When *Art in America* was founded in 1913, it was an important year for American art. The inaugural Armory Show introduced the European avant-garde to the United States, galvanizing generations of artists while shocking audiences with paintings like Marcel Duchamp’s *Nude Descending a Staircase *(1912). By 1917, Duchamp even-more-famously caused a stir with his porcelain urinal *Fountain*, a work that changed art forever and helped make New York an artistic center.

American art’s enduring paradoxes were already on display. That iconic readymade—now an emblem of the anything-goes American avant-garde—had been created by a foreigner who would soon establish tighter ties with New York, blurring the boundaries of what constituted “American” art. And the first Armory Show took place in the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue, a building with connections to American militarism that has since hosted everything from a homeless shelter to a Victoria’s Secret fashion show.…