1950's The Arts | Important Events in the Arts, 1950–1959

1950

• The Cardinal, by Henry Morton Robinson, is the year's best seller.
• Musical festivals in the United States and abroad commemorate the bicentenary death of Johann Sebastian Bach. Notable among them are the yearlong Bach series at the University of California School of Music and the augmented program in the annual Bach series at the Berkshire Music Festival.
• Basquet-Banquet, by Karl Knaths, wins the $3,500 first prize in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit "American Painting Today—1950."
• Abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollack completes Autumn Rhythm, in which the paint is dribbled and flung all over the surface of the canvas.
• South Pacific by Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Joshua Logan wins the Pulitzer Prize.
• Photographer Margaret Bourke-White makes a photographic essay of South Africa.
• Marilyn Monroe,...