Lincoln Kirstein.

Lincoln Kirstein, 88, the cofounder, with George Balanchine, of New York City Ballet, and a seminal figure in the development of the arts in twentieth-century America, died of natural causes at his home in New York City on January 5, 1996.

The Harvard-educated Kirstein was a latter-day Renaissance man--a poet, novelist, art collector, and critic--whose taste was honed through sojourns in Europe and exposure to Many of the major arts movements of the twenties and thirties. Particularly impressed by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, Kirstein became enamored of ballet early in his life. He especially admired the work of the young Balanchine and, after Diaghilev's death and the dissolution of Ballets Russes, Kirstein invited the choreographer to come to the United States and establish a ballet school and company. The School of American Ballet was thus founded in 1934, along with a troupe called the American Ballet in 1935 and, a year later, its offshoot, Ballet Caravan, established to provide opportunities for young American choreographers. The most notable works produced from this project were Lew Christensen's Filling Station and Eugene Loring's Billy the Kid.

After military service in World War II, Kirstein founded Ballet Society with Balanchine in 1946. When this successful company was invited to become resident at New York's City Center in 1948, it changed its name to New York City Ballet.

Admittedly biased toward the classical aesthetic, Kirstein had little use for modem dance. All of Balanchine's works, however groundbreaking in form and subject many of them may have been, were firmly rooted in the classical technique. Among Kirstein's many books on ballet were Ballet Alphabet (1939); The Classic Ballet (with Muriel Stuart, 1952); Movement and Metaphor: Four Centuries of Ballet (1971); The New York City Ballet (1973); Nijinsky Dancing (1975); and Ballet: Bias and Belief a collection of essays published in 1983.

Born in Rochester, New York, on May 4, 1907, and reared in Boston, Kirstein was a child of affluence stemming from Filene's department store, of which his father, Louis, was the chief executive. While at Harvard he founded a highly respected literary magazine, Hound and Horn. He later published poems, novels, and essays on a wide range of his man artistic, literary, historical, and political interests. His artistic philanthropies, often unpublicized, were widespread. Among his many lifetime honors were the United States government's Medal of Freedom, New York City's Handel Medallion, the National Medal of Arts, the Brandeis University Notable Achievement Award, the Benjamin Franklin Medal of Britain's Royal Society of Arts, and, along with Balanchine, the National Gold Medal of Merit Award of the National Society of Arts and Letters. Kirstein married Fidelma Cadmus, sister of the noted artist Paul Cadmus, in 1941. She died in 1991. Kirestein retired as general director of NYCB in 1989 but retained the title of general director emeritus.