Immigrant Artists, Alternative Modernisms and Collecting as a Public Good in the US, 1910-40

Before the shock of European modern art at the 1913 Armory show in NYC and Chicago, many immigrant artists brought to the U.S. from 1910 on already challenged notions about the nature of art and the meaning of modernism. These artists were invited to the U.S. by Hungarian immigrant art dealer Martin Birnbaum (1878-1970).

Many works Birnbaum exhibited landed in major museums in New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Boston, Chicago, Detroit and Buffalo, among other places, profoundly affecting public taste, the history of American collecting and new emerging museums in America's Midwest. Birnbaum's prominent collector clients shared his vision of art as a public good for everyone and all of them gave their collections to public museums.