March 13, 2025 · 6pm-7:30pm
$25 members, $35 non-members
In the spring of 1913, a group of American artists organized the International Exhibition of Modern Art in New York. Their intension was to display work by the best modern American artists. Better known today as the Armory Show, the results were just the opposite with works by European artists like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and most infamously Marcel Dechamp stealing the headlines. This talk will explore the history and consequences of this groundbreaking exhibition with consideration of some of the works exhibited in the original show.
Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), 1912, oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art
William Perthes is an educator, author, and curator. He is the Bernard C. Watson Director of Adult Education at the Barnes Foundation. Bill has a background in philosophy and art history and is the author of “The Barnes Method” included in the recently published The Barnes: Then and Now. Much of Bill's work focuses on how experiences with works of art, both short and long term, can impact and inform fields as varied as business, medicine, law enforcement. and restorative justice. Bill is the curator of Faces of Resilience a traveling exhibition of original works of art created by currently and formerly incarcerated artists at the State Correctional Institute Phoenix. In addition, his scholarship has focused on American Modernism with a special concentration on the Abstract Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell. He is the former Director of Education for the Violette de Mazia Foundation.
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