In 1913, a culture war erupted over an exhibition of modern works at the Art Institute of Chicago
CHICAGO — In 1913, the Art Institute of Chicago was the scene of what is now known as a culture war, a spitting match between defenders of tradition and partisans of innovation. Each side was convinced that civilization’s fate had been sealed, for better or worse, when the museum hosted the International Exhibition of Modern Art.
“They came to study the pictures,” the Tribune reported of socialites at the opening night’s charity benefit, “and study them they did from the hideous, deformed women of the Matisse conception, to the cubistic dancers and marchers of Picabia and Duchamp and their ilk.”
That salvo on March 25, 1913, initiated a month of putdowns of Henri Matisse, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and other European painters and sculptors who seemed to
