Culture and contemporary life

Main article: Culture of New York City

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest museums in the world.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is home to 12 influential arts organizations, making it the largest performing arts complex in the United States.

"Culture just seems to be in the air, like part of the weather", the writer Tom Wolfe has said of New York City.^[81] Numerous major American cultural movements began in the city, such as the Harlem Renaissance, which established the African-American literary canon in the United States. The city was a center of jazz in the 1940s, abstract expressionism in the 1950s and the birthplace of hip hop in the 1970s. The city's punk and hardcore scenes were influential in the 1970s and 1980s, and the city has long had a flourishing scene for Jewish American literature. Prominent indie rock bands coming out of New York in recent years include The Strokes, Interpol, The Bravery, Scissor Sisters, and They Might Be Giants.