page_title: 291 (art gallery)
section_title: At the forefront of modern art in New York (1909–12)
hierarchical_section_title: 291 (art gallery) / At the forefront of modern art in New York (1909–12)
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of the Brancusi sculpture exhibition, March-April 1914, at "291" (gallery)
context_page_description: 291 is the commonly known name for an internationally noted art gallery that was located in Midtown Manhattan at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York City from 1905 to 1917. Originally known as the "Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession", the gallery was created and managed by photographer Alfred Stieglitz.
  The gallery is noted for two reasons. First, the exhibitions there helped bring art photography to the same stature in America as painting and sculpture. Pioneering artistic photographers such as Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Gertrude Käsebier and Clarence H. White all gained critical recognition through exhibitions at 291. Equally important, Stieglitz used this space to introduce to the United States some of the most avant-garde European artists of the time, including Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin, Henri Rousseau, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brâncuși, and the Dadaists Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp.
context_section_description: In addition to marking the beginning of a new path for 291, 1909 was significant for Stieglitz due to the death of his father in May. The two had not been particularly close, but in his will, Stieglitz's father left him the then substantial amount of $10,000. Stieglitz drew on this amount over the next several years to help keep 291 in business.
  The new art and the public's reactions to it were very vitalizing to Stieglitz; it gave him a brand new set of admirers and followers at a time when he was feeling less and less connected to his old colleagues at the Photo-Secession. From then on, the course of the gallery was set. From 1909 until it closed in 1917, 291 featured only six shows of photography out of a total of 61 exhibitions held.
  The change in the focus of the gallery led to a coalescence of group of intellectuals and artists who both sympathized with Stieglitz's aims and who themselves were invigorated by the atmosphere there. After the artistic success of the Matisse exhibit, the gallery took on a new life. On any given day, Stieglitz might have been surrounded by artists John Marin, Max Weber, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley or Marius de Zayas; authors and art critics Sadakichi Hartmann and Benjamin De Casseres; financial supporters Paul Haviland and Agnes Ernst Meyer; and editors and collaborators Joseph Keiley and John Kerfoot.
  De Zayas had both a passion and a vision that matched with Stieglitz's personality, and soon he was helping define what the aesthetics of this new generation of art would be. His work was exhibited at the gallery, he wrote several articles for Camera Work, and he introduced Stieglitz to some of the newest European artists by serving as a guide and interpreter when Stieglitz would travel to Europe. His interest in African tribal art and admiration for Picasso's Cubist work convinced Stieglitz to hold groundbreaking exhibitions of these subjects at 291.
  For historical context, virtually no other galleries in the United States were showing works with such abstract and dynamic content at that time. Whether it was already controversial European artists like Picasso, Matisse or Cézanne, or relatively unknown but soon-to-be-famous Americans like Marin, Weber, Dove or Hartley, Stieglitz had both the aesthetic sense and the nerve to showcase individuals who are now acknowledged to have been at the forefront of modern art.
  In fact, the more an artist confounded the public the more Stieglitz felt justified in his efforts. When he presented Picasso's first exhibit in this country in 1911, Stieglitz delighted in telling critics that the works they called “the gibberings of a lunatic” he found to be “as perfect as a Bach fugue.”
  Among the significant exhibitions that took place during this period were first shows for Alfred Maurer, John Marin and Marsden Hartley, second shows of Rodin and Matisse, and important shows for newer artists Arthur Carles, Arthur Dove and Max Weber.
caption: View of the Constantin Brâncuși exhibition at "291", 1914 (published in Camera Work, No. 48, 1916)
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