December 6 & 7, 2013
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
To celebrate the centennial of the International Exhibition of Modern Art, better known as the Armory Show, the Musée d’Orsay and the New-York Historical Society organized a two-day international symposium focusing on the history and key issues of this crucial event in the history of art.
Held in New York in 1913, the Armory Show introduced the American public to the European avant-garde, provoking scandal and aesthetic shock that extended well beyond the approximately 87,000 visitors who came to the 69th Infantry Regiment Armory during the 26 days of the exhibition.
The exhibition became a landmark event in the history of American art and Franco-American cultural exchanges—about half of the 1,400 works in the exhibition, including Impressionist, Fauvist, and Cubist works seen by the American public for the first time, came from Europe, mainly from France—and it served as a catalyst for the emergence of American modern art and accelerated the spread of modernism in general.
The organizers propose to revisit and gain insight into how the Armory Show inspired contentious debates about national identity and international influence, which had a critical impact on the development of American art.
View all of the symposium sessions on the Musée d’Orsay website, including presentations by:
- Casey Nelson Blake, Professor of History and American Studies, Columbia University
- Marilyn Kushner, Curator and Head of the Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections, New-York Historical Society
- Didier Ottinger, Director, Centre Pompidou
- Joanne Marie Mancini, Department of History, National University of Ireland, Maynooth
- Emily C. Burns, Professor of Art History, Department of Art, Auburn University
- Barbara Shaefer, Curator, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne
- Laurette McCarthy, Independent Researcher, Indianapolis, Indiana
- Scarlett Reliquet, Independent Researcher, Musée d’Orsay
- Catherine Chevillot, Chief Heritage Curator and Director, Musée Rodin
- Doïna Lemny, Curator, Centre Pompidou
- Angela Miller, Professor, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri
- Kimberly Morse-Jones, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art, Sweet Briar College, Virginia
- Paul B. Franklin, President of the Association for Marcel Duchamp, Editor in Chief of the review Etant Donné Marcel Duchamp
- Kim Orcutt, Henry Luce Foundation Curator of American Art, New-York Historical Society
- Christine Oaklander, Independent researcher, Allentown, Pennsylvania
- Silvia Bernacchi, Art Historian, University of Pisa
- Annie Cohen-Solal, Professor, Universities of Paris
