Specialized journals and small presses consolidated the happenings pantheon

Evidence

The Drama Review (TDR) devoted its winter 1965 issue to what guest editor Michael Kirby called “The New Theater” (scripts by Oldenburg, Whitman, and Higgins, an interview with John Cage, a lecture by La Monte Young, and material on Fluxus); the same year, Higgins’s Something Else Press published Al Hansen’s Primer on Happenings and Time/Space Art, and Dutton brought out Kirby’s anthology Happenings, which established a pantheon, with scripts and statements by Kaprow, Grooms, Whitman, Dine, and Oldenburg. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1862

Categorization

• DEFINE: Documents precisely which publication institutions (TDR, Something Else Press, Dutton) canonized the happenings movement, not just the artists.
• XREF: The reader’s argument that avant-garde scenes need material infrastructure: here the infrastructure is periodicals and presses, not just cheap rent.