New York

The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and... dedicated on October 28, 1886. The statue, a gift to the United States from the people of France, is of a robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, who bears a torch and a tabula ansata upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. A broken chain lies at her feet. The statue has become an icon of freedom and of the United States. Bartholdi was inspired by French law professor and politician Édouard René de Laboulaye, who commented in 1865 that any monument raised to American independence would properly be a joint project of the French and American peoples. Due to the troubled political situation in France, work on the statue did not commence until the early 1870s. In 1875, Laboulaye proposed that the French finance the statue and the Americans provide the pedestal and the site.
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The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in 1883, it connects the New York City boroughs of... Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River. With a main span of 1,595.5 feet , it was the longest suspension bridge in the world from its opening until 1903, and the first steel-wire suspension bridge. Originally referred to as the New York and Brooklyn Bridge and as the East River Bridge, it was dubbed the Brooklyn Bridge, a name from an earlier January 25, 1867 letter to the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and formally so named by the city government in 1915. Since its opening, it has become an icon of New York City, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964 and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1972. The Brooklyn Bridge was initially designed by German immigrant John Augustus Roebling, who had previously designed and constructed shorter suspension bridges, such as Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, Waco Suspension Bridge in Waco, Texas, and the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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The Cathedral of St. Patrick is a decorated Neo-Gothic-style Roman Catholic cathedral church in the United States. It is the seat of the archbishop... of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and a parish church, located on the east side of Fifth Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets in midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, directly across the street from Rockefeller Center and specifically facing the Atlas statue. The land on which the present cathedral sits, sold by the city's aldermen in 1799 at a quit rent, was purchased at auction for unpaid taxes in November 1828 by Francis Cooper, who conveyed it to the trustees of St Peter's Church in the city that still lay far to the south. The trustees intended it for a Catholic burial ground. The site at 50th Street and Fifth Avenue contained a "fine old house," which was then fitted with a chapel of St. Ignatius. The school closed in 1814 and the Jesuits sold the lot to the diocese.
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Belmont Park is a major thoroughbred horse-racing facility located in Elmont in the Town of Hempstead in Nassau County, New York, on Long Island... adjoining New York City. It first opened on May 4, 1905. It is typically open for racing throughout May, June and into late July, and again from late September through late October. It is world famous as the home of the Belmont Stakes, known as the "Test of the Champion", the third leg of the Triple Crown. Belmont is known as "The Championship Track" because almost every major champion in racing history since the early 20th century has competed on the racecourse — including each of the 11 Triple Crown winners. Along with Saratoga Race Course, Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Churchill Downs in Louisville, and Del Mar and Santa Anita racecourses in California, Belmont is considered one of the elite racetracks in the sport. The largest crowd was in 2004 when 120,139 witnessed the Belmont Stakes as Smarty Jones was seeking the Triple Crown but was upset by Birdstone. Belmont Park is operated by the non-profit New York Racing Association, as are Aqueduct and Saratoga Race Course.
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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 world's largest art galleries. There is also a much smaller second location at "The Cloisters" in Upper Manhattan that features medieval art. Represented in the permanent collection are works of art from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine, and Islamic art. The museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several notable interiors, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Met's galleries. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens.
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The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the... permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, it is one of the 20th century's most important architectural landmarks. The museum opened on October 21, 1959, and was the second museum opened by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; from 2005 to 2008 it underwent an extensive renovation. Solomon Guggenheim, guided by his art adviser and German painter Hilla Rebay, began to collect works by nonobjective artists in 1929. Guggenheim first began to show his collection in his apartment, and as the collection grew, he established The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1937. Guggenheim and Rebay opened the foundation for the "promotion and encouragement and education in art and the enlightenment of the public.
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The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art.... Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of media. The Whitney places a particular emphasis on exhibiting the work of living artists for its collection as well as maintaining an extensive permanent collection containing many important pieces from the first half of the last century. The museum's Annual and Biennial exhibitions have long been a venue for younger and less well-known artists whose work is showcased by the museum. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the museum's namesake and founder, was herself a well-regarded sculptor as well as a serious art collector. As a patron of the arts, she had already achieved some success as the creator of the "Whitney Studio Club," a New York–based exhibition space which she created in 1918 to promote the works of avant-garde and unrecognized American artists.
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The New Museum, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to presenting contemporary art from around... the world. Over the past five years, the New Museum has exhibited artists from Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, China, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Germany, Poland, Spain, South Africa, Turkey, and the United Kingdom among many other countries. The Museum presents the work of under-recognized artists, and has mounted ambitious surveys of important figures such as Ana Mendieta, William Kentridge, David Wojnarowicz, Paul McCarthy and Andrea Zittel before they received widespread public recognition. In 2003, the New Museum presented the highly-regarded exhibition Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Also in 2003, the New Museum formed an affiliation with Rhizome, a leading online platform for global new media art. In 2005, the museum was among 406 New York City arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.
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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. Among his best known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris , as well as the opera, Porgy and Bess . He wrote most of his vocal and theatrical works, including more than a dozen Broadway shows, in collaboration with his elder brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin. George Gershwin composed music for both Broadway and the classical concert hall, as well as popular songs that brought his work to an even wider public. His compositions have been used in numerous films and on television, and many became jazz standards recorded in numerous variations. Countless singers and musicians have recorded Gershwin songs. Gershwin was named Jacob Gershowitz at birth in Brooklyn, New York, on September 26, 1898. His parents were Jews from Odessa . His father, Morris Gershowitz, changed his family name to 'Gershwin' some time after immigrating to the United States from St. Petersburg, Russia in the early 1890s.
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Ossie Davis was an American film actor, director, poet, playwright, writer, and social activist. Davis was born Raiford Chatman Davis in Cogdell,... Clinch County, Georgia, a son of Kince Charles Davis, a railway construction engineer, and his wife Laura . The name Ossie came from a county clerk who misheard his mother's pronunciation of his initials "R.C." when he was born. So he inadvertently became "Ossie" when his mother told the courthouse clerk in Clinch River, Ga., who was filing his birth certificate that his name was R.C. Davis. The clerk thought she had said, Ossie Davis, and she was not about to argue with a white person. Davis experienced racism from an early age as the KKK threatened to shoot his father, whose job they felt was too advanced for a black man to have. Following the wishes of his parents, he attended Howard University but dropped out in 1939 to fulfill his acting career in New York; he later attended Columbia University School of General Studies. His acting career, which spanned seven decades, began in 1939 with the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem.
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Paul Julian Banks is an English American musician, best known as the lead singer, lyricist and guitarist of the rock band Interpol. He is also a... solo artist under the name Julian Plenti. As a singer, Banks' voice lies in the baritone range. Banks was born in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, England. His family left England when he was three years old, moving to Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and then to Spain where he attended the American School of Madrid. His father was later transferred to Mexico, where Banks finished high school at the American School Foundation. There he attended the American School Foundation, where he was involved in theatre productions, and played the lead role in the musical South Pacific. He speaks fluent Spanish with a Castilian and Mexican accent. After high school, Banks attended New York University where he studied English and Comparative Literature, and after graduating, he worked at magazines such as Gotham and Interview. Banks later took a job in data entry, and then in a café, in order to devote more of his time to music.
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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. Mirman was born in Russia to Jewish parents. His family immigrated to the United States when he was four and a half years old. Mirman attended William Diamond Middle School and Lexington High School in Lexington, MA, and Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts. He returned to his high school to deliver its 2009 commencement address. He will return to Hampshire to deliver the 2012 commencement speech as well. In 2004, Mirman released The Absurd Nightclub Comedy of Eugene Mirman, a CD/DVD on Suicide Squeeze Records. The album was voted one of the Best Albums of 2004 by both The A.V. Club and Time Out New York. His second album, En Garde, Society was released by Sub Pop in 2006. Three years later, Mirman released another comedy album titled God Is a Twelve-Year-Old Boy with Aspergers which was recorded in Chicago at the Lakeshore Theatre. Mirman has appeared at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal, Bumbershoot, and South by Southwest.
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Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States.... Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm. He was the inventor of the term "organized sound", a phrase meaning that certain timbres and rhythms can be grouped together, sublimating into a whole new definition of music. Although his complete surviving works only last about three hours, he has been recognised as an influence by several major composers of the late 20th century. His use of new instruments and electronic resources led to his being known as the "Father of Electronic Music" while Henry Miller described him as "The stratospheric Colossus of Sound". Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse was born in Paris, but when he was only a few weeks old, he was sent to be raised by his great-uncle and other relations in the small town of Le Villars in Burgundy region of France. There he developed a very strong attachment to his maternal grandfather, Claude Cortot.
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Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt,... Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic. Then his family moved to nearby Iglau where Mahler grew up. As a composer, he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century. Born in humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age.
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Kyra Minturn Sedgwick is an American actress. Sedgwick is best known for her starring role as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on the TNT crime... drama The Closer. Sedgwick's role in the series won her a Golden Globe Award in 2007 and an Emmy Award in 2010. The series will end in Summer 2012, following the completion of its seventh season. Sedgwick was born in New York City, the daughter of Patricia , a speech teacher and educational/family therapist, and Henry Dwight Sedgwick V, a venture capitalist. Her father was Episcopalian and of English heritage, and her mother was Jewish. On her father's side, she is a descendant of Judge Theodore Sedgwick, Endicott Peabody , William Ellery , John Lathrop , of Boston, Mass and Ellery Sedgwick, owner / editor of The Atlantic Monthly. Sedgwick is also the first cousin once removed of actress Edie Sedgwick, a niece of the writer John Sedgwick, a sister of actor Robert Sedgwick, and half-sister of jazz guitarist Mike Stern.
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Abigail Kathleen Breslin is an American actress. She is one of the youngest actresses ever to be nominated for an Academy Award. Breslin appeared in... her first commercial when she was only three years old, and in her first film, Signs, at the age of five. Her subsequent films include Little Miss Sunshine, Nim's Island, Definitely, Maybe, My Sister's Keeper, Zombieland and Rango. Breslin was born in New York City, the daughter of Kim, who manages her career, and Michael, a telecommunications expert, computer programmer, and consultant. Breslin has two older brothers, Ryan and Spencer, who are also actors. Breslin lives in New York with her family, which her maternal grandparents have described as "very close-knit". She is named after First Lady of the United States Abigail Adams. Breslin's career began at the age of three, when she appeared in a Toys "R" Us commercial. Her first film role was in the 2002 science fiction thriller Signs, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, where she played Bo Hess, the daughter of the main character, Graham Hess . Signs garnered mostly positive reviews and was a box office success, grossing $408 million worldwide.
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Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon. The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest... male star in the history of American cinema. After trying various jobs, Bogart began acting in 1921 and became a regular in Broadway productions in the 1920s and 1930s. When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film. His first great success was as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest , and this led to a period of typecasting as a gangster with films such as Angels with Dirty Faces and B-movies like The Return of Doctor X . His breakthrough as a leading man came in 1941, with High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon. The next year, his performance in Casablanca raised him to the peak of his profession and, at the same time, cemented his trademark film persona, that of the hard-boiled cynic who ultimately shows his noble side.
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Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards ... including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award. Described by Frank Rich of the New York Times as "the greatest, and perhaps best-known artist working in musical theatre", his most famous scores include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Assassins. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy. In addition to theatre, he has contributed to movies as well, including the 1981 Warren Beatty film Reds, contributing the song "Goodbye For Now". He also wrote five songs for the 1990 movie Dick Tracy, including Sooner or Later , which won the Academy Award for Best Song. He was president of the Dramatists Guild from 1973 to 1981.
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Jon Stewart is an American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian. He is widely known as host of The... Daily Show, a satirical news program that airs on Comedy Central. Stewart started as a stand-up comedian, but branched into television as host of Short Attention Span Theater for Comedy Central. He went on to host his own show on MTV, called The Jon Stewart Show, and then hosted another show on MTV called You Wrote It, You Watch It. He has also had several film roles as an actor. Stewart became the host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central in early 1999. He is also a writer and co-executive-producer of the show. After Stewart joined, The Daily Show steadily gained popularity and critical acclaim, resulting in his sixteen Emmy Awards. Stewart has gained acclaim as an acerbic, satirical critic of personality-driven media shows, in particular those of the US media networks such as CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. Critics say Stewart benefits from a double standard: he critiques other news shows from the safe, removed position of his "fake news" desk.
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Jonathan Niven "Jon" Cryer is an American actor, screenwriter and film producer. He is the son of actress–singer Gretchen Cryer. He made his... motion picture debut in the 1984 romantic comedy No Small Affair, but gained greater fame as "Duckie" in the 1986 John Hughes-scripted film Pretty in Pink. In 1998, he finished writing and producing the independent film Went to Coney Island on a Mission from God Be Back by Five, which was well received. Even though Cryer gained subsequent fame by starring in these films, it took several years to find success on television; the shows in which he starred, , did not last long. In 2003, he was cast as Alan Harper on the CBS hit comedy series Two and a Half Men, opposite Charlie Sheen, for which Cryer was nominated six consecutive times for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series; winning the Emmy in 2009. Cryer was born in New York. His mother, Gretchen Cryer , was a playwright, songwriter, actress, and singer, and his father, Donald David Cryer, was an actor/singer who originally studied to be a minister.
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