Walt Kuhn Family papers and Armory Show records
name: label: Creator
content: Kuhn, Walt, 1877-1949
label: Names
content: Armory Show (1913: New York, N.Y.)
label: Names
content: Association of American Painters and Sculptors (New York, N.Y.)
label: Names
content: Kit Kat Club (New York, N.Y.)
label: Names
content: Penguin Club (New York, N.Y.)
label: Names
content: Davies, Arthur B. (Arthur Bowen), 1862-1928
label: Names
content: Kuhn, Brenda, 1911-
label: Names
content: Kuhn, Vera, d. 1961
label: Names
content: Oldfield, Otis, 1890-1969
label: Names
content: Pach, Walter, 1883-1958
label: Names
content: Quinn, John, 1870-1924
label: Photographer
content: Rainford, Percy
label: Names
content: Sheeler, Charles, 1883-1965
label: Photographer
content: Weston, Edward, 1886-1958
topic: label: Occupation
content: Etchers -- New York (State) -- New York
label: Occupation
content: Watercolorists -- New York (State) -- New York
label: Occupation
content: Lithographers -- New York (State) -- New York
label: Topic
content: New York school of art
label: Topic
content: Modernism (Art)
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: The Walt Kuhn Family papers and Armory Show records were loaned for microfilming and later donated to the Archives of American Art by Walt Kuhn's daughter Brenda Kuhn in several installments between 1962 and 1979. An additional accession of letters, photographs, and an artifact was purchased by the Archives in 2000. Another addition was donated by Terry DeLapp, Kuhn's dealer, in 2015.
creator: label: Creator
content: Kuhn, Walt, 1877-1949
setName: label: See more items in
content: Walt Kuhn Family papers and Armory Show records
abstract: label: Summary
content: The Walt Kuhn Family papers and Armory Show records measure 31 linear feet and date from 1859 to 1984, with the bulk of material dating from 1900 to 1949. Papers contain records of the legendary Armory Show of 1913, also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, which introduced modern European painting and sculpture to the American public. Papers also contain records of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS), the artist-run organization that mounted the Armory Show; records of the New York artists' clubs the Kit Kat Club (founded 1881) and the Penguin Club (founded 1917); and the personal and family papers of New York artist Walt Kuhn (1877-1949), one of the primary organizers of the Armory Show.
bioghist: label: Biographical/Historical note
content: Walt Kuhn (1877-1949) was an etcher, lithographer, and watercolorist, as well as being a teacher, an advisor to art collectors, an organizer, and a promoter of modern art. He played a key role in the art scene of New York City in the early 20th century, and was among the small group that organized the infamous Armory Show of 1913, officially known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, held at the 69th Regiment Armory building in New York City. After the Armory Show, Kuhn went on to a distinguished career as a painter. He was best known for his sober oil portraits of show people, clowns, acrobats, and circus performers, but was equally prolific in landscapes, still lifes, and figure and genre drawings.

Walt Kuhn was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1877. After a brief career as a bicycle shop owner in downtown Brooklyn, Kuhn traveled West in 1899 to San Francisco, CA and earned his living as a cartoonist for newspapers such as Wasp. After two years in California, he moved back East and then on to Europe to pursue further art training. He briefly attended the Académie Colarossi studio in Paris, but quickly moved to Munich where he joined the class of Heinrich von Zügel in the Royal Academy.

Kuhn returned to New York City in 1904 and took up an active role in the art scene there, participating in the Salmagundi Club and the Kit Kat Club, teaching at the New York School of Art, and cartooning for Life, Judge, Puck, and other publications. In 1910, he participated in an exhibition of Independent Artists on 35th St. with Robert Henri and met artist Arthur B. Davies.

In 1911, when the National Academy of Design opened their annual exhibition, Kuhn, Henry Fitch Taylor, Elmer MacRae, and Jerome Myers were exhibiting at Clara Potter Davidge's Madison Gallery. To these four young artists, the Academy exhibition was typically lackluster, and the attention it received was unwarranted. Sensing that they were not alone in their attitude, they decided to organize. They invited a dozen other artists to join them, thus forming the Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS). The group elected Kuhn Secretary and Arthur B. Davies President, and with the help of attorney and art collector John Quinn, they incorporated and began raising funds for an independent exhibition the following year.

In September of 1912, at Davies' suggestion, Kuhn traveled to Cologne, Germany to view the Sonderbund Internationale Kunst-Austellung. There he saw presented, in overwhelming volume, the work of his European contemporaries and their modern antecedents, the post-impressionists. He immediately began selecting and securing artwork for the upcoming AAPS exhibition. Kuhn traveled through Germany, Holland, France, and England, visiting private collectors, dealers, and artists. In Paris, Kuhn was joined by Davies and American artist and art agent Walter Pach. Kuhn and Davies sailed for New York in November, leaving the details of European arrangements to Pach.

The resulting Armory Show exhibition opened in New York in February 1913, and a selection of the foreign works traveled to Chicago and Boston in March and April. It included approximately 1300 American and European works of art, arranged in the exhibition space to advance the notion that the roots of modernism could be seen in the works of the old masters, from which the dramatically new art of living artists had evolved. Savvy and sensational publicity, combined with strategic word-of-mouth, resulted in attendance figures over 200,000 and over $44 thousand in sales. The Armory Show had demonstrated that modern art had a place in the public taste, that there was a market for it and legitimate critical support as well.

During the first World War, Kuhn stayed in NY and was active in the Kit Kat Club, an artists' club founded in 1881, which provided its members with collective studio space, live models, exhibitions, and an annual costume ball. In 1917, Kuhn founded another group called the Penguin Club, which had similar objectives to the Kit Kat Club, but with Kuhn himself as the gatekeeper. In addition to exhibitions and costume balls, the Penguin Club held summer outings and stag dinners, and maintained collective studio and exhibition space on East 15th Street in Manhattan. Its members included Americans and European artists displaced by the war in Europe. In the 1920s, Kuhn expanded a few sketches he had written for Penguin Balls into full-blown vaudeville productions, some of which were incorporated into larger musical revues such as The Merry Go Round and The 49ers and traveled around the country. Kuhn's theater work continued until 1928, and his fascination with show business continued to influence him throughout his life.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Kuhn gradually achieved recognition for his artwork, with sales to private collectors and dealers including Edith Halpert, Merritt Cutler, Lillie Bliss, John Quinn, and Marie Harriman. Kuhn also promoted other young painters whose work he liked, including Otis Oldfield, Lily Emmet Cushing, John Laurent, Frank di Gioia, and the self-taught Vermont artist Patsy Santo. Sometimes artists would contact him by mail, asking for lessons or advice. His lengthy letters to students offer coaching in technique and subject matter, as well as in the overall problem of success in art.

In 1929, Kuhn moved into the 18th St. studio that he would keep until the end of his life. He kept a rack of costumes in the studio, mostly made by Vera Kuhn, and his models, many of them stage and circus performers, would come and sit for Kuhn's portraits. The same year his painting The White Clown was exhibited at the newly established Museum of Modern Art in New York, bringing intense publicity and sales interest. Around this time, Kuhn began to receive the support of collector Duncan Phillips and curator Juliana Force of the Whitney Museum of American Art, both of whom made purchases and consistently exhibited his work.

Marie Norton Whitney Harriman, second wife of railroad magnate and diplomat W. Averell Harriman, shared a professional liaison with Kuhn that would take many forms and last until his death. Soon after the success of The White Clown, Kuhn established a relationship with the Marie Harriman Gallery, where he participated in group and solo shows during the height of his career. Kuhn also traveled with the Harrimans to Europe in 1931, where the three visited important private collections and acquired many valuable modern paintings for the Harrimans. Their collection, so heavily influenced by Kuhn's ideas about art, would eventually go to the National Gallery of Art.

Kuhn was an artist who understood the art business and never shied away from it. For Kuhn, promoting the ideas and practitioners of a certain brand of modernism was an expression of both aesthetic ideology and pragmatic self-interest. His contribution to the public discourse on modernism situated his own work at the heart of art history and the marketplace. Regardless of his motivations, he was indisputably a key player at a pivotal time in American art, when academic art was riotoulsy overturned to make way for modernism. His paintings are now held in major museum collections around the country, where most of them arrived with bequests from the collectors Kuhn had cultivated so carefully in his lifetime.

Sources consulted for this biography include The Story of the Armory Show (1988) by Milton W. Brown, Walt Kuhn, Painter: His Life and Work (1978) by Philip Rhys Adams, and "Walt Kuhn" by Frank Getlein, in the 1967 catalog of the Kennedy Galleries, Inc.
function: label: Function
content: Arts organizations -- New York (State)
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 31 Linear Feet
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1859-1984
label: Date
content: bulk 1900-1949
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives of American Art
identifier: label: Identifier
content: AAA.kuhnwalt
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Drawings
label: Type
content: Diaries
label: Type
content: Scrapbooks
label: Type
content: Sound recordings
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: This collection has been arranged into 4 series, with multiple subseries in Series 1 and 4.

Series 1: Armory Show Records, 1912-1963 (Boxes 1-2, 27-31, 56, OV 36; 3.6 linear feet)

Series 2: Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS) Records, 1911-1914, undated (Box 3; 0.2 linear feet)

Series 3: Kit Kat Club and Penguin Club Records, 1909-1923, undated (Box 3, 32, 56, OVs 37-38; 0.5 linear feet)

Series 4: Walt Kuhn Family Papers, 1859-1984, undated (Box 3-26, 32-35, 56-57, OVs 39-55, 58; 26.7 linear feet)

In general, documents are arranged chronologically, alphabetically, or by type of material. Copy negatives and copy prints made from documents in this collection have been filed separately from originals, in a folder marked "copy." Duplicates of original records made or obtained by the Kuhns have been filed separately as well.

Existing envelopes are filed in front of correspondence and enclosures directly after. Correspondence in the Armory Show Records and AAPS Records is arranged alphabetically, and correspondents are listed in the box inventory following series descriptions below.
processinfo: label: Processing Information note
content: Initial accessions of the collection were arranged and microfilmed separately upon accession on microfilm reels D72-73, D240-D242, D344-D350, 912-916, 1191, 1607-1616, and 2917-2918. In 2004-2005 the entire collection to date was fully processed, arranged and described by Megan McShea. Series 1-3 and one folder from Series 4.1 were digitized in 2006, with funding provided by the Getty Foundation. Series 4 was digitized in 2009 with funding provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art. 

The 2015 addition was arranged and described by Stephanie Ashley in 2019, and has not been digitized.
altformavail: label: Existence and Location of Copies note
content: The bulk of the collection was digitized in 2006 and 2009 and is available on the Archives of American Art website. 

Materials that generally have not been digitized include medical records and records of routine financial transactions; duplicate originals and copies; negatives and slides; and large groups of news clippings. For many publications, such as books, catalogs, and pamphlets, only the cover and title pages have been digitized; complete publications are available by appointment. The 2015 accession has not been digitized.

Portions of the collection are available on 35mm microfilm reels D72-73, D240-D242, D344-D350, 912-916, 1191, 1607-1616, and 2917-2918 at the Archives of American Art offices and through interlibrary loan. Researchers should note that the arrangement of material described in the container inventory does not reflect the arrangement of the collection on microfilm.
genre_format: label: Genre/Form
content: Drawings
label: Genre/Form
content: Diaries
label: Genre/Form
content: Scrapbooks
label: Genre/Form
content: Sound recordings
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents note
content: The Walt Kuhn Family papers and Armory Show records measure 31 linear feet and date from 1859 to 1984, with the bulk of material dating from 1900 to 1949. Papers contain records of the legendary Armory Show of 1913, also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, which introduced modern European painting and sculpture to the American public. Papers also contain records of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS), the artist-run organization that mounted the Armory Show; records of the New York artists' clubs the Kit Kat Club (founded 1881) and the Penguin Club (founded 1917); and the personal and family papers of New York artist Walt Kuhn (1877-1949), one of the primary organizers of the Armory Show.


As Secretary for the AAPS, Kuhn retained the bulk of existing records of that organization and of the Armory Show. Minutes and correspondence make up most of the AAPS records (Series 2), as well as documents related to John Quinn's legal brief against a tariff on imported works of living artists. Armory Show Records (Series 1) include personal letters, voluminous business correspondence, a record book, miscellaneous notes, inventories and shipping records, two large scrapbooks, printed materials, a small number of photographs, and retrospective accounts of the show. The printed materials and photographs in Kit Kat Club and Penguin Club Records reflect Kuhn's deep involvement in those clubs.

The Walt Kuhn Family Papers (Series 4) contain records of his artwork, career, travels, personal and professional associations, family members, and work in vaudeville, film, and interior design. Notable among the family papers are illustrated letters and other cartoons; sketches, drawings, watercolors, and prints; candid letters from Walt to Vera Kuhn discussing art scene politics and personalities in New York, Paris, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Florida, and the Midwest; general correspondence with artists, dealers, collectors, journalists, writers, models, and fans; notes in index card files containing biographical anecdotes of the Kuhns' many contacts; provenance files that document the origin and fate of Kuhn's paintings, sculptures, and prints; papers relating to Kuhn's exhibitions and his relationships with the Marie Harriman Gallery and Durand-Ruel Gallery; and photographs and drawings depicting Kuhn's early years in Munich, Germany and Fort Lee, New Jersey; trips to Nova Scotia, New England, the Western United States, and Europe; New York and summer studios, among other subjects.
relatedmaterial: label: Related Archival Materials note
content: The Archives of American Art holds the papers of Walter Pach, the European representative of the Armory Show.