The 1913 Armory Show

The landmark Armory Show of 1913 was the first large exhibition of modern art in the US and introduced European modernism to an American audience. The show was initially titled the International Exhibition of Modern Art and was the first project of the ‘American Association of Painters and Sculptors’, a group that aimed to “lead the public taste in art, rather than follow it.”

Leah Dickerman, a curator at the MoMA in NYC describes this 1913 exhibition as, “a reordering of the rules of art-making—a great transformation where the foundations of how art is conceived are totally shaken.” Amongst the 1300 works on display were pieces by leading European avant-garde artists (from Impressionists to Cubists) whose experimental approach challenged both audiences and artists, while casting into sharp relief the relative conservatism of American realism—the defining approach of American art of the time.