Invitation to the Beefsteak dinner, John Sloan Manuscript Collection, Delaware Art Museum
Walking through The New Spirit: American Art in the Armory Show, 1913, you might wonder just how much the Montclair Art Museum sets aside for the purchase of artificial evergreens. Potted miniatures ring the Sherman Family Gallery, wherein items documenting the organization and response to the Armory Show are on display; in the exhibition proper, garlands of plastic are draped on high. What initially seems a PoMo fillip turns out to be a recreation of the original installation at the Sixty-ninth Regiment Armory. The evergreen tree was conceived as a symbol for “the new spirit” of art heralded by the exhibition. Posters advertising the show and buttons handed out during its run were emblazoned with an evergreen logo. At Montclair, wall-sized photos of the original exhibition testify to how Postimpressionist and Modern artworks were surrounded by an abundance of shrubbery. But how “green” can an iteration of the Armory Show be in 2013?
Henri Matisse, Nude in a Wood (Nu dans la forêt; Nu assis dans le bois), 1906; oil on board mounted on panel, 16 x 12 ¾ in; Brooklyn Museum, Gift of George F. Of, 52.150, © 2012 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The transformative effect the Armory Show had on American culture—and, in the long term, world culture—is a tale often told (see “The Armory Show at 100,” The New Criterion, December 2012).