Société Anonyme, Inc. (Museum of Modern Art). Report 1920-1921

Katherine Dreier; Marcel Duchamp, et al., 1921

Dreier, Katherine; Marcel Duchamp, et al. Société Anonyme, Inc. (Museum of Modern Art). Report 1920-1921. New York: 1921. Tall 8vo (25.5 cm), 50 pp.; 24 b/w illus. reproducing artworks by Archipenko, Brancusi, Man Ray, Villon, etc., interior near fine; in paper boards with title label, a bit rubbed with small losses to paper at board edges, crown of rear joint loosened, otherwise very good.

A document of real museological significance for modern art in the US: the first annual report of New York’s first Museum of Modern Art, founded by artist and activist Katherine Dreier, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray in 1920 (nine years before MoMA) to showcase and promote “a better understanding” of international modernism “throughout the country, as well as in New York City.” The report documents the first year of exhibitions, lectures, and publications of the Society, which “acted as a leaven in the art world of America.”

Descriptions of the exhibitions include fascinating notes on display and gallery design. Lists of the included artists offer hints at the internationalism of modern schools and lesser-known names while lecture notes conjure wonderful evenings, including The First Birthday Party: An Evening with Gertrude Stein. Concludes with a catalogue of the Reference LIbrary, some entries with annotations the author considered important, e.g. “very rare, out of print” and “entered into the Library because it shows the break of the earlier Renaissance from the Byzantine.”

The Société Anonyme was the first permanent collection of modern art in the United States.

SOLD