New York City Culture

New York City's cultural weight comes from being the place people arrived. The Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, abstract expressionism in the 1940s, punk at CBGB in the 1970s and hip-hop in the Bronx in 1973 all started here, and each began in a specific neighbourhood rather than in an institution.

The institutions are formidable too — the Met, MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Whitney within a few miles of each other — but the living culture is more dispersed than that suggests.

More than 200 languages are spoken here and nearly 40% of residents were born abroad, the highest of any major American city. Queens alone is often called the most ethnically diverse urban area on earth.

Theatre is the city's most visible export: around forty Broadway houses, plus a much larger off-Broadway scene that is usually where the interesting work is.