Dictioneer · CC BY-SA 4.0

Allan Kaprow coined the term "Happening" and, in the late 1950s and 1960s, staged roughly 200 of them — loosely scripted performance events that broke down the line between artist, audience and everyday life. He later shifted toward smaller-scale "Activities," intimate pieces built around ordinary human behavior rather than spectacle. His ideas fed directly into Fluxus and the broader development of performance and installation art as recognized forms.