Lincoln Kirstein founded the School of American Ballet in 1934 with George Balanchine, and in 1948 the two men established the New York City Ballet, for which Kirstein served as general director until l989. He wrote more than five hundred books, articles, and monographs on the arts, as well as criticism, poetry, novels, and a number of historical and autobiographical works. He died in 1996. Muriel Stuart, the last protegee of Anna Pavlova, was an instructor at the School of American Ballet for thirty-five years.