Category: Fine Arts, Artists

A writer, social activist, and arts aficionado, Mabel Dodge Luhan is celebrated less for her artistic accomplishments than for her key role in building artistic communities, supporting artists, and generating interest in modern art forms. A Buffalo, New York, native, she lived at the turn of the twentieth century in Florence, Italy, where she was a prominent figure among American expatriates and visitors that included Gertrude Stein, Carl Van Vechten, and Hutchins and Neith Boyce Hapgood. Returning to the United States in the 1910s, Mabel Dodge settled in Greenwich Village, where she helped organize the groundbreaking Armory show of Postimpressionist art and hosted perhaps the most important New York City salon of the period.