ART IN NEW YORK

Rivaled by few other cities, New York is an icon and haven for visual artists. From the collection of ancient Greek statues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the most avant-garde installation at PS 1, New York makes room for the education, business, and culture of art. Countless popular modern artists lived in New York at one time or another: from Jackson Pollack to Andy Warhol to Yoko Ono to Keith Haring...the list is so long that the phenomenon has become a cliché.

In the 18th century, New York was not the leading American producer of art. In fact, the first instances of modern painting and sculpture in New York were quite frail. The tumultuous years between 1910 and 1930 shifted the balance of world power, turning America into a dominant nation and New York into a powerful city. The influx of ideas, money, and immigrants opened up New York as a city of change, renewal, experimentation, and hope.

Culture, hybridity, and pictorial ideas and movements flowed in from Europe. Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, the high ornamental style of Art Deco were some of New York's main imports and they brought life and energy to its people. Enriching this even further was The Harlem Renaissance, a movement of extraordinary power in music, dance, poetry, fiction, and storytelling, introduced by African-American artists in the 1920s.

The Big Apple took on modernism like no other American city, setting the foundation for its contribution to art. Even today, parts of America resist the irreverence and progressiveness associated with New York. But New York's spirit of experimentation, openness to other cultures, and valorization of the art world, makes it, even more than a place, an idea of great power.