American Decades

Important Events in the Arts, 1980–1989

More than 1.5 million people tour a retrospective exhibit of one thousand works by Pablo Picasso at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
President Jimmy Carter cancels a Washington exhibit of works from the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Mikhail Baryshnikov becomes director of the American Ballet Theater.
The Metropolitan Opera receives a $5 million grant from Texaco.
On March 29, the New York Metropolitan Opera production of
Manon Lescaut,
with Placido Domingo and Renata Scotto, is broadcast via satellite to twenty countries.
On April 13,
Grease,
the longest running show on Broadway to date, closes after 3,388 performances.
On September 6, the Whitney Museum buys Jasper Johns's
Three Flags
for $1 million, the highest price yet paid for a work by a living artist.

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