The 1960s Arts and Entertainment: Chronology

1960:     January 3 The Moscow State Symphony begins a seven-week tour at New York's Carnegie Hall, becoming the first Soviet orchestra to perform in the United States.

1960:     February 11 Jack Paar, host of The Tonight Show, walks off the show when an NBC censor deletes a joke from his performance.

1960:     April The New York State legislature authorizes the city of New York to purchase Carnegie Hall, which was scheduled for demolition.

1960:     April 1 Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz appear for the last time as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo on The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957–60).

1960:     October 13 Jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong begins a goodwill tour of Africa, partially sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

1961:     January 20 Robert Frost reads his poem "The Gift Outright" at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.

1961:     January 27 Soprano Leontyne Price first performs at New York's Metropolitan Opera.

1961:     April Folk singer Bob Dylan makes his debut at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village, New York.

1962:     May 30 Jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman begins a six-week, U.S. State Department-arranged tour of Russia.

1962:     August 5 Actress Marilyn Monroe dies from an overdose of barbiturates.

1962:     September 25 Philharmonic Hall, the first completed building of New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, is inaugurated by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic.

1963:     January 8 Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci, is shown at Washington's National Gallery, the first time the painting ever has appeared outside the Louvre in Paris.

1963:     May 7 The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, the first major regional theater in the Midwest, opens.

1963:     November 24 The murder of alleged presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is broadcast live on television.

1964:     February 9 The Beatles make their first appearance on American television, on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948–71).

1964:     May The just-remodeled Museum of Modern Art in New York City reopens with a new gallery, the Steichen Photography Center, named for photographer Edward Steichen.

1965:     April 26 Symphony No. 4 (1916) by Charles Ives is performed in its entirety for the first time by the American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski.

1965:     May 9 Piano virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz returns to the Carnegie Hall stage after a twelve-year-long "retirement."

1965:     September 29 President Lyndon Johnson signs into the law the Federal Aid to the Arts Bill.

1966:     August 29 The Beatles play their last live concert.

1967:     February 18 The National Gallery of Art arranges to purchase da Vinci's Ginevra dei Benci for between $5 and $6 million, the highest price paid to date for a single painting.

1967:     June The Monterey International Pop Festival, an important early rock music event, is held in California.

1967:     November 9 The first issue of Rolling Stone magazine is published. A portrait of The Beatles' John Lennon is featured on the cover.

1967:     December Universal News, the last of the movie newsreel companies, closes because it is unable to compete with television news.

1968:     April 19 Hair opens on Broadway, at the Biltmore Theatre.

1968:     September 16 Presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon appears as a guest on TV's Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In (1968–73) and delivers one of the show's signature lines: "Sock it to me."

1968:     November 1 The Motion Picture Association of America inaugurates its film ratings system.

1969:     August 15–17 The Woodstock Music and Art Fair is held on a 600-acre hog farm in upstate New York.