George Maciunas

Born on 8 November 1931 in Kaunas, Lithuania, and emigrating with his family to the United States in 1948, he studied architecture, art history, graphic design, and musicology at Cooper Union, Carnegie Tech, and NYU over eleven years. In 1960, attending Richard Maxfield composition classes at the New School, he met La Monte Young, Al Hansen, and Allan Kaprow. The following year he named and launched Fluxus, organising its first festivals in Europe and producing the influential Fluxus Editions series. He died on 9 May 1978 in Boston, leaving behind SoHo's first artist cooperatives as a further legacy.