The Armory Show at 100

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October 11, 2013 - February 23, 2014

This exhibition will revisit the famous 1913 New York Armory Show on its 100th anniversary. The original exhibition, organized by a small group of American artists and presented at the Lexington Avenue Armory, introduced the American public to European avant-garde painting and sculpture. The public sensation and the polemical critical responses to the show represented a watershed in the history of American art. The exhibition included works by such well-known European modernists as Paul Cezanne, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso and Paul Gauguin, as well as leaders of American art such as Robert Henri, Albert Pinkham Ryder and Childe Hassam, along with the early work by such budding modernists as Charles Sheeler, Marsden Hartley and Stuart Davis.

Marcel Duchamp, (French, 1887-1968), Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), 1912. Oil on canvas, 57 7/8 x 35 1/8 in. Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950, 1950-134-59 © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris/Succession Marcel Duchamp. Reproduction, including downloading this work, is prohibited by copyright law without written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The New-York Historical Society's exhibition reasesses the Armory Show with a carefully chosen group of approximately seventy-five works. The exhibition includes American and European paintings and sculpture that will represent the scandalous avant-garde and the range of early twentieth-century American art. It will also include historical works (dating through the nineteenth century) that the original organizers gathered in an effort to show the progression of modern art leading up to the controversial abstract works that have become the Armory Show’s hallmark.

The 2013 exhibition revisits the Armory Show from an art-historical point of view, shedding new light on the artists represented and how New Yorkers responded. It will also place this now-legendary event within the context of its historical moment in the United States and the milieu of New York City in ca. 1911–1913. To that end, music, literature and early film will be considered, as well as the political and economic climate.

The exhibition will not travel. It will be accompanied by a substantial catalogue with thirty-one essays by prominent scholars from a variety of fields to re-examine the 1913 exhibition and its historical and cultural context.

Generous support for The Armory Show at 100 has been provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. Through grant making, policy development, and research, IMLS helps communities and individuals thrive through broad public access to knowledge, cultural heritage, and lifelong learning.

Support for the development of The Armory Show at 100 Web resource has been provided by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this web resource do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.