April 4 – June 16, 2013
![Henri Matisse, Four Studies of a Nude, ca. 1910. Crayon on wove paper. Gift of Mrs. Gustav Radeke, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, 22.296](/art-museum/exhibitions/PublishingImages/armory-100/Matisse.jpg)
Henri Matisse, Four Studies of a Nude, ca. 1910. Crayon on wove paper. Gift of Mrs. Gustav Radeke, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, 22.296
![Albert Krehbiel, Untitled (Female Figure), early 20th century. Charcoal on paper. Collection of DePaul University, gift of Rebecca Krehbiel Ryan from the Krehbiel Estate, 2001.7](/art-museum/exhibitions/PublishingImages/armory-100/2001_7.jpg)
Albert Krehbiel, Untitled (Female Figure), early 20th century. Charcoal on paper. Collection of DePaul University, gift of Rebecca Krehbiel Ryan from the Krehbiel Estate, 2001.7
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This exhibition followed by a century the sensational Armory Show, formally known as “The International Exhibition of Modern Art.” Organized by a group of American artists and first mounted in an armory in New York, it brought together hundreds of works by contemporary European and American artists, as well as a few earlier examples, to introduce avant-garde art to American audiences. Many works challenged the established academic tradition, which was not just an artistic practice but an entire world view. During its three-week run at the Art Institute of Chicago, the show drew an astonishing 189,000 visitors, and in that time the city was virtually obsessed by new ways of seeing: curious visitors lined up for lectures about modern art, newspaper editorials bemoaned its moral effect, and Cubism became a running joke. To explore that history, this exhibition featured academic works that represented conventional taste; then, like the Armory Show itself, it concentrated on American and European artists who shared in what the organizers termed the “New Spirit;” new subject matter, new freedom from formal constraints, new social attitudes.
This exhibition is funded in part by a grant from The Terra Foundation for American Art.