Culture of New York City

Times Square is the center of the city's theater district.

Manhattan has been the scene of many important American cultural movements. In 1912, about 20,000 workers, a quarter of them women, marched on Washington Square Park to commemorate the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 workers on March 25, 1911. Many of the women wore fitted tucked-front blouses like those manufactured by the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a clothing style that became the working woman's uniform and a symbol of female independence, reflecting the alliance of labor and suffrage movements.

The Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s established the African-American literary canon in the United States. Manhattan's vibrant visual art scene in the 1950s and 1960s was a center of the American pop art movement, which gave birth to such giants as Jasper Johns]and Roy Lichtenstein. Perhaps no other artist is as associated with the downtown pop art movement of the late 1970s as Andy Warhol, who socialized at clubs like Serendipity 3, and Studio 54 and was shot in the chest in 1968 by the radical feminist Valerie Solanas, founder of the group "Society for Cutting Up Men" (S.C.U.M.) and author of the SCUM Manifesto.

A popular haven for art, the downtown neighborhood of Chelsea, Manhattan/Chelsea is widely known for its galleries and cultural events, with more than 200 art galleries that are home to modern art from upcoming artists and respected artists

"With more than 200 galleries, Chelsea has plenty of variety. "Some 200 galleries have opened their doors in recent years, making West Chelsea a destination for art lovers from around the City and the world."

Broadway theatre is often considered the highest professional form of theatre in the United States. Plays and musical theater/musicals are staged in one of the 39 larger professional theatres with at least 500 seats

Manhattan is also home to some of the most extensive art collections, both contemporary and historical, in the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum/Guggenheim Museum.

Manhattan is the borough most closely associated with New York City by non-residents; even some natives of New York City's outer boroughs will describe a trip to Manhattan as "going to the city