« Settler colonialism is a prison: Kelly Tabbutt, ‘Indigenous Carceral System Inequalities in the US: A Synthesis of the Literature About the Nature and Sources’, Sociology Compass, 19, 10, 2025, #e70123
The settler backlash (in Argentina, for example): Claudia N. Briones, ‘Argentina’s indigenous policy under a libertarian regime: An oxymoron with worrying nuances’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 15, 3, 2025, pp. 627-634 »

High settler modernism? C. Oliver O’Donnell, ‘The Armory Show, Walt Kuhn, and Settler Modernism’, Archives of American Art Journal, 64, 2, 2025

28Oct25

Abstract: The artistic production of Walt Kuhn, as well as the watershed exhibition he helped organize—the Armory Show of 1913—were shaped by the legacies of United States colonialism. This essay substantiates this claim by positioning the Armory Show’s pine tree emblem as well as Kuhn’s own work in relation to deeper iconographic histories and interpreting them as forms of settler modernism. This interpretative framework recasts the controversial reception of the Armory Show, especially when placed in dialogue with the politics of Theodore Roosevelt—who prominently reviewed the exhibition—as well as with the particularities of Euro-American nationalism. The resulting interpretation clarifies the key role race played in displacing the academic tradition from its position of authority within the US and in excluding nonwhite artists and cultures from histories of American modernism.


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