Soil, Theory, and the Forum Exhibition.

In this article, the author looks back at the "The Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters," held from March 13-25, 1916 at the Anderson Galleries in New York City. The exhibition was the brainchild of the American art critic Willard Huntington Wright, who envisioned it as an opportunity to demonstrate the significant achievements of modernist American artists who he believed had been overshadowed by the European art on display at the more renowned Armory Show of 1913. The article discusses the exhibition's mixed critical reception and the debates it generated about the identity and future of American art. Special emphasis is paid to the debate between Wright and the American art dealer Robert Coady regarding the role of abstraction within American modernism.