Converting Ounces to Grams

Converting Ounces to Grams This worked example problem demonstrates how to convert ounces to grams. This is a common type of mass unit conversion problem. One of the most common practical reasons to know how to do this conversion is for recipes, so lets start with a food example: Ounces To Grams Problem A chocolate bar weighs 12 ounces. What is its weight in grams? Solution One of the easiest ways to solve this problem is to use the pound to kilogram conversion. If you like in a country where both units are used, this is a useful conversion to know. Start by converting ounces into pounds. Then convert the pounds into kilograms. All that remains is to move the decimal point three places to the right to convert kilograms into grams. Here are the conversions you need to know:16 oz 1 lb1 kg 2.2 lbs1000 g 1 kgYou are solving for x numbers of grams. First, convert ounces into pounds. The next part of the solution converts pounds to kilograms, while the final section converts kilograms to grams. Note how units cancel each other out, so all you are left with is grams. x g 12 ozx g 12 oz x (1 lb/16 oz) x (1 kg/2.2 lb) x (1000 g/1 kg)x g 340.1 g Answer The 12 oz chocolate bar weighs 340.1 g.

The Long Telegram of George Kennan

The Long Telegram of George Kennan The Long Telegram was sent by George Kennan from the United States Embassy in Moscow to Washington, where it was received on February 22nd, 1946. The telegram was prompted by US inquiries about Soviet behavior, especially with regards to their refusal to join the newly created World Bank and International Monetary Fund. In his text, Kennan outlined Soviet belief and practice and proposed the policy of containment, making the telegram a key document in the history of the Cold War. The name long derives from the telegrams 8000-word length. US and Soviet Division The US and USSR had recently fought as allies, across Europe in the battle to defeat Nazi Germany, and in Asia to defeat Japan. US supplies, including trucks, had helped the Soviets weather the storm of Nazi attacks and then push them right back to Berlin. But this was a marriage from purely one situation, and when the war was over, the two new superpowers regarded each other warily. The US was a democratic nation helping put Western Europe back into economic shape. The USSR was a murderous dictatorship under Stalin, and they occupied a swathe of Eastern Europe and wished to turn it into a series of buffer, vassal states. The US and the USSR seemed very much opposed. The US thus wanted to know what Stalin and his regime were doing, which was why they asked Kennan what he knew. The USSR would join the UN, and would make cynical overtures about joining NATO, but as the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, the US realized they now shared the world with a huge, powerful and anti-democratic rival. Containment Kennans Long Telegram didnt just reply with insight into the Soviets. It coined the theory of containment, a way of dealing with the Soviets. For Kennan, if one nation became communist, it would apply pressure on its neighbors and they too might become communist. Hadnt Russia now spread to the east of Europe? Werent communists working in China? Werent France and Italy still raw after their wartime experiences and looking towards communism? It was feared that, if Soviet expansionism was left unchecked, it would spread over great areas of the globe. The answer was containment. The US should move to help countries at risk from communism by propping them up with the economic, political, military, and cultural aid they needed to stay out of the Soviet sphere. After the telegram was shared around government, Kennan made it public. President Truman adopted the containment policy in his Truman Doctrine and sent the US to counter Soviet actions. In 1947, the CIA spent considerable sums of money to ensure the Christian Democrats defeated the Communist Party in elections, and, therefore, kept the country away from the Soviets.​ Of course, containment was soon twisted. In order to keep nations away from the communist bloc, the US supported some terrible governments, and engineered the fall of democratically elected socialist ones. Containment remained US policy throughout the Cold War, ending in 1991, but discussed as something to be reborn when it came to US rivals ever since.

How should the USA deal with China should they contain or not contain Research Paper

How should the USA deal with China should they contain or not contain China - Research Paper Example This year featured spats between China versus Philippines; China versus Vietnam; and China versus Japan. The disagreements are loudly triggering diplomatic tensions as Chinese government send forth their marine vessels in shores that are within the territorial jurisdictions of other Southeast Asian countries. The situation alarmed the international community, especially United States of America, because this Chinese territorial aggression also strategically affects its geographic control in the Pacific regions and with allied countries. This brought us the core issue, must US contain China or not? What is Containment? Before variegated positions are explicated, let us define first what containment all about is. Containment is a foreign policy strategy of the United States at the height of cold war which was prominently used by George F. Kennan in 1947 against communist nation to isolate and marginalize it to lessen it influence or remove its political clout from allied countries.1 Ex perts posit, by experience, that the containment theory of US resulted to the intervention of United States in Vietnam, Central America and in Grenada.2 This was also adopted by US President Truman as part of the Truman doctrine and is also widely discussed in US and Iraq conflict.3 Containment is historically started in a long telegraph sent by George Kennan from Moscow to Washington in 1946 about the Soviet’s refusal to join the International Monetary Bank and World Bank which detailed the practices of the country and anent recommendation to use the policy of containment—which ultimately led to that historic Cold War.4 From a psychological vantage, containment is a control theory aiming at establishing internal and external factors to develop a law-abiding behaviour which could be considered as a defence or a protective insulation against potential conflict or delinquency.5 Shouldn’t Contain Some political analysts argued that US shouldn’t contain China albeit the reactions of other countries who presumed that US intervention will help balance the power amid incessant aggression of Chinese soldiers to Hanoi, Philippines and Japan. Chinese however demanded from US, which was sought for intervention by aggrieved parties to refrain from getting involved asserting that the conflicting parties can resolve maritime and territorial disputes through bilateral consultations.6 This call generated political mass actions by peoples who rallied in the streets and in Chinese embassies or even conducted live-fire drills (e.g. Vietnam) to demonstrate their disagreement with China’s two-face diplomatic strategy in relating with them: offering a hand for bilateral consultations but at the same time, aggressively sending marine soldiers within sovereign states’ shores to claim ownership or prior rights thereof.7 Affected countries wanted to internationalize the issue while Chinese opposed this effort to bring the international communit y to multilateral discourse on this problem arguing

The role of multi-channel retailing in Singapore service retail Essay

The role of multi-channel retailing in Singapore service retail industry - Essay Example Thus with the development of internet communication the consumers can now easily make purchases through the web sphere and also through their personal gadgets like Personal Digital Assistants having internet connectivity. Moreover the customers can also make relevant purchases based on catalogues or visiting kiosks of the retail stores. These services largely enabled by multi-channel retailing systems have helped in transforming the pattern of services generated in the retail sphere. Furthermore the retail firms based on multi-channel systems are also helping the consumers to avail a large number of options where the consumer can locate products in one outlet and purchase such from another belonging to the same company. Again multi-channel retailing system has also helped the consumers to gain the advantage of returning commodities in one retail outlet which was purchased from another outlet of the same company. (Berman, Retail Management, A Strategic Approach, 10E (India: Pearson Ed ucation India, 2007), 183.; Willard N. Ander and Neil Z. Stern, Winning at retail: developing a sustained model for retail success (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2004; Lena Fitzen, Multi Channel Retailing in the Automotive Industry: Determinants of Consumer Retail Choice (Germany: GRIN Verlag, 2009), 16.) Different retail companies pertaining to categories like apparel and other consumer durables make expanded use of multi-channel retail systems to reach wide number of consumers thereby focusing on market expansion and augmentation of revenues. Big retail firms through the opening up of different retail formats and through increased web presence can fulfill the business objectives of market expansion in both new and existing territories. (Joachim Zentes, Dirk Moschett and Hanna Schramm-Klein, Strategic Retail Management: Text and International Cases (Germany: Gabler Verlag, 2007), 55; Diamond, Fashion Retailing: A Multi-Channel Approach (India: Pearson Education India, 2007), 374). Multi-Channel Retailing-Advantages and Challenges The growth of multi-channel retail systems around the world led to the increase of large number of advantages and disadvantages related to it. Firstly the retail companies tending to use the multi-channel retail systems need to strategize their retail offerings and services in a homogeneous manner so that it can well percolate along the several marketing mixes. Retailers through the use of multi-channel retail concept tend to draw consumer attention to specially designed products which are not easily displayed in retail counters. These retail companies through the use of the online sphere tend to create a huge display of different types of products thus enhancing the width of the product assortments. Moreover retail companies can also cause consumer hype by creating displays of new product and service launches in their websites. Again the retailers can make use of multi-channel retailing concept to create a mass promotion of the pro ducts and services. The retailers can make use of utilities like kiosks and catalogues to help in generating large number of information to the consumes pertaining to the availability of store outlets, product and servi

Organizational Forms Essay Example for Free

Organizational Forms Essay There are several types of organizational forms that a business can choose from. Each form presents pros and cons that may or may not be suitable for a particular business. This report will review characteristics such as: liability, income taxes, longevity or continuity, control, profit retention, location, convenience and burden for each business form and how they differentiate from the different types of organization forms. Sole proprietorship A sole proprietorship is the most common business form. A business is a sole proprietorship if it is not incorporated, meaning that a separate legal entity is not created for it. An advantage of forming a sole proprietorship is that it is the easiest and least expensive business form. a.Liability: A sole proprietorship does not excuse the owner from personal liability. If the business fails, the owner is responsible to the creditors and may lose personal assets. b.Income Taxes: The profits and losses of the business go through the owners’ personal tax return. This can positively or negatively affect the owner depending on what the profit and losses of the business are and what other sources of income the owner may have. c.Longevity or continuity: If the owner dies the company cannot continue on. If the owner decides to leave the company, then the company will also cease to exist. d.Control: In a sole proprietorship the owner has full control of the business. e.Profit retention: The owner receives all profits in a sole proprietorship. f.Location: When a business is a sole proprietorship the owner can move the business to any location. The only fee may be if changing states or county and the business is operating under a trade name, then the owner will have to pay the relatively small fee to operate as a DBA (â€Å"Doing Business As†). g.Convenience or burden: There are not any extra burdens when operating as a sole proprietorship. The owner does not have to meet any special reporting or regulatory requirements. There are not any special tax requirements or restrictions. The business profit and losses are filed with the owner’s regular tax return. General partnership A general partnership is between two or more owners of a business that is not incorporated. a.Liability: Each partner is held personally liable for the debts of the business regard less of fault. b.Income Taxes: Taxes are reported on each partner’s personal income tax return, so any profits made by the company are treated separately from the individuals’ income, but included. c.Longevity or continuity of the organization: A general partnership lacks continuity. If a partner leaves and his or her shares cannot be bought by the remaining partner, then the business must close. If a partner dies, their heir can be paid for the value of their share of partnership, but cannot continue with business. d.Control: In a partnership control is equal between all the partners. This can be difficult when a company has many partners or partners that don’t know each other. If a change is made without consulting with the other partners that can cause friction between the partners, so it may be best to include all partners in all decisions. e.Profit Retention: Profit is distributed equally between all partners and so is any loss. f.Location: A general partnership is fairly easy to setup and move. There are not any special forms that need to be filed with the state or county to form a general partnership. There only has to be at least two people to make up the partnership. g.Convenience or burden: Since there are not any special filings that need to be done for a general partnership, it is very convenient. Limited Partnership A limited partnership is partnership that does not hold the partners personally liable for the business debts. a.Liability: Limited partners are not held personally liable for the business debts. b.Income Taxes: All profits and losses are passed through each partners’ individual income tax return. The company does not pay taxes. c.Longevity or Continuity: Limited partners can freely enter and leave the company. The company can continue if a limited partner leaves. d.Control: In a limited partnership there are limited partners and general partners. The general partners manage the partnership. e.Profit Retention: Profits are distributed to the partners based on their contribution and pass through to the partners, who in turn report the profits on their individual tax return and pay taxes at their individual rate. f.Location: When a LLP is formed or if it moves, then it must comply with state filing requirements. A LLP must file a Certificate of Limited Partnership with the appropriate state agency. g.Convenience or burden: A LLP can be convenient because it attract capital easily, it offers limited liability to partners, easy transferability of partnership, and pass-through taxation. C-corporation A C- corporation or a â€Å"privately held corporation† is a company whose stock is not publicly traded. a.Liability: A business owner is not personally liable for the company debts and is protected from lawsuits and judgments against the business. b.Income Taxes: C-corporations are double taxed. The IRS taxes the company profits and tax any dividends paid to shareholders. c.Longevity or Continuity: Even if the owner leaves or dies, the C-corporation being a separate entity can continue to go on. d.Control: Management is shared between the shareholders. e.Profit Retention: Profits are usually kept within the company and not distributed to shareholders. f.Location: A C-corporation must follow state filing requirements in each state that it wishes to setup in. This can be very costly. g.Convenience or burden: An advantage of a C-Corporation is that it provides the best protection for the owner against the company debts. A disadvantage is that it can be costly to establish. S-corporation S-corporations are a separate entity from the owner. It offers the owner limited liability, but the tax structure benefit of a partnership. a.Liability: The owner an S-corporation is not held personally liable for any debts or judgments incurred by the company. b.Income Taxes: In an S-corporation, the profits and losses of the company are passed through to the owners and shareholders and reported on their personal income tax returns and taxed at their individual rates. The company itself is not taxed. c.Longevity or continuity: Like a C-corporation an S-corporation can continue on, if the owner leaves or dies. d.Control: A board of directors manages the company through officers. e.Profit Retention: Generally in an S-corporation the profits are passed on to the shareholders. f.Location: An S-corporation must follow state filing requirements in any state that it wishes to setup in. g.Convenience or burden: An S-corporation can be convenient, because it provides the owner and shareholders protection from company debt and they save on paying taxes on profit, but it can be costly in setting up. Limited Liability Company A Limited Liability Company is similar to an S-corporation in that it offers the limited liability of a corporation, but the tax structure benefit of a partnership. a.Liability: Owners and shareholders are protected from personal liability for the business debts and judgments. b.Income Taxes: Profits and losses are passed through to the shareholders and filed on their individual income tax returns. c.Longevity and continuity: An LLC can continue if a member leaves, but the LLC must pay the member the value of their interest. d.Control: An LLC is managed by its’ members. e.Profit Retention: Profits are passed on to the members. f.Location: A LLC must follow state filing requirements for any state it wishes to setup in. g.Convenience or burden: LLC offer a very flexible structure. It also has no limitations on the number and kind of owners. It can be very expensive to form and because it is so new, it can be more complex. Bibliography Book: Beatty, J. Samuelson, S. (2007). Business Law and the Legal Environment: Standard Edition, 4e. Mason, OH: Rob Dewey Web site: Perez, W. (2009). Protect Your Business Profits by Incorporating. About.com. Retrieved March 20, 2009, from http://taxes.about.com/od/taxplanning/a/incorporating.htm Corey Pierce, J. (2002-2004). Business Startup: Where to Begin How to Grow. Businessfinance.com. Retrieved March 22, 2009, from http://www.businessfinance.com/books/StartABusiness/StartABusinessWorkbookTOC.htm PART B interoffice memorandum to:Owner subject: Business organization date:8/10/2013 There are many different types of business forms. After reviewing them all, I have come to the conclusion that an S corporation will be the most beneficial to you company. An S-corporation is a separate legal entity and protects the owner and shareholders from personal liability and offers benefits with its tax structure. This memo will address issues that are important to you and the advantages provided to you by forming an S-corporation. You expressed concern regarding your personal liability and whether or not if the company was to be sued- you did not want to possibly lose all of your personal assets. With an S-corporation you are protected from losing your personal assets if a company is sued for negligence by an employee or subcontractor. If the company were to default on debts, your personal assets are protected from creditors. Funding will also be fairly easy to obtain with an S-corporation. With an S-corporation, you will be able to sell stock in the company to increase capital assets to help with you expanding. You will be able to sell as much or as little of your companies’ stock as you wish, once a stock value is determined. An advantage to selling you company’s stock beside the increase in capital is that you are also able to retain control of the company when issuing stock. The profit that your company earns will be distributed to the shareholders, but with an S-corporation, shareholders are only allocated the profit and losses equal to the amount of their investment. The profits and losses are passed through to each shareholder and filed on their individual income tax returns. The company itself is not taxed. Also, with an S-corporation, if you were to pass away, the company would have continuity. The company would not have to dissolve and you. The stock that you own in the company can be transferred to an heir or transferred by the sale of all or a portion of the stock. Based on these findings, I recommend you to form an S-corporation for your company.

Credit and Debt in Victorian England Essay -- Victorian Era

Credit and Debt in Victorian England The majority of Victorian society’s economic dealings can be summed up in two words: credit and debt. These ominous specters, which seemed to haunt Victorian England, were simultaneously able to evoke feelings of delight and doom in their â€Å"victims of vanity†. There were several different factors that contributed to the Victorian’s propensity to abuse their credit, and as a result, fall deeply into debt. In her essay, â€Å"A Husband and His Wife’s Dresses†, Erika Rappaport discusses the significant role that gender played in the credit and debt â€Å"epidemic† that plagued Victorian society. Rappaport gives a fairly detailed account of the progression of buying on credit in Victorian society. In her essay, Rappaport states that â€Å"for most of the nineteenth century, consumer credit was still informal and was based on personal trust and a financial and moral assessment of the buyer† (165). Essentially, buying on credit was based on social position rather than financial stability. She comments that in the nineteenth century, selling on credit was still a widespread practice, and â€Å"many of the commodities that filled the Victorians’ homes and adorned their bodies were bought with its helpâ₠¬  (167). Rappaport states that buying on credit â€Å"helped middle-class families on limited income set up households†, and that â€Å"approximately 80 percent of all sales in the small, elite shops of metropolitan districts were offered on credit† (167). However, as time progressed, informal store credit became increasingly risky. Consumers began to travel longer distances in order to buy their goods, and it became increasingly less common to conduct business with neighbors and relatives. As a result of these changes, â€Å"wholesale... ... bills was perpetually in the forefront of the Victorian mindset. Further Links http://www.victorianweb.org/graphics/thackeray/17.1.html Works Cited Landow, George P. â€Å"Bankruptcy in Victorian England—Threat or Myth?† The Victorian Web. 22 March 2001. 7 Nov. 2004. . Rappaport, Erika. â€Å"A Husband and His Wife’s Dresses.† The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective. Ed. Victoria de Grazia with Ellen Furlough. London: University of California Press, Ltd., 1996. 163-177. â€Å"The Victorians: Debt Could Get You in Prison.† RomanceEverAfter. 7 Nov. 2004. . Williams, Montagu Q.C. â€Å"London: Down East and Up West.† The Victorian Dictionary. 1894. 7 Nov. 2004. . Path: Finance: Money-Lenders. Credit and Debt in Victorian England Essay -- Victorian Era Credit and Debt in Victorian England The majority of Victorian society’s economic dealings can be summed up in two words: credit and debt. These ominous specters, which seemed to haunt Victorian England, were simultaneously able to evoke feelings of delight and doom in their â€Å"victims of vanity†. There were several different factors that contributed to the Victorian’s propensity to abuse their credit, and as a result, fall deeply into debt. In her essay, â€Å"A Husband and His Wife’s Dresses†, Erika Rappaport discusses the significant role that gender played in the credit and debt â€Å"epidemic† that plagued Victorian society. Rappaport gives a fairly detailed account of the progression of buying on credit in Victorian society. In her essay, Rappaport states that â€Å"for most of the nineteenth century, consumer credit was still informal and was based on personal trust and a financial and moral assessment of the buyer† (165). Essentially, buying on credit was based on social position rather than financial stability. She comments that in the nineteenth century, selling on credit was still a widespread practice, and â€Å"many of the commodities that filled the Victorians’ homes and adorned their bodies were bought with its helpâ₠¬  (167). Rappaport states that buying on credit â€Å"helped middle-class families on limited income set up households†, and that â€Å"approximately 80 percent of all sales in the small, elite shops of metropolitan districts were offered on credit† (167). However, as time progressed, informal store credit became increasingly risky. Consumers began to travel longer distances in order to buy their goods, and it became increasingly less common to conduct business with neighbors and relatives. As a result of these changes, â€Å"wholesale... ... bills was perpetually in the forefront of the Victorian mindset. Further Links http://www.victorianweb.org/graphics/thackeray/17.1.html Works Cited Landow, George P. â€Å"Bankruptcy in Victorian England—Threat or Myth?† The Victorian Web. 22 March 2001. 7 Nov. 2004. . Rappaport, Erika. â€Å"A Husband and His Wife’s Dresses.† The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective. Ed. Victoria de Grazia with Ellen Furlough. London: University of California Press, Ltd., 1996. 163-177. â€Å"The Victorians: Debt Could Get You in Prison.† RomanceEverAfter. 7 Nov. 2004. . Williams, Montagu Q.C. â€Å"London: Down East and Up West.† The Victorian Dictionary. 1894. 7 Nov. 2004. . Path: Finance: Money-Lenders.

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AMERICAN CULTURE Visual and performing arts 3. Arts and letters The arts, more than other features of culture, provide avenues for the expression of imagination and personal vision. They offer a range of emotional and intellectual pleasures to consumers of art and are an important way in which a culture represents itself. There has long been a Western tradition distinguishing those arts that appeal to the multitude, such as popular music, from those—such as classical orchestral music—normally available to the elite of learning and taste.Popular art forms are usually seen as more representative American products. In the United States in the recent past, there has been a blending of popular and elite art forms, as all the arts experienced a period of remarkable cross-fertilization. Because popular art forms are so widely distributed, arts of all kinds have prospered. The arts in the United States express the many faces and the enormous creative range of the American peopl e. Especially since World War II, American innovations and the immense energy displayed in literature, dance, and music have made American cultural works world famous.Arts in the United States have become internationally prominent in ways that are unparalleled in history. American art forms during the second half of the 20th century often defined the styles and qualities that the rest of the world emulated. At the end of the 20th century, American art was considered equal in quality and vitality to art produced in the rest of the world. Throughout the 20th century, American arts have grown to incorporate new visions and voices. Much of this new artistic energy came in the wake of America’s emergence as a superpower after World War II.But it was also due to the growth of New York City as an important center for publishing and the arts, and the immigration of artists and intellectuals fleeing fascism in Europe before and during the war. An outpouring of talent also followed the civil rights and protest movements of the 1960s, as cultural discrimination against blacks, women, and other groups diminished. American arts flourish in many places and receive support from private foundations, large corporations, local governments, federal agencies, museums, galleries, and individuals.What is considered worthy of support often depends on definitions of quality and of what constitutes art. This is a tricky subject when the popular arts are increasingly incorporated into the domain of the fine arts and new forms such as performance art and conceptual art appear. As a result, defining what is art affects what students are taught about past traditions (for example, Native American tent paintings, oral traditions, and slave narratives) and what is produced in the future.While some practitioners, such as studio artists, are more vulnerable to these definitions because they depend on financial support to exercise their talents, others, such as poets and photographers, a re less immediately constrained. Artists operate in a world where those who theorize and critique their work have taken on an increasingly important role. Audiences are influenced by a variety of intermediaries—critics, the schools, foundations that offer grants, the National Endowment for the Arts, gallery owners, publishers, and theater producers.In some areas, such as the performing arts, popular audiences may ultimately define success. In other arts, such as painting and sculpture, success is far more dependent on critics and a few, often wealthy, art collectors. Writers depend on publishers and on the public for their success. Unlike their predecessors, who relied on formal criteria and appealed to aesthetic judgments, critics at the end of the 20th century leaned more toward popular tastes, taking into account groups previously ignored and valuing the merger of popular and elite forms.These critics often relied less on aesthetic judgments than on social measures and wer e eager to place artistic productions in the context of the time and social conditions in which they were created. Whereas earlier critics attempted to create an American tradition of high art, later critics used art as a means to give power and approval to nonelite groups who were previously not considered worthy of including in the nation’s artistic heritage. Not so long ago, culture and the arts were assumed to be an unalterable inheritance—the accumulated wisdom and highest forms of achievement that were established in the past.In the 20th century generally, and certainly since World War II, artists have been boldly destroying older traditions in sculpture, painting, dance, music, and literature. The arts have changed rapidly, with one movement replacing another in quick succession. a) Visual arts. The visual arts have traditionally included forms of expression that appeal to the eyes through painted surfaces, and to the sense of space through carved or molded mate rials. In the 19th century, photographs were added to the paintings, drawings, and sculpture that make up the visual arts.The visual arts were further augmented in the 20th century by the addition of other materials, such as found objects. These changes were accompanied by a profound alteration in tastes, as earlier emphasis on realistic representation of people, objects, and landscapes made way for a greater range of imaginative forms. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, American art was considered inferior to European art. Despite noted American painters such as Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Mary Cassatt, and John Marin, American visual arts barely had an international presence.American art began to flourish during the Great Depression of the 1930s as New Deal government programs provided support to artists along with other sectors of the population. Artists connected with each other and developed a sense of common purpose through programs of the Public Works Administra tion, such as the Federal Art Project, as well as programs sponsored by the Treasury Department. Most of the art of the period, including painting, photography, and mural work, focused on the plight of the American people during the depression, and most artists painted real people in difficult circumstances.Artists such as Thomas Hart Benton and Ben Shahn expressed the suffering of ordinary people through their representations of struggling farmers and workers. While artists such as Benton and Grant Wood focused on rural life, many painters of the 1930s and 1940s depicted the multicultural life of the American city. Jacob Lawrence, for example, re-created the history and lives of African Americans. Other artists, such as Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper, tried to use human figures to describe emotional states such as loneliness and despair. Abstract Expressionism.Shortly after World War II, American art began to garner worldwide attention and admiration. This change was due to the inn ovative fervor of abstract expressionism in the 1950s and to subsequent modern art movements and artists. The abstract expressionists of the mid-20th century broke from the realist and figurative tradition set in the 1930s. They emphasized their connection to international artistic visions rather than the particularities of people and place, and most abstract expressionists did not paint human figures (although artist Willem de Kooning did portrayals of women).Color, shape, and movement dominated the canvases of abstract expressionists. Some artists broke with the Western art tradition by adopting innovative painting styles—during the 1950s Jackson Pollock â€Å"painted† by dripping paint on canvases without the use of brushes, while the paintings of Mark Rothko often consisted of large patches of color that seem to vibrate. Abstract expressionists felt alienated from their surrounding culture and used art to challenge society’s conventions. The work of each art ist was quite individual and distinctive, but all the artists identified with the radicalism of artistic creativity.The artists were eager to challenge conventions and limits on expression in order to redefine the nature of art. Their radicalism came from liberating themselves from the confining artistic traditions of the past. The most notable activity took place in New York City, which became one of the world’s most important art centers during the second half of the 20th century. The radical fervor and inventiveness of the abstract expressionists, their frequent association with each other in New York City’s Greenwich Village, and the support of a group of gallery owners and dealers turned them into an artistic movement.Also known as the New York School, the participants included Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, and Arshile Gorky, in addition to Rothko and Pollock. The members of the New York School came from diverse backgrounds such as the American M idwest and Northwest, Armenia, and Russia, bringing an international flavor to the group and its artistic visions. They hoped to appeal to art audiences everywhere, regardless of culture, and they felt connected to the radical innovations introduced earlier in the 20th century by European artists such as Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp.Some of the artists—Hans Hofmann, Gorky, Rothko, and de Kooning—were not born in the United States, but all the artists saw themselves as part of an international creative movement and an aesthetic rebellion. As artists felt released from the boundaries and conventions of the past and free to emphasize expressiveness and innovation, the abstract expressionists gave way to other innovative styles in American art. Beginning in the 1930s Joseph Cornell created hundreds of boxed assemblages, usually from found objects, with each based on a single theme to create a mood of contemplation and sometimes of reverence.Cornell's boxes exemplify th e modern fascination with individual vision, art that breaks down boundaries between forms such as painting and sculpture, and the use of everyday objects toward a new end. Other artists, such as Robert Rauschenberg, combined disparate objects to create large, collage-like sculptures known as combines in the 1950s. Jasper Johns, a painter, sculptor, and printmaker, recreated countless familiar objects, most memorably the American flag. The most prominent American artistic style to follow abstract expressionism was the pop art movement that began in the 1950s.Pop art attempted to connect traditional art and popular culture by using images from mass culture. To shake viewers out of their preconceived notions about art, sculptor Claes Oldenburg used everyday objects such as pillows and beds to create witty, soft sculptures. Roy Lichtenstein took this a step further by elevating the techniques of commercial art, notably cartooning, into fine art worthy of galleries and museums. Lichtens tein's large, blown-up cartoons fill the surface of his canvases with grainy black dots and question the existence of a distinct realm of high art.These artists tried to make their audiences see ordinary objects in a refreshing new way, thereby breaking down the conventions that formerly defined what was worthy of artistic representation. Probably the best-known pop artist, and a leader in the movement, was Andy Warhol, whose images of a Campbell’s soup can and of the actress Marilyn Monroe explicitly eroded the boundaries between the art world and mass culture. Warhol also cultivated his status as a celebrity. He worked in film as a director and producer to break down the boundaries between traditional and popular art.Unlike the abstract expressionists, whose conceptual works were often difficult to understand, Andy Warhol's pictures, and his own face, were instantly recognizable. Conceptual art, as it came to be known in the 1960s, like its predecessors, sought to break fre e of traditional artistic associations. In conceptual art, as practiced by Sol LeWitt and Joseph Kosuth, concept takes precedent over actual object, by stimulating thought rather than following an art tradition based on conventional standards of beauty and artisanship.Modern artists changed the meaning of traditional visual arts and brought a new imaginative dimension to ordinary experience. Art was no longer viewed as separate and distinct, housed in museums as part of a historical inheritance, but as a continuous creative process. This emphasis on constant change, as well as on the ordinary and mundane, reflected a distinctly American democratizing perspective. Viewing art in this way removed the emphasis from technique and polished performance, and many modern artworks and experiences became more about expressing ideas than about perfecting finished products. Photography.Photography is probably the most democratic modern art form because it can be, and is, practiced by most Ameri cans. Since 1888, when George Eastman developed the Kodak camera that allowed anyone to take pictures, photography has struggled to be recognized as a fine art form. In the early part of the 20th century, photographer, editor, and artistic impresario Alfred Stieglitz established 291, a gallery in New York City, with fellow photographer Edward Steichen, to showcase the works of photographers and painters. They also published a magazine called Camera Work to increase awareness about photographic art.In the United States, photographic art had to compete with the widely available commercial photography in news and fashion magazines. By the 1950s the tradition of photojournalism, which presented news stories primarily with photographs, had produced many outstanding works. In 1955 Steichen, who was director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, called attention to this work in an exhibition called The Family of Man. Throughout the 20th century, most professional photogra phers earned their living as portraitists or photojournalists, not as artists.One of the most important exceptions was Ansel Adams, who took majestic photographs of the Western American landscape. Adams used his art to stimulate social awareness and to support the conservation cause of the Sierra Club. He helped found the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in 1940, and six years later helped establish the photography department at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco (now the San Francisco Art Institute). He also held annual photography workshops at Yosemite National Park from 1955 to 1981 and wrote a series of influential books on photographic technique.Adams's elegant landscape photography was only one small stream in a growing current of interest in photography as an art form. Early in the 20th century, teacher-turned-photographer Lewis Hine established a documentary tradition in photography by capturing actual people, places, and events. Hine photo graphed urban conditions and workers, including child laborers. Along with their artistic value, the photographs often implicitly called for social reform. In the 1930s and 1940s, photographers joined with other depression-era artists supported by the federal government to create a hotographic record of rural America. Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Arthur Rothstein, among others, produced memorable and widely reproduced portraits of rural poverty and American distress during the Great Depression and during the dust storms of the period. In 1959, after touring the United States for two years, Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank published The Americans, one of the landmarks of documentary photography. His photographs of everyday life in America introduced viewers to a depressing, and often depressed, America that existed in the midst of prosperity and world power.Photographers continued to search for new photographic viewpoints. This search was perhaps most disturbingly embodied i n the work of Diane Arbus. Her photos of mental patients and her surreal depictions of Americans altered the viewer’s relationship to the photograph. Arbus emphasized artistic alienation and forced viewers to stare at images that often made them uncomfortable, thus changing the meaning of the ordinary reality that photographs are meant to capture. American photography continues to flourish.The many variants of art photography and socially conscious documentary photography are widely available in galleries, books, and magazines. A host of other visual arts thrive, although they are far less connected to traditional fine arts than photography. Decorative arts include, but are not limited to, art glass, furniture, jewelry, pottery, metalwork, and quilts. Often exhibited in craft galleries and studios, these decorative arts rely on ideals of beauty in shape and color as well as an appreciation of well-executed crafts. Some of these forms are also developed commercially.The decora tive arts provide a wide range of opportunity for creative expression and have become a means for Americans to actively participate in art and to purchase art for their homes that is more affordable than works produced by many contemporary fine artists. 4. Performing arts As in other cultural spheres, the performing arts in the United States in the 20th century increasingly blended traditional and popular art forms. The classical performing arts—music, opera, dance, and theater—were not a widespread feature of American culture in the first half of the 20th century.These arts were generally imported from or strongly influenced by Europe and were mainly appreciated by the wealthy and well educated. Traditional art usually referred to classical forms in ballet and opera, orchestral or chamber music, and serious drama. The distinctions between traditional music and popular music were firmly drawn in most areas. During the 20th century, the American performing arts began to incorporate wider groups of people. The African American community produced great musicians who became widely known around the country.Jazz and blues singers such as Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday spread their sounds to black and white audiences. In the 1930s and 1940s, the swing music of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller adapted jazz to make a unique American music that was popular around the country. The American performing arts also blended Latin American influences beginning in the 20th century. Between 1900 and 1940, Latin American dances, such as the tango from Argentina and the rumba from Cuba, were introduced into the United States.In the 1940s a fusion of Latin and jazz elements was stimulated first by the Afro-Cuban mambo and later on by the Brazilian bossa nova. Throughout the 20th century, dynamic classical institutions in the United States attracted international talent. Noted Russian-born choreographer George Balanchine e stablished the short-lived American Ballet Company in the 1930s; later he founded the company that in the 1940s would become the New York City Ballet. The American Ballet Theatre, also established during the 1940s, brought in non-American dancers as well.By the 1970s this company had attracted Soviet defector Mikhail Baryshnikov, an internationally acclaimed dancer who served as the company’s artistic director during the 1980s. In classical music, influential Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, who composed symphonies using innovative musical styles, moved to the United States in 1939. German-born pianist, composer, and conductor Andre Previn, who started out as a jazz pianist in the 1940s, went on to conduct a number of distinguished American symphony orchestras.Another Soviet, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, became conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D. C. , in 1977. Some of the most innovative artists in the first half of the 20th century successfully incorporated new forms into classical traditions. Composers George Gershwin and Aaron Copland, and dancer Isadora Duncan were notable examples. Gershwin combined jazz and spiritual music with classical in popular works such as Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935).Copland developed a unique style that was influenced by jazz and American folk music. Early in the century, Duncan redefined dance along more expressive and free-form lines. Some artists in music and dance, such as composer John Cage and dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, were even more experimental. During the 1930s Cage worked with electronically produced sounds and sounds made with everyday objects such as pots and pans. He even invented a new kind of piano.During the late 1930s, avant-garde choreographer Cunningham began to collaborate with Cage on a number of projects. Perhaps the greatest, and certainly the most popular, American innovation was the Broadway musical, which also became a m ovie staple. Beginning in the 1920s, the Broadway musical combined music, dance, and dramatic performance in ways that surpassed the older vaudeville shows and musical revues but without being as complex as European grand opera.By the 1960s, this American musical tradition was well established and had produced extraordinary works by important musicians and lyricists such as George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Jerome Kern, and Oscar Hammerstein II. These productions required an immense effort to coordinate music, drama, and dance. Because of this, the musical became the incubator of an American modern dance tradition that produced some of America's greatest choreographers, among them Jerome Robbins, Gene Kelly, and Bob Fosse.In the 1940s and 1950s the American musical tradition was so dynamic that it attracted outstanding classically trained musicians such as Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein composed the music for West Side Story, an updated version of Romeo and Juliet set in New York that became an instant classic in 1957. The following year, Bernstein became the first American-born conductor to lead a major American orchestra, the New York Philharmonic. He was an international sensation who traveled the world as an ambassador of the American style of conducting.He brought the art of classical music to the public, especially through his â€Å"Young People's Concerts,† television shows that were seen around the world. Bernstein used the many facets of the musical tradition as a force for change in the music world and as a way of bringing attention to American innovation. In many ways, Bernstein embodied a transformation of American music that began in the 1960s. The changes that took place during the 1960s and 1970s resulted from a significant increase in funding for the arts and their increased availability to larger audiences.New York City, the American center for art performances, experienced an artistic expl osion in the 1960s and 1970s. Experimental off-Broadway theaters opened, new ballet companies were established that often emphasized modern forms or blended modern with classical (Martha Graham was an especially important influence), and an experimental music scene developed that included composers such as Philip Glass and performance groups such as the Guarneri String Quartet. Dramatic innovation also continued to expand with the works of playwrights such as Edward Albee, Tony Kushner, and David Mamet.As the variety of performances expanded, so did the serious crossover between traditional and popular music forms. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, an expanded repertoire of traditional arts was being conveyed to new audiences. Popular music and jazz could be heard in formal settings such as Carnegie Hall, which had once been restricted to classical music, while the Brooklyn Academy of Music became a venue for experimental music, exotic and ethnic dance presentations, and traditional p roductions of grand opera. Innovative producer Joseph Papp had been staging Shakespeare in Central Park since the 1950s.Boston conductor Arthur Fiedler was playing a mixed repertoire of classical and popular favorites to large audiences, often outdoors, with the Boston Pops Orchestra. By the mid-1970s the United States had several world-class symphony orchestras, including those in Chicago; New York; Cleveland, Ohio; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Even grand opera was affected. Once a specialized taste that often required extensive knowledge, opera in the United States increased in popularity as the roster of respected institutions grew to include companies in Seattle, Washington; Houston, Texas; and Santa Fe, New Mexico.American composers such as John Adams and Philip Glass began composing modern operas in a new minimalist style during the 1970s and 1980s. The crossover in tastes also influenced the Broadway musical, probably America's most durable music form. Starting in the 1960 s, rock music became an ingredient in musical productions such as Hair (1967). By the 1990s, it had become an even stronger presence in musicals such as Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk (1996), which used African American music and dance traditions, and Rent (1996) a modern, rock version of the classic opera La Boheme.This updating of the musical opened the theater to new ethnic audiences who had not previously attended Broadway shows, as well as to young audiences who had been raised on rock music. Performances of all kinds have become more available across the country. This is due to both the sheer increase in the number of performance groups as well as to advances in transportation. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the number of major American symphonies doubled, the number of resident theaters increased fourfold, and the number of dance companies increased tenfold.At the same time, planes made it easier for artists to travel. Artists and companies regularly tour, and they expand the audiences for individual artists such as performance artist Laurie Anderson and opera singer Jessye Norman, for musical groups such as the Juilliard Quartet, and for dance troupes such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Full-scale theater productions and musicals first presented on Broadway now reach cities across the country. The United States, once a provincial outpost with a limited European tradition in performance, has become a flourishing center for the performing arts. . Arts and letters The arts, more than other features of culture, provide avenues for the expression of imagination and personal vision. They offer a range of emotional and intellectual pleasures to consumers of art and are an important way in which a culture represents itself. There has long been a Western tradition distinguishing those arts that appeal to the multitude, such as popular music, from those—such as classical orchestral music—normally available to the elite of learning and taste. Popular art forms are usually seen as more representative American products.In the United States in the recent past, there has been a blending of popular and elite art forms, as all the arts experienced a period of remarkable cross-fertilization. Because popular art forms are so widely distributed, arts of all kinds have prospered. The arts in the United States express the many faces and the enormous creative range of the American people. Especially since World War II, American innovations and the immense energy displayed in literature, dance, and music have made American cultural works world famous.Arts in the United States have become internationally prominent in ways that are unparalleled in history. American art forms during the second half of the 20th century often defined the styles and qualities that the rest of the world emulated. At the end of the 20th century, American art was considered equal in quality and vitality to art produced in the rest of the world. Throughout the 20th century, American arts have grown to incorporate new visions and voices. Much of this new artistic energy came in the wake of America’s emergence as a superpower after World War II.But it was also due to the growth of New York City as an important center for publishing and the arts, and the immigration of artists and intellectuals fleeing fascism in Europe before and during the war. An outpouring of talent also followed the civil rights and protest movements of the 1960s, as cultural discrimination against blacks, women, and other groups diminished. American arts flourish in many places and receive support from private foundations, large corporations, local governments, federal agencies, museums, galleries, and individuals.What is considered worthy of support often depends on definitions of quality and of what constitutes art. This is a tricky subject when the popular arts are increasingly incorporated into the domain of the fine arts and new forms such as performance art and conceptual art appear. As a result, defining what is art affects what students are taught about past traditions (for example, Native American tent paintings, oral traditions, and slave narratives) and what is produced in the future.While some practitioners, such as studio artists, are more vulnerable to these definitions because they depend on financial support to exercise their talents, others, such as poets and photographers, are less immediately constrained. Artists operate in a world where those who theorize and critique their work have taken on an increasingly important role. Audiences are influenced by a variety of intermediaries—critics, the schools, foundations that offer grants, the National Endowment for the Arts, gallery owners, publishers, and theater producers.In some areas, such as the performing arts, popular audiences may ultimately define success. In other arts, such as painting and sculpture, success is far more dependent on criti cs and a few, often wealthy, art collectors. Writers depend on publishers and on the public for their success. Unlike their predecessors, who relied on formal criteria and appealed to aesthetic judgments, critics at the end of the 20th century leaned more toward popular tastes, taking into account groups previously ignored and valuing the merger of popular and elite forms. These critics ften relied less on aesthetic judgments than on social measures and were eager to place artistic productions in the context of the time and social conditions in which they were created. Whereas earlier critics attempted to create an American tradition of high art, later critics used art as a means to give power and approval to nonelite groups who were previously not considered worthy of including in the nation’s artistic heritage. Not so long ago, culture and the arts were assumed to be an unalterable inheritance—the accumulated wisdom and highest forms of achievement that were establis hed in the past.In the 20th century generally, and certainly since World War II, artists have been boldly destroying older traditions in sculpture, painting, dance, music, and literature. The arts have changed rapidly, with one movement replacing another in quick succession. a) Visual arts. The visual arts have traditionally included forms of expression that appeal to the eyes through painted surfaces, and to the sense of space through carved or molded materials. In the 19th century, photographs were added to the paintings, drawings, and sculpture that make up the visual arts.The visual arts were further augmented in the 20th century by the addition of other materials, such as found objects. These changes were accompanied by a profound alteration in tastes, as earlier emphasis on realistic representation of people, objects, and landscapes made way for a greater range of imaginative forms. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, American art was considered inferior to European art. Despite noted American painters such as Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Mary Cassatt, and John Marin, American visual arts barely had an international presence.American art began to flourish during the Great Depression of the 1930s as New Deal government programs provided support to artists along with other sectors of the population. Artists connected with each other and developed a sense of common purpose through programs of the Public Works Administration, such as the Federal Art Project, as well as programs sponsored by the Treasury Department. Most of the art of the period, including painting, photography, and mural work, focused on the plight of the American people during the depression, and most artists painted real people in difficult circumstances.Artists such as Thomas Hart Benton and Ben Shahn expressed the suffering of ordinary people through their representations of struggling farmers and workers. While artists such as Benton and Grant Wood focused on rural life, man y painters of the 1930s and 1940s depicted the multicultural life of the American city. Jacob Lawrence, for example, re-created the history and lives of African Americans. Other artists, such as Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper, tried to use human figures to describe emotional states such as loneliness and despair. Abstract Expressionism.Shortly after World War II, American art began to garner worldwide attention and admiration. This change was due to the innovative fervor of abstract expressionism in the 1950s and to subsequent modern art movements and artists. The abstract expressionists of the mid-20th century broke from the realist and figurative tradition set in the 1930s. They emphasized their connection to international artistic visions rather than the particularities of people and place, and most abstract expressionists did not paint human figures (although artist Willem de Kooning did portrayals of women).Color, shape, and movement dominated the canvases of abstract expressio nists. Some artists broke with the Western art tradition by adopting innovative painting styles—during the 1950s Jackson Pollock â€Å"painted† by dripping paint on canvases without the use of brushes, while the paintings of Mark Rothko often consisted of large patches of color that seem to vibrate. Abstract expressionists felt alienated from their surrounding culture and used art to challenge society’s conventions. The work of each artist was quite individual and distinctive, but all the artists identified with the radicalism of artistic creativity.The artists were eager to challenge conventions and limits on expression in order to redefine the nature of art. Their radicalism came from liberating themselves from the confining artistic traditions of the past. The most notable activity took place in New York City, which became one of the world’s most important art centers during the second half of the 20th century. The radical fervor and inventiveness of t he abstract expressionists, their frequent association with each other in New York City’s Greenwich Village, and the support of a group of gallery owners and dealers turned them into an artistic movement.Also known as the New York School, the participants included Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, and Arshile Gorky, in addition to Rothko and Pollock. The members of the New York School came from diverse backgrounds such as the American Midwest and Northwest, Armenia, and Russia, bringing an international flavor to the group and its artistic visions. They hoped to appeal to art audiences everywhere, regardless of culture, and they felt connected to the radical innovations introduced earlier in the 20th century by European artists such as Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp.Some of the artists—Hans Hofmann, Gorky, Rothko, and de Kooning—were not born in the United States, but all the artists saw themselves as part of an international creative movement an d an aesthetic rebellion. As artists felt released from the boundaries and conventions of the past and free to emphasize expressiveness and innovation, the abstract expressionists gave way to other innovative styles in American art. Beginning in the 1930s Joseph Cornell created hundreds of boxed assemblages, usually from found objects, with each based on a single theme to create a mood of contemplation and sometimes of reverence.Cornell's boxes exemplify the modern fascination with individual vision, art that breaks down boundaries between forms such as painting and sculpture, and the use of everyday objects toward a new end. Other artists, such as Robert Rauschenberg, combined disparate objects to create large, collage-like sculptures known as combines in the 1950s. Jasper Johns, a painter, sculptor, and printmaker, recreated countless familiar objects, most memorably the American flag. The most prominent American artistic style to follow abstract expressionism was the pop art move ment that began in the 1950s.Pop art attempted to connect traditional art and popular culture by using images from mass culture. To shake viewers out of their preconceived notions about art, sculptor Claes Oldenburg used everyday objects such as pillows and beds to create witty, soft sculptures. Roy Lichtenstein took this a step further by elevating the techniques of commercial art, notably cartooning, into fine art worthy of galleries and museums. Lichtenstein's large, blown-up cartoons fill the surface of his canvases with grainy black dots and question the existence of a distinct realm of high art.These artists tried to make their audiences see ordinary objects in a refreshing new way, thereby breaking down the conventions that formerly defined what was worthy of artistic representation. Probably the best-known pop artist, and a leader in the movement, was Andy Warhol, whose images of a Campbell’s soup can and of the actress Marilyn Monroe explicitly eroded the boundaries between the art world and mass culture. Warhol also cultivated his status as a celebrity. He worked in film as a director and producer to break down the boundaries between traditional and opular art. Unlike the abstract expressionists, whose conceptual works were often difficult to understand, Andy Warhol's pictures, and his own face, were instantly recognizable. Conceptual art, as it came to be known in the 1960s, like its predecessors, sought to break free of traditional artistic associations. In conceptual art, as practiced by Sol LeWitt and Joseph Kosuth, concept takes precedent over actual object, by stimulating thought rather than following an art tradition based on conventional standards of beauty and artisanship.Modern artists changed the meaning of traditional visual arts and brought a new imaginative dimension to ordinary experience. Art was no longer viewed as separate and distinct, housed in museums as part of a historical inheritance, but as a continuous creative proces s. This emphasis on constant change, as well as on the ordinary and mundane, reflected a distinctly American democratizing perspective. Viewing art in this way removed the emphasis from technique and polished performance, and many modern artworks and experiences became more about expressing ideas than about perfecting finished products.Photography. Photography is probably the most democratic modern art form because it can be, and is, practiced by most Americans. Since 1888, when George Eastman developed the Kodak camera that allowed anyone to take pictures, photography has struggled to be recognized as a fine art form. In the early part of the 20th century, photographer, editor, and artistic impresario Alfred Stieglitz established 291, a gallery in New York City, with fellow photographer Edward Steichen, to showcase the works of photographers and painters.They also published a magazine called Camera Work to increase awareness about photographic art. In the United States, photographi c art had to compete with the widely available commercial photography in news and fashion magazines. By the 1950s the tradition of photojournalism, which presented news stories primarily with photographs, had produced many outstanding works. In 1955 Steichen, who was director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, called attention to this work in an exhibition called The Family of Man.Throughout the 20th century, most professional photographers earned their living as portraitists or photojournalists, not as artists. One of the most important exceptions was Ansel Adams, who took majestic photographs of the Western American landscape. Adams used his art to stimulate social awareness and to support the conservation cause of the Sierra Club. He helped found the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in 1940, and six years later helped establish the photography department at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco (now the San Francisco Art Instit ute).He also held annual photography workshops at Yosemite National Park from 1955 to 1981 and wrote a series of influential books on photographic technique. Adams's elegant landscape photography was only one small stream in a growing current of interest in photography as an art form. Early in the 20th century, teacher-turned-photographer Lewis Hine established a documentary tradition in photography by capturing actual people, places, and events. Hine photographed urban conditions and workers, including child laborers.Along with their artistic value, the photographs often implicitly called for social reform. In the 1930s and 1940s, photographers joined with other depression-era artists supported by the federal government to create a photographic record of rural America. Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Arthur Rothstein, among others, produced memorable and widely reproduced portraits of rural poverty and American distress during the Great Depression and during the dust storms of th e period.In 1959, after touring the United States for two years, Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank published The Americans, one of the landmarks of documentary photography. His photographs of everyday life in America introduced viewers to a depressing, and often depressed, America that existed in the midst of prosperity and world power. Photographers continued to search for new photographic viewpoints. This search was perhaps most disturbingly embodied in the work of Diane Arbus. Her photos of mental patients and her surreal depictions of Americans altered the viewer’s relationship to the photograph.Arbus emphasized artistic alienation and forced viewers to stare at images that often made them uncomfortable, thus changing the meaning of the ordinary reality that photographs are meant to capture. American photography continues to flourish. The many variants of art photography and socially conscious documentary photography are widely available in galleries, books, and magazi nes. A host of other visual arts thrive, although they are far less connected to traditional fine arts than photography.Decorative arts include, but are not limited to, art glass, furniture, jewelry, pottery, metalwork, and quilts. Often exhibited in craft galleries and studios, these decorative arts rely on ideals of beauty in shape and color as well as an appreciation of well-executed crafts. Some of these forms are also developed commercially. The decorative arts provide a wide range of opportunity for creative expression and have become a means for Americans to actively participate in art and to purchase art for their homes that is more affordable than works produced by many contemporary fine artists. . Performing arts As in other cultural spheres, the performing arts in the United States in the 20th century increasingly blended traditional and popular art forms. The classical performing arts—music, opera, dance, and theater—were not a widespread feature of America n culture in the first half of the 20th century. These arts were generally imported from or strongly influenced by Europe and were mainly appreciated by the wealthy and well educated. Traditional art usually referred to classical forms in ballet and opera, orchestral or chamber music, and serious drama.The distinctions between traditional music and popular music were firmly drawn in most areas. During the 20th century, the American performing arts began to incorporate wider groups of people. The African American community produced great musicians who became widely known around the country. Jazz and blues singers such as Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday spread their sounds to black and white audiences. In the 1930s and 1940s, the swing music of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller adapted jazz to make a unique American music that was popular around the country.The American performing arts also blended Latin American influences beginning in th e 20th century. Between 1900 and 1940, Latin American dances, such as the tango from Argentina and the rumba from Cuba, were introduced into the United States. In the 1940s a fusion of Latin and jazz elements was stimulated first by the Afro-Cuban mambo and later on by the Brazilian bossa nova. Throughout the 20th century, dynamic classical institutions in the United States attracted international talent.Noted Russian-born choreographer George Balanchine established the short-lived American Ballet Company in the 1930s; later he founded the company that in the 1940s would become the New York City Ballet. The American Ballet Theatre, also established during the 1940s, brought in non-American dancers as well. By the 1970s this company had attracted Soviet defector Mikhail Baryshnikov, an internationally acclaimed dancer who served as the company’s artistic director during the 1980s. In classical music, influential Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, who composed symphonies using i nnovative musical styles, moved to the United States in 1939.German-born pianist, composer, and conductor Andre Previn, who started out as a jazz pianist in the 1940s, went on to conduct a number of distinguished American symphony orchestras. Another Soviet, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, became conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D. C. , in 1977. Some of the most innovative artists in the first half of the 20th century successfully incorporated new forms into classical traditions. Composers George Gershwin and Aaron Copland, and dancer Isadora Duncan were notable examples.Gershwin combined jazz and spiritual music with classical in popular works such as Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935). Copland developed a unique style that was influenced by jazz and American folk music. Early in the century, Duncan redefined dance along more expressive and free-form lines. Some artists in music and dance, such as composer John Cage and dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, were even more experimental. During the 1930s Cage worked with electronically produced sounds and sounds made with everyday objects such as pots and pans.He even invented a new kind of piano. During the late 1930s, avant-garde choreographer Cunningham began to collaborate with Cage on a number of projects. Perhaps the greatest, and certainly the most popular, American innovation was the Broadway musical, which also became a movie staple. Beginning in the 1920s, the Broadway musical combined music, dance, and dramatic performance in ways that surpassed the older vaudeville shows and musical revues but without being as complex as European grand opera.By the 1960s, this American musical tradition was well established and had produced extraordinary works by important musicians and lyricists such as George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Jerome Kern, and Oscar Hammerstein II. These productions required an immense effort to coordinate music, drama, and dance. Because of this, the musical became the incubator of an American modern dance tradition that produced some of America's greatest choreographers, among them Jerome Robbins, Gene Kelly, and Bob Fosse.In the 1940s and 1950s the American musical tradition was so dynamic that it attracted outstanding classically trained musicians such as Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein composed the music for West Side Story, an updated version of Romeo and Juliet set in New York that became an instant classic in 1957. The following year, Bernstein became the first American-born conductor to lead a major American orchestra, the New York Philharmonic. He was an international sensation who traveled the world as an ambassador of the American style of conducting.He brought the art of classical music to the public, especially through his â€Å"Young People's Concerts,† television shows that were seen around the world. Bernstein used the many facets of the musi cal tradition as a force for change in the music world and as a way of bringing attention to American innovation. In many ways, Bernstein embodied a transformation of American music that began in the 1960s. The changes that took place during the 1960s and 1970s resulted from a significant increase in funding for the arts and their increased availability to larger audiences.New York City, the American center for art performances, experienced an artistic explosion in the 1960s and 1970s. Experimental off-Broadway theaters opened, new ballet companies were established that often emphasized modern forms or blended modern with classical (Martha Graham was an especially important influence), and an experimental music scene developed that included composers such as Philip Glass and performance groups such as the Guarneri String Quartet. Dramatic innovation also continued to expand with the works of playwrights such as Edward Albee, Tony Kushner, and David Mamet.As the variety of performanc es expanded, so did the serious crossover between traditional and popular music forms. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, an expanded repertoire of traditional arts was being conveyed to new audiences. Popular music and jazz could be heard in formal settings such as Carnegie Hall, which had once been restricted to classical music, while the Brooklyn Academy of Music became a venue for experimental music, exotic and ethnic dance presentations, and traditional productions of grand opera. Innovative producer Joseph Papp had been staging Shakespeare in Central Park since the 1950s.Boston conductor Arthur Fiedler was playing a mixed repertoire of classical and popular favorites to large audiences, often outdoors, with the Boston Pops Orchestra. By the mid-1970s the United States had several world-class symphony orchestras, including those in Chicago; New York; Cleveland, Ohio; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Even grand opera was affected. Once a specialized taste that often required extensi ve knowledge, opera in the United States increased in popularity as the roster of respected institutions grew to include companies in Seattle, Washington; Houston, Texas; and Santa Fe, New Mexico.American composers such as John Adams and Philip Glass began composing modern operas in a new minimalist style during the 1970s and 1980s. The crossover in tastes also influenced the Broadway musical, probably America's most durable music form. Starting in the 1960s, rock music became an ingredient in musical productions such as Hair (1967). By the 1990s, it had become an even stronger presence in musicals such as Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk (1996), which used African American music and dance traditions, and Rent (1996) a modern, rock version of the classic opera La Boheme.This updating of the musical opened the theater to new ethnic audiences who had not previously attended Broadway shows, as well as to young audiences who had been raised on rock music. Performances of all kinds ha ve become more available across the country. This is due to both the sheer increase in the number of performance groups as well as to advances in transportation. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the number of major American symphonies doubled, the number of resident theaters increased fourfold, and the number of dance companies increased tenfold.At the same time, planes made it easier for artists to travel. Artists and companies regularly tour, and they expand the audiences for individual artists such as performance artist Laurie Anderson and opera singer Jessye Norman, for musical groups such as the Juilliard Quartet, and for dance troupes such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Full-scale theater productions and musicals first presented on Broadway now reach cities across the country. The United States, once a provincial outpost with a limited European tradition in performance, has become a flourishing center for the performing arts.