Mabel Dodge Luhan & Company:

American Moderns and the West

Exhibition Website

Mar 10 2017 - May 28 2017

The exhibition focuses on the life and times of Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879-1962), one of the most under-recognized cultural figures of the early 20th century. Luhan brought modern art to Taos, New Mexico, putting Taos on the map of the avant-garde.

Raised in East-coast society, Luhan created a “Paris West” in the American Southwest. From 1918-1947, she summoned scores of luminaries to Taos. These “legions of European and American ‘movers and shakers’” subsequently found intellectual and spiritual inspiration for their work in the remote high desert, translating Northern New Mexico’s physical and cultural landscapes into new aesthetic, social, and cultural views on modern life.

This is the first exhibition ever to explore the impact Mabel Dodge Luhan had on the art, writings and activism of the 20th-century American Modernism. The 150 works in the show -- produced by the visual, literary, and performance artists who came to Taos at Mabel's behest – include art and ephemera of Andrew Dasburg, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Ansel Adams, Agnes Pelton, D.H. Lawrence, and Georgia O'Keeffe, displayed alongside the work of the local Pueblo and Hispano artists who inspired their modernist sensibilities. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

Whether you go or not, the full-color, hardbound companion publication, Mabel Dodge Luhan and Company: American Moderns and the West further illustrates the story of Mabel Dodge Luhan, her impact on American Modernism, and the complex issues of Anglo patronage of Native American and Hispano art and culture. 

Mabel Dodge Luhan and Company: American Moderns and the West


  • 20th Century
  • Western
  • Modernism

Exhibition Venues & Dates