Antedating of "Happening"

[Fred Shapiro]

The OED's first use for the Sixties art noun "happening" is dated 1959.
According to Wikipedia, "George Segal hosted annual picnics for his New
York art friends, which frequently involved happenings. It was at one of
the picnics that Kaprow first coined the term Happening in the Spring of
1957. Happening first appeared in print in the Winter 1958 issue of the
Rutgers undergraduate literary magazine, Anthologist. The form was
imitated and the term was adopted by artists across the United States,
Germany, and Japan."

Fred Shapiro


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