Between March 24 and April 16 of 1913 the Art Institute of Chicago hosted the International Exhibition of Modern Art. For the first time, avant-garde art was exhibited in a museum setting, and it was lauded as the "biggest exhibition ever put up in an American art gallery in the shortest space of time."

Fresh from the show's debut at the 69th Regiment Armory in the New York City, the Chicago installation contained 634 objects out of 1,090 originally on view in New York. It placed radical American and European Fauvists, Cubists, Symbolists, and Futurists in context with Post-Impressionist masters and included paintings by Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS) founding members Arthur Davies, Walt Kuhn, and Walter Pach; Pach curated the show with remarkable premonition for artists and pieces that would become pinnacles of twentieth-century modernism.

Sometimes hung three-pieces-high, the Armory Show contained Amadeo de Souza Cardoso's The Leap of the Rabbit (1911) and Andre Derain's Forest at Martigue (1908-09), both now in the collection of the Art Institute. Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse were hung with Rodin, Munch, Kandinsky, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Sculpture by Alexander Archipenko and Constantin Brancusi shared space with the three liberally-represented Duchamp brothers, and Odilon Redon, with 36 pieces in the show, required a room all to himself. Pablo Picasso's Woman with a Mustard Pot (1910) and Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) were target for ridicule.

The show caused a sensation. At times, 18,000 Chicagoans visited per day; it was "So crowded that the faces of the visitors were almost against the pictures."

1. Quote by Walt Kuhn from "Chicago gets art exhibit." New York Tribune, March 6, 1913.
2. Extract from contract between Association of American Painters and Sculptors, Inc., and the Art Institute of Chicago, 1913.
3. Parodic rhyme from "Director French Flees Deluge of Cubist Art." Chicago Record-Herald, March 21, 1913.
4. Letter from Newton H. Carpenter to William M. R. French, March 26, 1913.
5. Installation photograph featuring sculpture by Brancusi, paintings by Matisse, Lehmbruck, Blanchet, and Dufy, 1913 (1 of 2).
6. Installation photograph featuring sculpture by Brancusi, paintings by Matisse, Lehmbruck, Blanchet, and Dufy, 1913 (2 of 2).
7. Installation photograph featuring works by Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Gauguin, 1913 (1 of 2).
8. Installation photograph featuring works by Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Gauguin, 1913 (2 of 2).
9. "'Cubist' photograph of 'cubist' crowd at 'cubist' exhibit." Chicago Daily Tribune, March 31, 1913.
10. "Crowds Leaving Art Institute." Chicago Daily Tribune, March 31, 1913.
11. Installation photograph featuring Picabia, Maurice de Vlaminck, Picasso, Derain, and Duchamp, 1913 (1 of 2).
12. Installation photograph featuring Picabia, Maurice de Vlaminck, Picasso, Derain, and Duchamp, 1913 (2 of 2).