CLOSED
*The Stieglitz Collection is currently at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
ORIGINS OF INFLUENCE III: American Modernism
MAIN LEVEL
This exhibition includes works from the Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Modern Art, The Harmon Foundation Collection, Aaron Douglas Collection, and the Dr. A Everette James Jr. Collection of African- American Folk Art. These works celebrate the legacy of early modernist movement at the dawn of the 20th century. They represent a time when a new “spirit” enveloped American life. It was a spirit of change, dissent, revolution, and of hopefulness. Customs and traditions, as well as established ways of thinking across institutions were subjected to critical reappraisals and experimentation. Thus, new directions seemed possible in politics, the arts, and in the quality of life among Americans.
Alfred Stieglitz Collection
Alfred Stieglitz (1864- 1946) was arguably the most influential figure associated with modern art in the United States from the 1890s to the 1940s. He was America’s first great art photographer and almost single-handedly established photography as a fine art. While he was the impresario of the modern art movement in America, he was also the first in America to promote an appreciation of traditional African artifacts as works of art instead of primitive curiosities. He also founded and edited two influential photography magazines and assembled the first great collection of modern art in the United States, which consisted of more than 800 objects, not including his own photographs. Stieglitz developed an audience for modern art, and financially supported and promoted many of America’s earliest modern artists through three very influential galleries that he operated.
