestras. Later, white bands led by musicians like Jimmy Dorsey
Jimmy Dorsey
James "Jimmy" Dorsey was a prominent American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, trumpeter, composer, and big band leader. He was known as "JD"...
and Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
began to dominate and produced a number of instrumentalists that had a profound effect on the later evolution of jazz. Star vocalists also emerged, mainly women like the bluesy Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...
and the scat singer
Scat singing
In vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables or without words at all. Scat singing gives singers the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms, to create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using their voice.- Structure and syllable choice...
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...
.
Beginning in the 1940s, New York City was the center of a roots revival
Roots revival
A roots revival is a trend which includes young performers popularizing the traditional musical styles of their ancestors. Often, roots revivals include an addition of newly-composed songs with socially and politically aware lyrics, as well as a general modernization of the folk sound.After an...
in American folk music
American folk music
American folk music is a musical term that encompasses numerous genres, many of which are known as traditional music or roots music. Roots music is a broad category of music including bluegrass, country music, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun and Native American...
. Many New Yorkers took a renewed interested in blues, Appalachian folk music
Old-time music
Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music, with roots in the folk music of many countries, including England, Scotland, Ireland and countries in Africa. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dance, buck dance, and clogging. The genre also...
and other roots styles. Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
, in Lower Manhattan, became a hotbed of American folk music as well as leftist political activism. The performers associated with the Greenwich Village scene had sporadic mainstream success in the 1940s and 50s; some, like Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
and the Almanac Singers
Almanac Singers
The Almanac Singers were a group of folk musicians who, as their name indicates, specialized in topical songs, especially songs connected with the labor movement...
, did well, but most were confined to local coffeehouses and other venues. Performers like Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk was an American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street" ....
and Joan Baez
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....
helped expand the scene by appealing to university students, while Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
came to national prominence in the local folk music scene in the 1960s.
Disco
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
music diverged from the funk, soul and jazz of the 1960s, elevating music from the raw sound of 4-piece garage bands to refined music composed by producers who contracted local symphony and philharmonic orchestras and session musicians. A musical idiom that was strongly associated with minority audiences (especially black audiences and gay audiences), discothèques grew popular in the 1970s and began moving to larger venues. Many of the major disco nightclubs were in New York, including Paradise Garage
Paradise Garage
The Paradise Garage was a discotheque notable in the history of modern gay and nightclub cultures and in dance and pop music. It was founded by Michael Brody, its sole proprietor, and was located at 84 King Street, in the Hudson Square neighborhood of New York City. It operated from 1976 to 1987...
and Studio 54
Studio 54
Studio 54 was a highly popular discotheque from 1977 until 1991, located at 254 West 54th Street in Manhattan, New York, USA. It was originally the Gallo Opera House, opening in 1927, after which it changed names several times, eventually becoming a CBS radio and television studio. In 1977 it...
. This tradition continued in the 1980s with Area
Area (nightclub)
Area was a themed nightclub at 157 Hudson Street in Manhattan, New York City which operated from 1983 to 1987. The theme of the club changed roughly every six weeks, and the club was redecorated for each theme change. Themes included "Night" , "Surrealism", "Suburbia", "Red", and "Gnarly"...
, Danceteria
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...
, and Limelight
The Limelight
The Limelight is the name of a chain of nightclubs that were owned and operated by Peter Gatien, located in Atlanta, Hollywood, Florida, and London, and formerly in New York City and Chicago.-History:...
.
In the 1970s, punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
emerged in New York's downtown music scene with seminal bands such as the New York Dolls
New York Dolls
The New York Dolls is an American rock band, formed in New York in 1971. The band's protopunk sound prefigured much of what was to come in the punk rock era; their visual style influenced the look of many new wave and 1980s-era glam metal groups, and they began the local New York scene that later...
, Ramones
Ramones
The Ramones were an American rock band that formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens, in 1974. They are often cited as the first punk rock group...
and Patti Smith
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
. Anthrax
Anthrax (band)
Anthrax is an American heavy metal band from New York City, formed in 1981. Founded by guitarists Scott Ian and Danny Lilker, the band has since released ten studio albums and 20 singles, and an EP featuring Public Enemy. The band was one of the most popular of the 1980s thrash metal scene...
and KISS
KISS (band)
Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973. Well-known for its members' face paint and flamboyant stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid to late 1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting,...
were the best known heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
and glam
Glam rock
Glam rock is a style of rock and pop music that developed in the UK in the early 1970s, which was performed by singers and musicians who wore outrageous clothes, makeup and hairstyles, particularly platform-soled boots and glitter...
rock performers from the city. The downtown scene developed into the "new wave
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
" style of rock music at downtown clubs like CBGB
CBGB
CBGB was a music club at 315 Bowery at Bleecker Street in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.Founded by Hilly Kristal in 1973, it was originally intended to feature its namesake musical styles, but became a forum for American punk and New Wave bands like Ramones, Misfits, Television, the...
's. The 1970s were also when the Salsa and Latin Jazz movements grew and branched out to the world, still creating a huge impact today. Labels like the "Fania All Stars", leaders like Tito Puente, legends Like Celia Cruz and RM&M Record Label Created who passed away this year (2009), Ralph Mercado, all contributed to stars like Hector LaVoe, Ruben Blades and many, many more. The New Yorican Sound, differed somewhat from Salsa that came from Puerto Rico, it was being sung by Puerto Rican Americans from New York City and had the swagger of the Big Apple.
Hip hop first emerged in the Bronx in the early 1970s at neighborhood block parties
Block party
A block party is a large public party in which many members of a single neighbourhood congregate, either to observe an event of some importance or simply for mutual enjoyment. The name comes from the form of the party, which often involves closing an entire city block to vehicle traffic...
when DJs, like DJ Kool Herc
DJ Kool Herc
Clive Campbell , also known as Kool Herc, DJ Kool Herc and Kool DJ Herc, is a Jamaican-born DJ who is credited with originating hip hop music, in The Bronx, New York City...
, began isolating percussion breaks in funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
and R&B
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
songs and rapping while the audience danced. For many years, New York was the only city with a major hip-hop scene, and all of the early recordings came from New York. People like Kurtis Blow
Kurtis Blow
Kurt Walker , better known by his stage name Kurtis Blow, is an American rapper and record producer. He is one of the first commercially successful rappers and the first to sign with a major record label...
and LL Cool J
LL Cool J
James Todd Smith , better known as LL Cool J , is an American rapper, entrepreneur, and actor...
brought hip hop to the mainstream for the first time, while so-called East Coast rap
East Coast hip hop
East Coast hip hop is a regional subgenre of hip hop music that originated in New York City, USA during the 1970s. Hip hop is recognized to have originated and evolved first in the East Coast...
was defined in the 1980s by artists including Eric B. & Rakim
Eric B. & Rakim
Eric B. & Rakim were a hip-hop duo composed of DJ Eric Barrier and MC Rakim .Hailing from Long Island, New York, the pair are generally considered by hip hop enthusiasts to be one of the most influential and innovative groups in the genre...
, Kurtis Blow
Kurtis Blow
Kurt Walker , better known by his stage name Kurtis Blow, is an American rapper and record producer. He is one of the first commercially successful rappers and the first to sign with a major record label...
and Run-D.M.C.
Run-D.M.C.
Run–D.M.C. was an American hip hop group from Hollis, in the Queens borough of New York City. Founded by Joseph "Run" Simmons, Darryl "D.M.C." McDaniels, and Jason "Jam-Master Jay" Mizell, the group is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential acts in the history of hip hop culture.Run–D.M.C...
. Major New York stars emerged to go on and produce multi-platinum records, including Puff Daddy
Sean Combs
Sean John Combs , also known by his stage names Diddy and P. Diddy, is an American rapper, singer, record producer, actor, and entrepreneur. He has won three Grammy Awards and two MTV Video Music Awards, and his clothing line earned a Council of Fashion Designers of America award. He was originally...
, Jay-Z
Jay-Z
Shawn Corey Carter , better known by his stage name Jay-Z, is an American rapper, record producer, entrepreneur, and occasional actor. He is one of the most financially successful hip hop artists and entrepreneurs in America, having a net worth of over $450 million as of 2010...
and The Notorious B.I.G.
The Notorious B.I.G.
Christopher George Latore Wallace , best known as The Notorious B.I.G., was an American rapper. He was also known as Biggie Smalls , Big Poppa, and The Black Frank White .Wallace was raised in the Brooklyn borough...
, along with critically acclaimed acts like Wu-Tang Clan
Wu-Tang Clan
The Wu-Tang Clan is a hip-hop group from Staten Island that consists of RZA, GZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa, and the late Ol' Dirty Bastard. They are frequently joined by fellow childhood friend Cappadonna, a quasi member of the group...
, Nas
Nas
Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, who performs under the name Nas , formerly Nasty Nas, is an American rapper and actor. He is regarded as one of the most important figures in hip hop and one of the most skilled and influential rappers of all-time...
, Big L
Big L
Big L may refer to:* Lamont Coleman , better know by Big L, American hip-hop artist.Or a number of British radio stations:*Big L 1395, a British radio station.*Radio Luxembourg's English-language progammes ....
, and Busta Rhymes
Busta Rhymes
Trevor Tahiem Smith, Jr., better known by his stage name Busta Rhymes ,Smith is an American rapper, producer and actor. Chuck D of Public Enemy gave him the alias Busta Rhymes after NFL wide receiver George "Buster" Rhymes...
.
New York is also one of only five cities in the United States with permanent professional resident companies in all of the major performing arts disciplines: the New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
, New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...
, New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Leon Barzin was the company's first music director. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company...
, and the Public Theater. The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of New York City's Upper West Side. Reynold Levy has been its president since 2002.-History and facilities:...
, actually a complex of buildings housing 12 separate companies, is the largest arts institution in the world. It is also home to the internationally-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center
Jazz at Lincoln Center
Jazz at Lincoln Center is part of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. JALC's performing arts complex, Frederick P. Rose Hall, is located at West 60th Street and Broadway in New York City, slightly south of the main Lincoln Center campus and directly adjacent to Columbus Circle. Frederick P....
. Other notable performance halls include Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
, Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue located in New York City's Rockefeller Center. Its nickname is the Showplace of the Nation, and it was for a time the leading tourist destination in the city...
, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....
.
With nearly 8 million people riding the city's subway system each day, New York's transit network is also a major venue for musicians. Each week, more than 100 musicians and ensembles – ranging in genre from classical
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
to Cajun, bluegrass
Bluegrass music
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music...
, African
Music of Africa
Africa is a vast continent and its regions and nations have distinct musical traditions. The music of North Africa for the most part has a different history from sub-Saharan African music traditions....
, South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
n and jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
– give over 150 performances sanctioned by New York City Transit at 25 locations throughout the subway system.
Art
Armory Show
Many exhibitions have been held in the vast spaces of U.S. National Guard armories, but the Armory Show refers to the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art that was organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors...
in New York City, an exhibition which brought European modernist artists' work to the U.S., both shocked the public and influenced art making in the United States for the remainder of the twentieth century. The exhibition had a twofold effect of communicating to American artists that artmaking was about expression, not only aesthetics or realism
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
, and at the same time showing that Europe had abandoned its conservative model of ranking artists according to a strict academic hierarchy. This encouraged American artists to find a personal voice, and a modernist movement, responding to American civilization
American studies
American studies or American civilization is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the study of the United States. It traditionally incorporates the study of history, literature, and critical theory, but also includes fields as diverse as law, art, the media, film, religious studies, urban...
, emerged in New York. Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form...
(1864–1946), photographer, Charles Demuth
Charles Demuth
Charles Demuth was an American watercolorist who turned to oils late in his career, developing a style of painting known as Precisionism....
(1883–1935) and Marsden Hartley
Marsden Hartley
Marsden Hartley was an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist.-Early life and education:Hartley was born in Lewiston, Maine, where his English parents had settled. He was the youngest of nine children. His mother died when he was eight, and his father remarried four years later to Martha...
(1877–1943), both painters, helped establish an American viewpoint in the fine arts. Stieglitz promoted cubists and abstract painters at his 291 Gallery on 5th Avenue. The Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, founded in 1929, became a showcase for American and international contemporary art. By the end of World War II, Paris had declined as the world's art center while New York emerged as the center of contemporary fine art in both the United States and the world.
In the years after World War II, a group of young New York artists known as the New York School
New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...
formed the first truly original school of painting in America that exerted a major influence on foreign artists: abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
. Among the movement's leaders were Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
(1912–1956), Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....
(1904–1997), and Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz , was a Russian-born American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted classification as an "abstract painter".- Childhood :Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Province, Russian...
(1903–1970). The abstract expressionists abandoned formal composition and representation of real objects to concentrate on instinctual arrangements of space and color and to demonstrate the effects of the physical action of painting on the canvas.
New York's vibrant visual art scene in the 1950s and 1960s also defined the American pop art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
movement. Members of this next artistic generation favored a different form of abstraction: works of mixed media. Among them were Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns, Jr. is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking.-Life:Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed...
(1930– ), who used photos, newsprint, and discarded objects in his compositions. Pop artists, such as Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
(1930–1987), Larry Rivers
Larry Rivers
Larry Rivers was an American artist, musician, filmmaker and occasional actor. Rivers resided and maintained studios in New York City, Southampton, New York and Zihuatanejo, Mexico.-Biography:...
(1923–2002), and Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...
(1923–1997), reproduced, with satiric care, everyday objects and images of American popular culture—Coca-Cola bottles, soup cans, comic strips.
Today New York is a global center for the international art market. The industry is clustered in neighborhoods known for their art galleries, such as Chelsea
Chelsea, Manhattan
Chelsea is a neighborhood on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The district's boundaries are roughly 14th Street to the south, 30th Street to the north, the western boundary of the Ladies' Mile Historic District – which lies between the Avenue of the Americas and...
and DUMBO
DUMBO, Brooklyn
Dumbo, an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It encompasses two sections: one located between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, which connect Brooklyn to Manhattan across the East River, and another that continues...
, where dealers representing both established and up-and-coming artists compete for sales with bigger exhibition spaces, better locations, and stronger connections to museums and collectors. Wall Street money and funds from philanthropists flow steadily into the art market, often prompting artists to move from gallery to gallery in pursuit of riches and fame.
Enriching and countering this mainstream commercial movement is the constant flux of underground movements, such as hip-hop art and graffiti, which engendered such artists as Keith Haring
Keith Haring
Keith Haring was an artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s.-Early life:...
and Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist. His career in art began as a graffiti artist in New York City in the late 1970s, and in the 1980s produced Neo-expressionist painting.-Early life:...
, and continue to add visual texture and life to the atmosphere of the city.
Long Island City
Long Island City, Queens
Long Island City is the westernmost neighborhood of the borough of Queens in New York City. L.I.C. is notable for its rapid and ongoing gentrification, its waterfront parks, and its thriving arts community. L.I.C. has among the highest concentration of art galleries, art institutions, and studio...
(LIC) in Queens
Queens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
is rapidly flourishing art scene in New York City, serving as home to the largest concentration of arts institutions outside of Manhattan. Its abundance of industrial warehouses provide ample studio and exhibition space for many renowned artists, museums and galleries.
Public art
New York City has a law that requires no less than 1% of the first twenty million dollars of a building project, plus no less than one half of 1% of the amount exceeding twenty million dollars be allocated for art work in any public building that is owned by the city. The maximum allocation for any site is $400,000.Many major artists have created public works in the city, including Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons
Jeffrey "Jeff" Koons is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces....
, Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Joséphine Bourgeois , was a renowned French-American artist and sculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, titled Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the Spiderwoman...
, Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the first video artist....
, and Jim Power the "Mosaic Man." Anish Kapoor
Anish Kapoor
Anish Kapoor CBE RA is a British sculptor of Indian birth. Born in Mumbai , Kapoor has lived and worked in London since the early 1970s when he moved to study art, first at the Hornsey College of Art and later at the Chelsea School of Art and Design.He represented Britain in the XLIV Venice...
's Sky Mirror, a highly reflective stainless steel dish nearly three stories tall, was on view at Rockefeller Center in September and October 2006.
In 2005 Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Christo and Jeanne-Claude were a married couple who created environmental works of art...
installed The Gates
The Gates
The Gates was a site-specific work of art by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The artists installed 7,503 vinyl "gates" along 23 miles of pathways in Central Park in New York City. From each gate hung a panel of deep saffron-colored nylon fabric...
, a site-specific art project inspired by traditional Japanese torii
Torii
A is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the profane to the sacred...
gates. The installation consisted of 7,503 metal "gates" along 23 miles (37 km) of pathways in Central Park. From each gate hung a flag-shaped piece of saffron-colored nylon fabric.
The subway system also hosts several public art projects, including intricate tile mosaics and station signage.
Subversive public art trends have also coursed through New York City. Toward the end of the 1960s the modern American graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
subculture began to form in Philadelphia, 95 miles south of New York. By 1970, the center of graffiti innovation moved from Philadelphia to New York City, where the graffiti art subculture inspired an artistic style and social philosophy dubbed "Zoo York
Zoo York
Zoo York is a style and social philosophy inspired by the New York City graffiti art subculture of the 1970s. Its name originates from a subway tunnel running underneath the area of the Central Park Zoo...
." The name originated from a subway tunnel running underneath the Central Park Zoo
Central Park Zoo
The Central Park Zoo is a small zoo located in Central Park in New York City. It is part of an integrated system of four zoos and the New York Aquarium managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society , and is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums .The zoo began in the 1860s as a...
that was the haunt of very early "oldschool" graffiti writers like ALI
ALI (graffiti artist)
ALI was the graffiti name of artist and musician Marc André Edmonds, also known as J. Walter Negro, “The Playin’ Brown Rapper.” As ALI, he is best known as the founder of 'Soul Artists' and originator of the cult of Zoo York. As "alter-ego" J. Walter Negro ALI was the graffiti name of artist and...
(Marc André Edmonds), founder of The Soul Artists. The subway tunnel became a scene where crews of Manhattan graffiti artists gathered at night. With greater law enforcement and aggressive cleaning of subway trains in the 1980s and 1990s, the graffiti movement in New York eventually faded from the subway.
Dance
Modern dance
Modern dance is a dance form developed in the early 20th century. Although the term Modern dance has also been applied to a category of 20th Century ballroom dances, Modern dance as a term usually refers to 20th century concert dance.-Intro:...
in New York, a new, distinctively American art form. Perhaps the best known figure in modern dance, Martha Graham
Martha Graham
Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.She danced and choreographed for over seventy years...
, was a pupil of pioneer Ruth St. Denis
Ruth St. Denis
Ruth St. Denis was an early modern dance pioneer.-Biography:Ruth St. Denis founded Adelphi University's dance program in 1938 which was one of the first dance departments in an American university...
. Many of Graham's most popular works were produced in collaboration with New York's leading composers – Appalachian Spring with Aaron Copland, for example. Merce Cunningham
Merce Cunningham
Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance...
, a former ballet student and performer with Martha Graham, presented his first New York solo concert with John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
in 1944. Influenced by Cage and embracing modernist ideology
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
using postmodern
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
processes, Cunningham introduced chance procedures and pure movement to choreography and Cunningham technique to the cannon of 20th century dance techniques. Cunningham set the seeds for postmodern dance
Postmodern dance
Postmodern dance is a 20th century concert dance form. A reaction to the compositional and presentation constraints of modern dance, postmodern dance hailed the use of everyday movement as valid performance art and advocated novel methods of dance composition....
with his non-linear, non-climactic, non-psychological abstract work. In these works each element is in and of itself expressive, and the observer determines what it communicates. George Balanchine
George Balanchine
George Balanchine , born Giorgi Balanchivadze in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to a Georgian father and a Russian mother, was one of the 20th century's most famous choreographers, a developer of ballet in the United States, co-founder and balletmaster of New York City Ballet...
, one of the 20th century's foremost choreographers and the first pioneer of contemporary ballet
Contemporary ballet
Contemporary ballet is a form of dance which incorporates elements of both classical ballet and modern dance. It takes its technique and use of pointework from classical ballet, although it permits a greater range of movement that may not adhere to the strict body lines set forth by schools of...
, formed a bridge between classical and modern ballet. Balanchine used flexed hands (and occasionally feet), turned-in legs, off-centered positions and non-classical costumes to distance himself from the classical and romantic ballet traditions. Balanchine also brought modern dancers in to dance with his company, the New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Leon Barzin was the company's first music director. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company...
; one such dancer was Paul Taylor, who in 1959 performed in Balanchine's piece Episodes. Another significant modern choreographer, Twyla Tharp
Twyla Tharp
Twyla Tharp is an American dancer and choreographer, who lives and works in New York City.-Early years:Tharp was born in 1941 on a farm in Portland, Indiana, and was named after Twila Thornburg, the "Pig Princess" of the 89th Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana.she spend hours working on it to help her...
, choreographed Push Comes To Shove for the American Ballet Theatre
American Ballet Theatre
American Ballet Theatre , based in New York City, was one of the foremost ballet companies of the 20th century. It continues as a leading dance company in the world today...
under Mikhail Baryshnikov
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Mikhail Nikolaevich Baryshnikov is a Soviet and American dancer, choreographer, and actor, often cited alongside Vaslav Nijinsky and Rudolf Nureyev as one of the greatest ballet dancers of the 20th century. After a promising start in the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, he defected to Canada in 1974...
's artistic directorship in 1976; in 1986 she created In The Upper Room for her own company. Both these pieces were considered innovative for their use of distinctly modern movements melded with the characteristics of contemporary ballet such as the use of pointe shoes
Pointe shoes
A pointe shoe is a type of shoe worn by ballet dancers when performing pointework. Pointe shoes developed from the desire for dancers to appear weightless and sylph-like and have evolved to enable dancers to dance on the tips of their toes for extended periods of time...
and classically-trained dancers.
New York has also historically been a center for African-American modern dance. Alvin Ailey
Alvin Ailey
Alvin Ailey, Jr. was an American choreographer and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York. Ailey is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African-American participation in 20th century concert dance...
, a student of Lester Horton
Lester Horton
Lester Horton was an American dancer, choreographer, and teacher.-Early years:Lester Iradell Horton was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on January 23, 1906. His parents were Iradell Horton and Pollyanna Horton....
(and later Martha Graham), spent several years working in both concert and theatre dance. In 1958 Ailey and a group of young African-American dancers formed the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is a modern dance company based in New York, New York. It was founded in 1958 by choreographer and dancer Alvin Ailey...
. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performs annually at City Center Theater in New York City. Ailey drew upon his memories of Texas, the blues, spirituals and gospel as inspiration. Bill T. Jones
Bill T. Jones
Bill T. Jones is an American artistic director, choreographer and dancer.-Early life:Jones was born in Bunnell, Florida and his family moved North as part of the Great Migration in the first half of the twentieth century. They settled in Wayland, New York, where Jones attended Wayland High School...
, winner of a MacArthur "Genius" Award in 1994, choreographed for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, among others. Another significant African-American dancer, Pearl Primus
Pearl Primus
Pearl Primus was a dancer, choreographer and anthropologist. Primus played an important role in the presentation of African dance to American audiences. Early in her career she saw the needs to promote African dance as an art form worthy of study and performance...
, made her debut on February 24, 1943 at the 92nd Street Y
92nd Street Y
92nd Street Y is a multifaceted cultural institution and community center located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, at the corner of E. 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Its full name is 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association...
as a social-protest dancer. Her concerns and expression fit into the landscape of the ongoing Harlem renaissance and gained much public support, and was immediately graced with attention after her first professional solo debut. Her dances were inspired by revolutionary African-American choreographer Katherine Dunham
Katherine Dunham
Katherine Mary Dunham was an American dancer, choreographer, songwriter, author, educator, and activist...
. Primus became known for her singular ability to jump very high while dancing. She focused on matters such as oppression, racial prejudice, and violence.
New York was the birthplace of other dance forms, as well. Breakdance became an influential street dance style that emerged as part of the hip hop movement in African-American and Puerto Rican communities in the South Bronx in the early 1970s. It is arguably the best known of all hip hop dance styles. Popular speculations of the early 1980s suggest that breakdancing, in its organized fashion seen today, began as a method for rival gangs of the ghetto to mediate and settle territorial disputes. In a turn-based showcase of dance routines, the winning side was determined by the dancers who could outperform the other by displaying a set of more complicated and innovative moves. It later was through the highly energetic performances of the late funk legend James Brown
James Brown
James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr...
and the rapid growth of dance teams, like the Rock Steady Crew
Rock Steady Crew
Rock Steady Crew is a b-boying crew and hip hop group that was established in the Bronx, New York City in 1977. The group was initially formed by b-boys named Jimmy D and Jojo. In subsequent years, Rock Steady Crew became a franchise name for groups in other locations. The Manhattan branch was...
of the Bronx, that the competitive ritual of gang warfare evolved into a pop-culture phenomenon receiving massive media attention. Parties, disco clubs, talent shows, and other public events became typical locations for breakdancers, including gang members for whom dancing served as a positive diversion from the threats of city life.
Film
New York's film industry is smaller than that of HollywoodHollywood, Los Angeles, California
Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...
, but its billions of dollars in revenue makes it an important part of the city's economy and places it as the second largest center for the film industry in the United States.
New York was an epicenter of filmmaking in the earliest days of the American film industry, but the better year-round weather of Hollywood eventually saw California becoming the home of American cinema. The Kaufman-Astoria film studio in Queens, built during the silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
era, was used by the Marx Brothers
Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950...
and W. C. Fields
W. C. Fields
William Claude Dukenfield , better known as W. C. Fields, was an American comedian, actor, juggler and writer...
. As cinema moved west, much of the motion picture infrastructure in New York was used for the burgeoning television industry. Kaufman-Astoria eventually became the set for The Cosby Show
The Cosby Show
The Cosby Show is an American television situation comedy starring Bill Cosby, which aired for eight seasons on NBC from September 20, 1984 until April 30, 1992...
and Sesame Street
Sesame Street
Sesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...
.
New York City has recently seen a renaissance in filmmaking; 276 independent and studio films were in production in the city in 2006, an increase from 202 in 2004 and 180 in 2003. More than a third of professional actors in the United States are based in New York.
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
, whose films include Annie Hall
Annie Hall
Annie Hall is a 1977 American romantic comedy directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay co-written with Marshall Brickman and co-starring Diane Keaton. One of Allen's most popular and most honored films, it won four Academy Awards including Best Picture...
and Manhattan
Manhattan (film)
Manhattan is a 1979 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen about a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl before eventually falling in love with his best friend's mistress...
. Other New Yorkers in film include the actor Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...
, who started the Tribeca Film Festival
Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca Film Festival is a film festival founded in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff in a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the consequent loss of vitality in the TriBeCa neighborhood in Lower Manhattan.The mission of the festival...
after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and the directors Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
, Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
, Spike Lee
Spike Lee
Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee is an American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, has produced over 35 films since 1983....
, Jim Jarmusch, Joel and Ethan Coen, and many others.
While major studio productions are based in Hollywood, New York has become a capital of independent film. The city is home to a number of important film festivals, including the Tribeca Film Festival, the New York Film Festival
New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival has been a major film festival since it began in 1963 in New York. The films are selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center...
and the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, as well as major independent film companies like Miramax Films
Miramax Films
Miramax Films is an American entertainment company known for distributing independent and foreign films. For its first 14 years the company was privately owned by its founders, Bob and Harvey Weinstein...
. New York is also home to the Anthology Film Archives
Anthology Film Archives
__notoc__Anthology Film Archives is a film archive and theater located at 32 Second Avenue on the corner of East Second Street in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City devoted to the preservation and exhibition of experimental film. It is the only non-profit organization of its...
, the earliest surviving collective of avant-garde filmmakers, which preserves and exhibits hundreds of underground works from the entire span of film history.
The oldest public-access television
Public-access television
Public-access television is a form of non-commercial mass media where ordinary people can create content television programming which is cablecast through cable TV specialty channels...
in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network
Manhattan Neighborhood Network
Manhattan Neighborhood Network is a non-profit organization that broadcasts programming on four public-access television cable TV stations in Manhattan, New York and provides a community media center that enables individuals and groups to produce shows for its network.-History:It has operated...
, well known for its eclectic local programming that ranges from a jazz hour to discussion of labor issues to foreign language and religious programming. There are eight other Public, educational, and government access
Public, educational, and government access
Public, educational, and government access television, refers to three different cable television specialty channels...
(PEG) cable TV channels in New York, including Brooklyn Cable Access Television.
New York City's municipally-owned broadcast television service, NYCTV
NYCTV
NYC TV is a group of Government-access television broadcast and cable TV channels operated by NYC Media Group, a division of the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications...
, creates original programming that includes Emmy Award-winning shows like Blue Print New York and Cool in Your Code, as well as coverage of New York City government
Government of New York City
The government of New York City is organized under the City Charter and provides for a "strong" mayor-council system. The government of New York is more centralized than that of most other U.S...
. Other popular programs on NYCTV include music shows; New York Noise showcases music videos of local, underground, and indie rock musicians as well as coverage of major music-related events in the city like the WFMU
WFMU
WFMU is a listener-supported, independent community radio station headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey, United States, broadcasting at 91.1 MHz FM, presenting a freeform radio format...
Record Fair, interviews of New York icons (like The Ramones
Ramones
The Ramones were an American rock band that formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens, in 1974. They are often cited as the first punk rock group...
and Klaus Nomi
Klaus Nomi
Klaus Sperber , better known as Klaus Nomi, was a German countertenor noted for his wide vocal range and an unusual, otherworldly stage persona....
), and comedian hosts (like Eugene Mirman
Eugene Mirman
Eugene Boris Mirman is a Russian-born American comedian, writer, and filmmaker. Mirman currently plays Yvgeny Mirminsky on Delocated, and voices Gene Belcher for the animated comedy Bob's Burgers.-Early life:Mirman was born in Russia to Jewish parents...
, Rob Huebel
Rob Huebel
Rob Huebel is an American actor, comedian and writer best known for his sketch comedy work on the MTV series Human Giant. He currently co-stars on the Adult Swim series Childrens Hospital.-Early life:...
, and Aziz Ansari
Aziz Ansari
Aziz Ansari is an American actor, writer, and stand-up comedian. He currently stars as Tom Haverford on the NBC show Parks and Recreation....
). The Bridge, similarly, chronicles old school hip hop. The channel has won 14 New York Emmys and 14 National Telly awards.
Stand-up comedy
New York City is considered by many to be the heart of stand-up comedyStand-up comedy
Stand-up comedy is a comedic art form. Usually, a comedian performs in front of a live audience, speaking directly to them. Their performances are sometimes filmed for later release via DVD, the internet, and television...
in the United States. The city is home to a number of leading comedy club
Comedy club
A comedy club is a venue, typically a nightclub, bar, or restaurant where people watch or listen to performances, including stand-up comedians, improvisational comedians, impersonators, magicians, ventriloquists and other comedy acts...
s including Caroline's
Caroline's
Carolines on Broadway is a venue for stand-up comedy located in Times Square in New York City on Broadway between 49th and 50th Street. It is one of the most established, famous, and recognized stand-up comedy clubs in the United States. Its marketing slogan is "America's Premiere Comedy...
.
Comic books
The American comic bookAmerican comic book
An American comic book is a small magazine originating in the United States and containing a narrative in the form of comics. Since 1975 the dimensions have standardized at 6 5/8" x 10 ¼" , down from 6 ¾" x 10 ¼" in the Silver Age, although larger formats appeared in the past...
was invented in New York City in the early 1930s as a way to cheaply repackage and resell newspaper comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
s, which also experienced their major period of creative growth and development in New York papers in the first decades of the 20th century. Immigrant culture in the city was the central topic and inspiration for comics from the days of Hogan's Alley
The Yellow Kid
The Yellow Kid emerged as the lead character in Hogan's Alley, drawn by Richard F. Outcault, which became one of the first Sunday supplement comic strips in an American newspaper, although its graphical layout had already been thoroughly established in political and other, purely-for-entertainment...
, the Yellow Kid
The Yellow Kid
The Yellow Kid emerged as the lead character in Hogan's Alley, drawn by Richard F. Outcault, which became one of the first Sunday supplement comic strips in an American newspaper, although its graphical layout had already been thoroughly established in political and other, purely-for-entertainment...
, The Katzenjammer Kids and beyond. Virtually all creators and workers employed in the early comic book industry were based in New York, from publishers to artists, many of them coming from immigrant Jewish families in the Lower East Side and Brooklyn.
It can be argued that superhero
Superhero
A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...
es, the uniquely American contribution to comic books, owe their origin to New York, despite the fact that the first superhero, Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
, was created by two artists from Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
. Even when not based explicitly in New York, superhero stories often make use of recognizable stand-ins for the city, such as Metropolis
Metropolis (comics)
Metropolis is a fictional city that appears in comic books published by DC Comics, and is the home of Superman. Metropolis first appeared by name in Action Comics #16 ....
or Gotham City
Gotham City
Gotham City is a fictional U.S. city appearing in DC Comics, best known as the home of Batman. Batman's place of residence was first identified as Gotham City in Batman #4 . Gotham City is strongly inspired by Trenton, Ontario's history, location, atmosphere, and various architectural styles...
(Gotham being a common nickname for New York). The form and narrative conventions of superhero stories frequently dictate New York-sized cities as the settings, even generically.
Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
became famous for breaking with convention and setting their stories explicitly in a "real" New York, giving recognizable addresses for the homes of their major characters. Peter Parker, Spider-Man
Spider-Man
Spider-Man is a fictional Marvel Comics superhero. The character was created by writer-editor Stan Lee and writer-artist Steve Ditko. He first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15...
, lived with his Aunt May
Aunt May
May Reilly Parker-Jameson, commonly known as Aunt May, is a supporting character in Marvel Comics' Spider-Man series. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, she first appeared as May Parker in Amazing Fantasy #15...
in Forest Hills, Queens. The Baxter Building
Baxter Building
The Baxter Building is a fictitious 35-story office building in Manhattan whose five upper floors house the Fantastic Four's headquarters in the Marvel Universe.-Publication history:...
, long-time home of the Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four
The Fantastic Four is a fictional superhero team appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The group debuted in The Fantastic Four #1 , which helped to usher in a new level of realism in the medium...
, was located at 42nd and Madison Avenue. In 2007, the City of New York declared April 30 May 6 "Spider-Man Week" in honor of the release of Spider-Man 3
Spider-Man 3
Spider-Man 3 is a 2007 American superhero film written and directed by Sam Raimi, with a screenplay by Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent. It is the third film in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy based on the fictional Marvel Comics character Spider-Man...
. Both of the previous Spider-Man movies made heavy use of New York as a backdrop and included crowd scenes filled with "stereotypical New Yorkers."
New York also served as an inspiration and home for much of America's non-superhero comic books, famously starting with cartoonist and Brooklyn native Will Eisner
Will Eisner
William Erwin "Will" Eisner was an American comics writer, artist and entrepreneur. He is considered one of the most important contributors to the development of the medium and is known for the cartooning studio he founded; for his highly influential series The Spirit; for his use of comics as an...
's many depictions of everyday life among poor, working-class and immigrant New Yorkers. Today New York's alternative comics scene is thriving, including native New Yorkers Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman is an American comics artist, editor, and advocate for the medium of comics, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book memoir, Maus. His works are published with his name in lowercase: art spiegelman.-Biography:Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to Polish Jews...
, Ben Katchor
Ben Katchor
Ben Katchor is an American cartoonist best known for his comic strip Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer. He has contributed comics and drawings to The New Yorker and The New York Times...
and Dean Haspiel
Dean Haspiel
Dean Edmund Haspiel is an American comic book artist. He is known for his collaborations with writer Harvey Pekar on his American Splendor series as well as the graphic novel The Quitter. He has been nominated for numerous Eisner Awards, and won a 2010 Emmy Award for TV design work.-Early...
, graduates of the School of Visual Arts
School of Visual Arts
The School of Visual Arts , is a proprietary art school located in Manhattan, New York City, and is widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. It was established in 1947 by co-founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and...
cartooning program (the first accredited cartooning program in the country) and many others.
Meanwhile, New York's comic book history has worked its way into other facets of New York City culture, from the Pop Art of Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...
to the recent literary production of Brooklyn-based Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels...
and Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is known for the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and for his more recent work as a screenwriter. He is also the co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia.-Life:Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts,...
.
Museums
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
is one of the world's largest and most important art museums, and is located on the eastern edge of Central Park. It also comprises a building complex known as "The Cloisters" in Fort Tryon Park at the north end of Manhattan Island overlooking the Hudson River which features medieval art. The Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
(MoMA) is often considered a rival to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....
is the second largest art museum in New York and one of the largest in the United States. One of the premier art institutions in the world, its permanent collection includes more than one-and-a-half million objects, from ancient Egyptian masterpieces to contemporary art, and the art of many other cultures.
There are many smaller important galleries and art museums in the city. Among these is the Frick Collection
Frick Collection
The Frick Collection is an art museum located in Manhattan, New York City, United States.- History :It is housed in the former Henry Clay Frick House, which was designed by Thomas Hastings and constructed in 1913-1914. John Russell Pope altered and enlarged the building in the early 1930s to adapt...
, one of the preeminent small art museums in the United States, with a very high-quality collection of old master paintings housed in 16 galleries within the former mansion steel magnate Henry Clay Frick
Henry Clay Frick
Henry Clay Frick was an American industrialist, financier, and art patron. He founded the H. C. Frick & Company coke manufacturing company, was chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company, and played a major role in the formation of the giant U.S. Steel steel manufacturing concern...
. The collection features some of the best-known paintings by major European artists, as well as numerous works of sculpture and porcelain. It also has furniture, enamel, and carpets.
Jewish Museum (New York)
The Jewish Museum of New York, an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, is the leading Jewish museum in the United States. With over 26,000 objects, it contains the largest collection of art and Jewish culture outside of museums in Israel. The museum is housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in...
was first established in 1904, when the Jewish Theological Seminary received a gift a 26 Jewish ceremonial art
Jewish ceremonial art
Jewish ceremonial art, also known as Judaica refers to an array of objects used by Jews for ritual purposes. Because enhancing a mitzvah by performing it with an especially beautiful object is considered a praiseworthy way of honoring God's commandments, Judaism has a long tradition of...
objects by Judge Mayer Sulzberger. The museum now boasts a collection 28,000 objects including paintings, sculpture, archaeological artifacts, and many other pieces important to the preservation of Jewish history and culture.
Founded in 1969 by a group of Puerto Rican
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
artists, educators, community activists and civic leaders, El Museo del Barrio
El Museo del Barrio
El Museo del Barrio, New York’s leading Latino visual arts cultural institution, is located in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City, United States, also known as El Barrio. The museum welcomes visitors of all backgrounds to discover the artistic landscape of the Latino, Caribbean, and...
is located at the top of Museum Mile in Spanish Harlem
Spanish Harlem
East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem and El Barrio, is a section of Harlem in the northeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. East Harlem is one of the largest predominantly Latino communities in New York City. It includes the area formerly known as Italian Harlem, in which...
, a neighborhood also called 'El Barrio'. Originally, the museum was a creation of the Nuyorican Movement
Nuyorican Movement
The Nuyorican Movement is a cultural and intellectual movement involving poets, writers, musicians and artists who are Puerto Rican or of Puerto Rican descent, who live in or near New York City, and either call themselves or are known as Nuyoricans...
and Civil Rights Movement, and primarily functioned as a neighborhood institution serving Puerto Ricans. With the increasing size of New York's Latino population, the scope of the museum is expanding.
The American Museum of Natural History
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History , located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world...
and its Hayden Planetarium
Hayden Planetarium
The Hayden Planetarium is a public planetarium, part of the Rose Center for Earth and Space of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, currently directed by astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson....
focus on the sciences. There are also many smaller specialty museums, from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
Cooper–Hewitt, National Design Museum, a subsidiary of the Smithsonian Institution, is the United States' national museum of design history and contemporary design and the only museum in the U.S. whose collection is solely focused on contemporary and historic design...
to the International Center of Photography and The Museum of Television and Radio. There is even a Museum of the City of New York
Museum of the City of New York
The Museum of the City of New York is an art gallery and history museum founded in 1923 to present the history of New York City, USA and its people...
. A number of the city's museums are located along the Museum Mile
Museum Mile, New York City
Museum Mile is the name for a section of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in the city of New York, in the United States, running from 82nd to 104th streets on the Upper East Side in a neighborhood known as Carnegie Hill. The "mile", which contains one of the densest displays of culture in the world, is...
section of Fifth Avenue.
Long Island City, Queens
Long Island City is the westernmost neighborhood of the borough of Queens in New York City. L.I.C. is notable for its rapid and ongoing gentrification, its waterfront parks, and its thriving arts community. L.I.C. has among the highest concentration of art galleries, art institutions, and studio...
in Queens is an increasingly thriving location for the arts, home to P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and SculptureCenter for example. SculptureCenter
SculptureCenter
SculptureCenter is a contemporary art museum that is located in Long Island City in the borough of Queens in New York City.-Mission:Founded by artists in 1928, SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit arts institution dedicated to experimental and innovative developments in contemporary sculpture...
, New York City's only non-profit exhibition space dedicated to contemporary and innovative sculpture, re-located from Manhattan's Upper East Side to a former trolley repair shop in LIC, renovated by artist/designer Maya Lin in 2002. The museum commissions new work and presents challenging exhibits by emerging and established, national and international artists and hosts a diverse range of public programs including lectures, dialogues, and performances.
In 2006 more than 60 arts institutions spread across the five boroughs, from smaller community organizations like the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts
Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts
MoCADA, or the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, is a museum of contemporary art in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is the first museum of its kind to be opened in New York. Its mission is to foster a greater awareness and appreciation of the arts and cultures of the African...
in Brooklyn to major institutions like the The Morgan Library & Museum, were undergoing or recently completed architectural renovations or new construction. In aggregate the projects represented more than $2.8 billion in investment. The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs budget for building projects was the largest in the city's history: $865 million from 2006 through 2010, up from a $339.6 million planned budget for the 2001-4 period. The Alliance for the Arts, a nonpartisan, nonprofit arts advocacy and research group, reported in 2003 that the economic impact of cultural construction projects in New York — including factors like jobs created and collateral spending in the city — between 1997 and 2002 was $2.3 billion, with an anticipated impact of $2.7 billion for the period from 2003 through 2006.
Department of Cultural Affairs
The Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), a branch of the government of New York CityGovernment of New York City
The government of New York City is organized under the City Charter and provides for a "strong" mayor-council system. The government of New York is more centralized than that of most other U.S...
, is the largest public funder of the arts in the United States. DCLA's funding budget is larger than the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
, the Federal government's national arts funding mechanism. DCLA provides funding and support services to about 1,400 art and cultural organizations in the five boroughs, including 375 museums, 96 orchestras, 24 performing arts centers, 7 botanical gardens, 5 zoos and 1 aquarium. Recipients span many disciplines, including the visual, literary and performing arts; public-oriented science and humanities institutions including zoos, botanical gardens and historic and preservation societies; and creative artists at all skill levels who live and work within the City's five boroughs. DCLA also administers the Percent for Art program, which funds public art at building sites. In fiscal year 2007, DCLA's expense budget, used for funding programming at non-profits, was $151.9 million. Its capital budget, used to support projects at 196 cultural organizations throughout the city ranging from roof replacement to new construction, is roughly $867 million for the period between 2007 and 2011.
Cultural diversity
| Select Holy Days Officially Observed in New York City | ||
| Holy Day | Culture | Month (2006) |
| Eid al-Adha | Muslim | January |
| Asian Lunar New Year Chinese New Year Chinese New Year – often called Chinese Lunar New Year although it actually is lunisolar – is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. It is an all East and South-East-Asia celebration... |
East Asia | January |
| Ash Wednesday Ash Wednesday Ash Wednesday, in the calendar of Western Christianity, is the first day of Lent and occurs 46 days before Easter. It is a moveable fast, falling on a different date each year because it is dependent on the date of Easter... |
Christian | March |
| Purim Purim Purim is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people in the ancient Persian Empire from destruction in the wake of a plot by Haman, a story recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther .Purim is celebrated annually according to the Hebrew calendar on the 14th... |
Jewish | March |
| Nowruz Nowruz Nowrūz is the name of the Iranian New Year in Iranian calendars and the corresponding traditional celebrations. Nowruz is also widely referred to as the Persian New Year.... |
Iranian | March |
| Passover Passover Passover is a Jewish holiday and festival. It commemorates the story of the Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt... |
Jewish | April |
| Good Friday Good Friday Good Friday , is a religious holiday observed primarily by Christians commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary. The holiday is observed during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Triduum on the Friday preceding Easter Sunday, and may coincide with the Jewish observance of... |
Christian | April |
| Shavuot Shavuot The festival of is a Jewish holiday that occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan .... |
Jewish | June |
| Feast of Assumption Assumption of Mary According to the belief of Christians of the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and parts of the Anglican Communion and Continuing Anglicanism, the Assumption of Mary was the bodily taking up of the Virgin Mary into Heaven at the end of her life... |
Catholic | August |
| Rosh Hashanah Rosh Hashanah Rosh Hashanah , , is the Jewish New Year. It is the first of the High Holy Days or Yamim Nora'im which occur in the autumn... |
Jewish | September |
| Yom Kippur Yom Kippur Yom Kippur , also known as Day of Atonement, is the holiest and most solemn day of the year for the Jews. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jews traditionally observe this holy day with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue... |
Jewish | October |
| Succoth Sukkot Sukkot is a Biblical holiday celebrated on the 15th day of the month of Tishrei . It is one of the three biblically mandated festivals Shalosh regalim on which Hebrews were commanded to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem.The holiday lasts seven days... |
Jewish | October |
| Diwali Diwali Diwali or DeepavaliThe name of the festival in various regional languages include:, , , , , , , , , , , , , popularly known as the "festival of lights," is a festival celebrated between mid-October and mid-December for different reasons... |
Hindu | October |
| Eid ul-Fitr Eid ul-Fitr Eid ul-Fitr, Eid al-Fitr, Id-ul-Fitr, or Id al-Fitr , often abbreviated to Eid, is a Muslim holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting . Eid is an Arabic word meaning "festivity," while Fiṭr means "breaking the fast"... |
Muslim | October |
| All Saints Day All Saints All Saints' Day , often shortened to All Saints, is a solemnity celebrated on 1 November by parts of Western Christianity, and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Eastern Christianity, in honour of all the saints, known and unknown... |
Catholic | November |
| Eid al-Adha | Muslim | December |
To some observers, New York, with its large immigrant
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
population, seems more of an international city than something specifically "American". But to others, the city's very openness to newcomers makes it the archetype of a "nation of immigrants". The term "melting pot
Melting pot
The melting pot is a metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" into a harmonious whole with a common culture...
" derives from the play The Melting Pot, by Israel Zangwill
Israel Zangwill
Israel Zangwill was a British humorist and writer.-Biography:Zangwill was born in London on January 21, 1864 in a family of Jewish immigrants from Czarist Russia, to Moses Zangwill from what is now Latvia and Ellen Hannah Marks Zangwill from what is now Poland. He dedicated his life to championing...
, who in 1908 adapted Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
to a setting in the Lower East Side, where droves of immigrants from diverse European nations in the early 1900s learned to live together in tenements and row houses for the first time. In 2000, 36% of the city's population was foreign-born. Among American cities this proportion was higher only in Los Angeles and Miami. While the immigrant communities in those cities are dominated by a few nationalities, in New York no single country or region of origin dominates. The seven largest countries of origin are the Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
.
The cultural diversity of New York can be seen in the range of official city holidays. With the growth of New York's South Asian community, Diwali
Diwali
Diwali or DeepavaliThe name of the festival in various regional languages include:, , , , , , , , , , , , , popularly known as the "festival of lights," is a festival celebrated between mid-October and mid-December for different reasons...
, the Hindu
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
Festival of Lights, was recently added to the calendar.
Ethnic enclave
An ethnic enclave is an ethnic community which retains some cultural distinction from a larger, surrounding area, it may be a neighborhood, an area or an administrative division based on ethnic groups. Sometimes an entire city may have such a feel. Usually the enclave revolves around businesses...
s where they can talk and shop and work with people from their country of origin. Throughout the five boroughs the city is home to many distinct communities of India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
ns, Irish
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, Italians
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
ns, Dominicans
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
, Puerto Ricans
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
, Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
s, Hasidic Jews
Hasidic Judaism
Hasidic Judaism or Hasidism, from the Hebrew —Ḥasidut in Sephardi, Chasidus in Ashkenazi, meaning "piety" , is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy through the popularisation and internalisation of Jewish mysticism as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith...
, Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
s, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
ns and many others. Many of the largest city-wide annual events are parades celebrating the heritage of New York’s ethnic communities. Attendance at the biggest ones by city and state politicians is politically obligatory. These include the St Patrick's Day Parade
Saint Patrick's Day
Saint Patrick's Day is a religious holiday celebrated internationally on 17 March. It commemorates Saint Patrick , the most commonly recognised of the patron saints of :Ireland, and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. It is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion , the Eastern...
, probably the top Irish heritage parade in the Americas; the Puerto Rican Day Parade
Puerto Rican Day Parade
The Puerto Rican Day Parade takes place annually along Fifth Avenue in New York City, on the second Sunday in June, in honor of the nearly 4 million inhabitants of Puerto Rico and all people of Puerto Rican birth or heritage residing in the mainland U.S...
, which often draws up to 3 million spectators; the West Indian Labor Day Parade
Labor Day Carnival
The Labor Day Parade , is an annual celebration held on American Labor Day , in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York....
, among the largest parades in North America and the largest event in New York City; and the Chinese New Year Parade. New Yorkers of all stripes gather together for these spectacles. Other significant parades include the Gay Pride Parade
Gay Pride Parade (New York City)
The Gay Pride March is an annual march more commonly referred to as the Pride Parade in New York City, traversing southward down Fifth Avenue and ending at Greenwich Village...
, Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and the Coney Island Mermaid Parade
Coney Island Mermaid Parade
The Coney Island Mermaid Parade takes place every year in Coney Island, New York in mid-to-late June. The Parade is a lively and welcoming ocean-themed event open to everyone....
, all icons in the city’s counter-culture pantheon.
New York City has a larger Jewish population than any other city in the world, larger than even Jerusalem. Approximately one million New Yorkers, or about 13%, are Jewish. As a result, New York City culture has borrowed certain elements of Jewish culture, such as bagel
Bagel
A bagel is a bread product, traditionally shaped by hand into the form of a ring from yeasted wheat dough, roughly hand-sized, which is first boiled for a short time in water and then baked. The result is a dense, chewy, doughy interior with a browned and sometimes crisp exterior...
s. The city is also home to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
Jewish Theological Seminary of America
The Jewish Theological Seminary of America is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism, and a major center for academic scholarship in Jewish studies.JTS operates five schools: Albert A...
, the headquarters of Orthodox Jewish
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...
movements, one of three American campuses of Hebrew Union College
Hebrew Union College
The Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is the oldest extant Jewish seminary in the Americas and the main seminary for training rabbis, cantors, educators and communal workers in Reform Judaism.HUC-JIR has campuses in Cincinnati, New York, Los Angeles and Jerusalem.The Jerusalem...
of Reform Judaism
Reform Judaism
Reform Judaism refers to various beliefs, practices and organizations associated with the Reform Jewish movement in North America, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. In general, it maintains that Judaism and Jewish traditions should be modernized and should be compatible with participation in the...
, Yeshiva University
Yeshiva University
Yeshiva University is a private university in New York City, with six campuses in New York and one in Israel. Founded in 1886, it is a research university ranked as 45th in the US among national universities by U.S. News & World Report in 2012...
, and the home of the Anti-Defamation League
Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League is an international non-governmental organization based in the United States. Describing itself as "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency", the ADL states that it "fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects...
. Temple Emanu-El, the largest Jewish house of worship
Synagogue
A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...
in the world, became the first Reform congregation in America in 1845. It is also the home of such Jewish comedians, as Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
and Jerry Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld
Jerome Allen "Jerry" Seinfeld is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and television and film producer, known for playing a semi-fictional version of himself in the situation comedy Seinfeld , which he co-created and co-wrote with Larry David, and, in the show's final two seasons,...
.
Festivals and parades
City Parks Foundation
City Parks Foundation is the only independent, nonprofit organization to offer programs in parks throughout the five boroughs of New York City...
.
The Village Halloween Parade
New York's Village Halloween Parade
New York's Village Halloween Parade is an annual holiday parade and street pageant presented the night of every Halloween in New York City’s Greenwich Village...
is an annual holiday parade and street pageant presented the night of every Halloween
Halloween
Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...
(October 31) in Greenwich Village. Stretching more than a mile, this cultural event draws two million spectators, fifty thousand costumed participants, dancers, artists and circus performers, dozens of floats bearing live bands and other musical and performing acts, and a worldwide television audience of one hundred million.
The Feast of San Gennaro
Feast of San Gennaro
The Feast of San Gennaro, originally a one-day religious commemoration, began in September 1926 when newly arrived immigrants from Naples congregated along Mulberry Street in the Little Italy section of New York City, to continue the tradition they had followed in Italy to celebrate San Gennaro as...
, originally a one-day religious commemoration, is now an 11-day street fair held in mid-September in Manhattan's Little Italy
Little Italy, Manhattan
Little Italy is a neighborhood in lower Manhattan, New York City, once known for its large population of Italians. Today the neighborhood of Little Italy consists of Italian stores and restaurants.-Historical area:...
. Centered on Mulberry Street, which is closed to traffic for the occasion, the festival generally features parades, street vendors, sausages and zeppole, games, and a religious candlelit procession which begins immediately after a celebratory mass
Mass (liturgy)
"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...
at the Church of the Most Precious Blood. Another festival is held with the same attractions at New York's other Little Italy, in the Fordham/Belmont community in the Bronx
The Bronx
The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
. The streets are closed to traffic and the festivities begin early in the morning and proceed late into the night.
Other major parades include the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, often shortened to Macy's Day Parade, is an annual parade presented by Macy's. The tradition started in 1924, tying it for the second-oldest Thanksgiving parade in the United States along with America's Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit, and four years younger than...
, presented by Macy's Department Store and lasting three hours on Thanksgiving Day
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Day is a holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Thanksgiving is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. In Canada, Thanksgiving falls on the same day as Columbus Day in the...
, which features enormous inflatable balloons.
New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve is observed annually on December 31, the final day of any given year in the Gregorian calendar. In modern societies, New Year's Eve is often celebrated at social gatherings, during which participants dance, eat, consume alcoholic beverages, and watch or light fireworks to mark the...
celebrations in the United States is the "ball dropping
Times Square Ball
The Times Square Ball is a time ball dropped each year during the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square, Manhattan, New York City. The ball is made by Waterford Crystal and electric lights is raised to the top of a pole on the One Times Square building at 6:00 pm and then lowered to mark the...
" on top of One Times Square
One Times Square
One Times Square is a 25 story, 395 foot high skyscraper at 42nd Street and Broadway in Times Square....
that is broadcast live on national television. A 1,070-pound, 6-foot-diameter Waterford Crystal
Waterford Crystal
Waterford Crystal is a trademark brand of crystal glassware, previously produced in Waterford, Ireland, though the factory there was shut down after the receivership of Waterford Wedgwood plc in early 2009...
ball, high above Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
, is lowered starting at 23:59:00 and reaching the bottom of its tower at the stroke of midnight (00:00:00). New York Harbor
New York Harbor
New York Harbor refers to the waterways of the estuary near the mouth of the Hudson River that empty into New York Bay. It is one of the largest natural harbors in the world. Although the U.S. Board of Geographic Names does not use the term, New York Harbor has important historical, governmental,...
From 1982 to 1988, New York City dropped a large apple in recognition of its nickname, "The Big Apple." Dick Clark has hosted televised coverage of the event since 1972 with his show, Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve
Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve
Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest is a television program that airs every New Year's Eve on ABC. It has been hosted by Dick Clark since its first airing on Sunday, December 31, 1972. Ryan Seacrest has been the program's co-host since the December 31, 2005 telecast...
. For about four decades, until one year before his death in 1977, Canadian violinist and bandleader Guy Lombardo
Guy Lombardo
Gaetano Alberto "Guy" Lombardo was a Canadian-American bandleader and violinist.Forming "The Royal Canadians" in 1924 with his brothers Carmen, Lebert, and Victor and other musicians from his hometown, Lombardo led the group to international success, billing themselves as creating "The Sweetest...
and his Royal Canadians serenaded the United States from the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue. Their recording of the traditional song Auld Lang Syne
Auld Lang Syne
"Auld Lang Syne" is a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to the tune of a traditional folk song . It is well known in many countries, especially in the English-speaking world; its traditional use being to celebrate the start of the New Year at the stroke of midnight...
still plays as the first song of the new year in Times Square.
The city in popular culture
Because of its sheer size and cultural influence, New York has been the subject of many different, and often contradictory, portrayals in mass media. From the sophisticated and worldly metropolis seen in many Woody AllenWoody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
films, to the hellish and chaotic urban jungle depicted in such movies as Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
's Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver is a 1976 American drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. The film is set in New York City, soon after the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro and features Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, and Cybill Shepherd. The film was nominated for four Academy...
, New York has served as the backdrop for virtually every conceivable viewpoint on big city life.
In the early years of film, New York City was characterized as urbane and sophisticated. By the city's crisis period in the 1970s and early 1980s, however, films like Midnight Cowboy
Midnight Cowboy
Midnight Cowboy is a 1969 American drama film based on the 1965 novel of the same name by James Leo Herlihy. It was written by Waldo Salt, directed by John Schlesinger, and stars Dustin Hoffman and newcomer Jon Voight in the title role. Notable smaller roles are filled by Sylvia Miles, John...
, The French Connection
The French Connection (film)
This article is about the 1971 film. For the British fashion label, see French Connection .The French Connection is a 1971 American crime film directed by William Friedkin. The film was adapted and fictionalized by Ernest Tidyman from the non-fiction book by Robin Moore...
, Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver is a 1976 American drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. The film is set in New York City, soon after the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro and features Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, and Cybill Shepherd. The film was nominated for four Academy...
, Marathon Man
Marathon Man (film)
Marathon Man is a 1976 thriller film based on the novel of the same name by William Goldman. The film was directed by John Schlesinger, and stars Dustin Hoffman, Roy Scheider, and Laurence Olivier. The original music score was composed by Michael Small....
, Cruising
Cruising (film)
Cruising is a 1980 film directed by William Friedkin and starring Al Pacino. The film is loosely based on the novel of the same name, by New York Times reporter Gerald Walker, about a serial killer targeting gay men, in particular those associated with the S&M scene.Poorly reviewed by critics,...
, Dressed to Kill, and Death Wish
Death Wish (film)
Death Wish is a 1974 crime thriller film loosely based on the novel Death Wish by Brian Garfield. The film was directed by Michael Winner and stars Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey, a man who becomes a vigilante after his wife is murdered and his daughter is sexually assaulted by muggers.The film was...
showed New York as full of chaos and violence. With the city's renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s came new portrayals on television; Friends
Friends
Friends is an American sitcom created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994 to May 6, 2004. The series revolves around a group of friends in Manhattan. The series was produced by Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television...
, Seinfeld
Seinfeld
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...
, and Sex and the City
Sex and the City
Sex and the City is an American television comedy-drama series created by Darren Star and produced by HBO. Broadcast from 1998 until 2004, the original run of the show had a total of ninety-four episodes...
showed life in the city to be glamorous and interesting. Nonetheless a disproportionate number of crime dramas, such as Law & Order
Law & Order
Law & Order is an American police procedural and legal drama television series, created by Dick Wolf and part of the Law & Order franchise. It aired on NBC, and in syndication on various cable networks. Law & Order premiered on September 13, 1990, and completed its 20th and final season on May 24,...
, continue to make criminality in the city as their subject even as New York has become the safest large city
United States cities by crime rate
The following table of United States cities by crime rate is based on Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports statistics. The population numbers are based on U.S. Census estimates for the year end. The number of murders includes nonnegligent manslaughter. This list is based on the...
in the United States in the last two decades.
An essay appearing in the Arts section of the New York Times in April 2006 quoted several filmmakers, including Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
and Paul Mazursky
Paul Mazursky
Paul Mazursky is an American film director, screenwriter and actor.-Personal life:He was born Irwin Mazursky in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jean , a piano player for dance classes, and David Mazursky, a laborer. Mazursky was born to a Jewish family; his grandfather was an immigrant from...
, describing how modern cinema shows the city as far more "teeming, terrifying, exhilarating, unforgiving" than contemporary New York actually is, and the consequential challenge this poses for filmmakers. The article quotes Robert Greenhut, Woody Allen's
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
producer, as saying that despite the increased sanitization of modern New York, "New Yorkers' personalities are different to Chicago. There's a certain kind of vibrancy and tone that you can't get elsewhere. The labor pool is more interesting than elsewhere — the salesgirl with one line, or the cop. That's who directors are looking for."
James Sanders, editor of Scenes From the City: Filmmaking in New York, 1966–2006, is quoted in the article as predicting that future films in New York City will move away from the well-worn setting of upper-middle class Manhattan neighborhoods to the outer boroughs, where they will begin examining the crosscurrents emanating from ethnic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.
See also
The boroughs- Culture of The Bronx
- Culture of Brooklyn
- Culture of Manhattan
- Culture of Queens
- Culture of Staten Island
- Alliance for the ArtsAlliance for the ArtsThe Alliance for the Arts is a New York City organization which serves the entire cultural community through research and advocacy. Now in its 32nd year, the Alliance publishes information on the arts and cultural events in New York City as well as studies highlighting the importance of the arts to...
- Media in New York City
- New York City arts organizationsNew York City arts organizationsThe City of New York is home to many arts organizations. They include:* American Dance Festival* Brooklyn Academy of Music* Brooklyn Historic Railway Association* City Parks Foundation* Creative Time* Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts*...
- Public Art FundPublic Art FundThe Public Art Fund is a non-profit organization founded in 1977 by Doris Freedman , a Director of New York City's Department of Cultural Affairs, and the President of the Municipal Art Society. They have organized highly visible artists' projects, new commissions, installations and exhibitions in...
External links
- 1970s SoHo nightlife Alan Tannenbaum's photography of New York's nightlife in the 1970s. Warning: some photos are graphic.
- NYC ARTS
Partial list of major international cultural centers in New York City
- Scandinavia House
- Tenri Cultural Institute
- French Institute Alliance Francaise
- Goethe-Institut New York
- Swiss Institute
- New York Chinese Cultural Center
- The Ukrainian Museum
- Polish Cultural Institute
- Italian Cultural Institute
- Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
- Instituto Cervantes-Nueva York
- Romanian Cultural Institute New York
- Austrian Cultural Forum New York
