The Armory Show

In February 1913, the groundbreaking Armory Show opened in New York City. The exhibition featured paintings, prints, and sculpture by modern American and European artists. The art of Americans such as George Bellows, Robert Henri, and John Sloan was considered progressive for the time, but it was the work of avant-garde Europeans such as Paul Cézanne, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, and Paul Gauguin that truly shocked exhibition visitors. While many in the press, the public, and even the art world expressed outrage about the Europeans’ modern and abstract pieces, a number of American artists were inspired by the new visual language they saw exhibited by their counterparts from abroad. This exhibition celebrates the one-hundredth anniversary of the seminal Armory Show in New York by drawing on work in Reynolda’s collection and a private collection by American artists who participated in the 1913 show. Besides Bellows, Henri, and Sloan, the exhibition features pieces by Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, Alfred Maurer, Maurice Prendergast, and others.