Karinska left her nephew when she was invited by Balanchine to join the New York City Ballet at the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, newly injected with generous grants from the Ford Foundation. This period – often praised by critics as Karinska's greatest and condemned by others for “garish” colors – witnessed Balanchine's new "Firebird", in 1970, which Karinska created from the sketches of Marc Chagall. Karinska and Chagall had been close friends and mutual artistic admirers since Moscow in the 1920s.