Société Anonyme, Inc.

Société Anonyme, Inc. (or a Museum of Modern Art). An association founded in 1920 by Katherine Dreier together with Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray for the promotion of contemporary art in America by lectures, publications, travelling exhibitions, and the formation of a permanent collection. In French the term ‘société anonyme’ means ‘limited company', so the name—suggested by Man Ray—was intended as a tautological Dada jest; as Miss Dreier loved to explain, it meant ‘incorporated corporation'. However, the work of the society was serious and trailblazing. Its museum, which opened at 19 East 47th Street, New York, on 30 April 1920, was the first in the USA, and one of the earliest anywhere, to be devoted entirely to modern art (although as it existed mainly for temporary exhibitions, the Phillips Collection (see PHILLIPS, DUNCAN) has the distinction of being the first permanent museum of modern art in the USA). Between 1920 and 1940 the Société organized 84 exhibitions, the largest—at the Brooklyn Museum in 1926—being the most important in the field since the Armory Show in 1913. The emphasis of the exhibitions was on avant-garde and abstract art and it was through them that such artists as Klee, Malevich, Miró, and Schwitters were first exhibited in America. To some extent, therefore, the Société carried on the tradition that had been started by the 291 Gallery of Stieglitz in the years before the Armory Show, and to some extent also it prepared the way for the Museum of Modern Art, which was founded in 1929. The Museum of Modern art soon eclipsed the Société Anonyme and Miss Dreier's finances were in any case badly hit by the Depression, but she continued officially as President (as Duchamp did as secretary) until the Société officially closed in 1950. Nine years earlier, in 1941, they had presented the superb permanent collection that the Société had built up (over 600 works) to Yale University Art Gallery.