Beyond the ‘Shingle Factory’: The Armory Show in the Popular Press after 1913

While much has been written on the media coverage of the Armory Show in its opening year, to date there has been no comprehensive study of how the exhibition was discussed in the popular press in the following decades. Drawing on new archival research, this article explores how the exhibition was portrayed in the American media after 1913. Looking closely at the many articles on the Armory Show published in periodicals such as Life, Time and Vogue from the 1930s through to the 1970s, this historiographical study compares the varied ways the exhibition was represented in the popular press, demonstrating the key role the media played in mythologizing and canonizing the Armory Show, along with shaping its legacy as a controversial, watershed event in the history of modern art.