In April of 1920, a strange little exhibition in two third-floor rented rooms on East 47th Street in Manhattan inaugurated the tenure of America’s first “Museum of Modern Art.” It was created by a loosey-goosey but presciently multidisciplinary collective named the Société Anonyme Inc. by Man Ray, who co-founded the group with Marcel Duchamp and his great supporter — and artist in her own right — Katherine Dreier. The group was dedicated to educating the American public about the profound and sweeping changes being brought about by modern art. Although the infamous Armory Show of 1913 and Alfred Stieglitz’s seminal 291 Gallery had given the public a taste for the avant-garde, the isms were mutating so fast and furious, and the misunderstanding of Modernism was so widespread, that it seemed necessary to establish a sort of clearing-house for the international community of experimental artists. Their first show, accordingly, included a wide sampling of approaches, ranging from the rough, colorful pictorialism of Expressionism to the chance compositions and diagrammatic machine... More >>>