<P> The Berlin group published periodicals such as Club Dada, Der Dada, Everyman His Own Football, and Dada Almanach . </P> <P> In Cologne, Ernst, Baargeld, and Arp launched a controversial Dada exhibition in 1920 which focused on nonsense and anti-bourgeois sentiments . Cologne's Early Spring Exhibition was set up in a pub, and required that participants walk past urinals while being read lewd poetry by a woman in a communion dress . The police closed the exhibition on grounds of obscenity, but it was re-opened when the charges were dropped . </P> <P> Like Zürich, New York City was a refuge for writers and artists from the First World War . Soon after arriving from France in 1915, Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia met American artist Man Ray . By 1916 the three of them became the center of radical anti-art activities in the United States . American Beatrice Wood, who had been studying in France, soon joined them, along with Elsa von Freytag - Loringhoven . Arthur Cravan, fleeing conscription in France, was also in New York for a time . Much of their activity centered in Alfred Stieglitz's gallery, 291, and the home of Walter and Louise Arensberg . </P> <P> The New Yorkers, though not particularly organized, called their activities Dada, but they did not issue manifestos . They issued challenges to art and culture through publications such as The Blind Man, Rongwrong, and New York Dada in which they criticized the traditionalist basis for museum art . New York Dada lacked the disillusionment of European Dada and was instead driven by a sense of irony and humor . In his book Adventures in the arts: informal chapters on painters, vaudeville and poets Marsden Hartley included an essay on "The Importance of Being' Dada"'. </P>

Where did the term dada come from and what does it mean