A Trip to Paris that Changed History

On November 6, 1912, the American artist Walt Kuhn wrote to his wife that Arthur B. Davies had arrived in Paris. Davies had sent Kuhn on a quest to secure the latest European works for the Armory Show, starting with the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, Germany and continuing to The Hague, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Munich. Kuhn, in turn, urged Davies to come and see the avant-garde for himself. Their crash course in modern art in the fall of 1912 transformed the Armory Show into a showcase of radical new movements – according to Kuhn, “We have crowded an art education into these few weeks.” The artist confided to his wife that they “will probably be jumped on for bringing over things which they will at first consider too wild…we will show NY something they never dreamed of.”

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Jacques Villon (French, 1875–1963), Young Girl, 1912. Oil on canvas, 57 9/16 × 45 in. (146.2 × 114.3 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950, 1950-134-190