Between March 24 and April 16, 1913, The Art Institute of Chicago hosted the International Exposition of Modern Art – the famous “Armory Show” – which included 634 works that traced the development of European art from Goya to the Cubists. The show arrived in Chicago fresh from its first, month-long showing in New York…
…the Armory Show came as a shock to most Chicagoans, provoking a raucous response ranging from moral posturing and parody in the press to honest outrage…
The Armory Show changed the progress of art in Chicago. In addition to establishing the importance of avant-garde art in the popular imagination, it prepared the ground for such influential designs as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Midway Gardens (1914), which combined modern painting, sculpture, and architecture in a single creation; the founding of the Arts Club in 1916; and the growth of Chicago’s many radical exhibitions societies of the 1920s.
~Encyclopedia of Chicago
~image, Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition History: http://www.artic.edu/research/1913-exhibition-history