formerly New School for Social Research Private university in New York City. It was established in 1919 as an informal centre for adult education and soon became the first American university to specialize in continuing education. In 1934 it established a graduate faculty of political and social sciences, staffed mainly by refugee academics from Nazi Germany. It also includes a liberal arts college, a graduate school of management and urban policy, the Mannes College of Music, and the Parsons School of Design
Painters who participated in the development of contemporary art, particularly Abstract Expressionism, in or around New York City in the 1940s and '50s. During and after World War II, leadership in avant-garde art shifted from war-torn Europe to New York, and the New York school maintained a dominant position in world art into the 1980s. Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Pop art, and the new realist styles of the late 1960s, among others, all had their beginnings in New York. See also action painting