The Arts Club of Chicago was established on March 2, 1916, in the aftermath of the 1913 Armory Show's contentious Chicago presentation. Founded by artists and patrons, the club created a social and exhibition platform for modern art in a city whose major museum had exposed audiences to avant-garde European work but had not fully normalized it. Its early mission was to raise artistic standards, maintain galleries, and connect art workers with art lovers. Over the next decades it became one of the most receptive American venues for European modernism, mounting major presentations of Picasso, Brancusi, Dubuffet, Leger, and other artists who were still controversial in the United States.
The club helped make Chicago a crucial American staging ground for modernist and avant-garde art.
