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Twenty-Five Years After

In the course of years, since that wild time in 1913, my feelings have turned first hot, then cold, as to what the whole thing has really meant to us Americans. How did we benefit, if at all?

The late President Coolidge once said, "America's business is business." Therein lies the answer. We naïve artists, we wanted to see what was going on in the world of art, we wanted to open up the mind of the public to the need of art. Did we do it? We did more than that. The Armory Show affected the entire culture of America. Business caught on immediately, even if the artists did not at once do so. The outer appearance of industry absorbed the lesson like a sponge. Drabness, awkwardness began to disappear from American life, and color and grace stepped in. Industry certainly took notice. The decorative elements of Matisse and the cubists were immediately taken on as models for the creation of a brighter, more lively America. The decorative side of Brancusi went into everything from milliners' dummies to streamliner trains. The exhibition affected every phase of American life - the apparel of men and women, the stage, automobiles, airplanes, furniture, interior decorations, beauty parlors, advertising and printing in its various departments, plumbing, hardware - everything from the modernistic designs of gas pumps and added
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color of beach umbrellas and bathing suits, down to the merchandise of the dime store.

In spite of the number of admittedly first class pieces of "fine art" in the Armory Show, the thing that "took" was the element of decoration. American business, perhaps unconsciously, absorbed this needed quality and reached with it, into every home and industry and pastime. 

At a dinner given to the press by the Association's press committee, one of the conservative critics said with good humor, "Men it was a bully show, but don't do it again." We did not have to do it again. It kept right on going and is going better than ever today. Many great exhibitionists since then could not have appeared without it. The Museum of Modern Art in New York would never have been possible. For years Davies and the writer urged Miss Lillie Bliss, probably one of the truly disinterested collectors of her time, and a staunch supporter of the Armory Show, to establish just that sort of a permanent place for contemporary art, but she wasn't ready. After the death of Davies I kept up the pleading. Finally she decided and called me to steer the ship. I felt it was not my place and turned it over to another, who now is doing a good job. I was not made for that sort of thing. Perhaps I was after all, as old Mr. Montross used to call me, just a "war secretary". 
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