The Armory South

The Armory South: The 1924 Jacksonville Woman’s Club Exhibition Rediscovered reassembles core works from a forgotten but seminal Modernist exhibition mounted in March 1924 by the Woman’s Club of Jacksonville and the newly founded Jacksonville Fine Arts Society (now MOCA). Planned to mark the beginning of the museum’s second century in 2025, The Armory South tells several related stories of essential importance to the history of women in Modern art, the introduction of Modernism to the American South, and the ideas and relationships shaping American art in the mid-1920s.  

The title of this new exhibition is a nod to the 1913 Armory show that propelled the Modern art movement in America. In the same way, the 1924 Woman’s Club Exhibition in Jacksonville marked the beginning of Modern art in the South. The exhibition was organized by four Jacksonville women led by Merrydelle Hoyt, a largely overlooked but pioneering advocate for Modern art in Florida, and curated by the artist Wood Gaylor. It included nearly 200 works by more than eighty cutting edge Modernist artists, including George Ault, Peggy Bacon, Charles DeMuth, John Dos Passos, Wood Gaylor, Marsden Hartley, Thomas Hart Benton, Walt Kuhn, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Adelaide Lawson, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Katherine Schmidt, Joseph Stella, and Isabel Whitney, among others. Nearly one-third of the exhibiting artists were women. 

Until very recently, this remarkable history had been almost completely forgotten.   

Beyond its contribution to understanding a forgotten regional history of American art, this retrospective exhibition will bring completely new evidence to bear on open questions important to our broader history of American art. The exhibition will be an opportunity to reconsider both the neglected work of influential women artists and some of the now canonical artworks that shaped Modern art in America in the early twentieth century.   

A catalog is being created to accompany this exhibition with support from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. 

Guest curator: Dr. P. Scott Brown, PhD.  

SPONSORS

CATALOG SPONSOR

Wyeth Foundation for American Art

FUTURIST SPONSOR

Lauren Baker | Morgan and Melanie Busby | Anne Joseph and Dita Domonkos

CUBIST UNDERWRITER

Cornelia and John Baker | Sallie Ball | The Cummer Family Foundation | Jill and Jed Davis | Shanna Khan | Kathleen Ligare | Emily and Lawrence Lisska in Honor of the Woman’s Club of Jacksonville | The Woman’s Club of Jacksonville

MODERNIST COMMITTEE

Anne and John Baker | Jennifer and Henry Brown | P. Scott and Sally Anne Brown | Lory Doolittle | Margaret and Bill Gellatly | Carole Lombard | Cameron and Ryland Lucie | John and Kristen Surface | Preeti and Sanjay Swani | Kimberly and Ken Tonning | Patty and Steve Wilson | Wende Wilson | Charlie and Amanda Wodehouse | Ashley and Matt Wotiz | Leah Zalupski