Prior to her arrival in Taos, Dodge’s celebrated New York salons had become famous for their regular assemblage of avant-garde movers and shakers, a roster of revolutionaries, which ranged from political radical John Reed to analyst Abraham A. Brill, feminist Emma Goldman and writer Upton Sinclair. Leo and Gertrude Stein, famous for their Paris salons and promotion of European Modern Art, and Alfred Stieglitz, whose Gallery 291 championed and promoted Modernism, also attended Dodge’s salons; and the most innovative painters of the early twentieth century, including John Marin, Marsden Hartley and Georgia O’Keeffe, became part of Dodge’s circle. Through her association with the Steins and Stieglitz, Dodge advocated the Armory Show of 1913, one of the most significant events in twentieth-century American art history. In helping to introduce French and American Modern Art to New York, Dodge felt she was participating in another kind of American Revolution.
Mabel Dodge wrote to the Armory Show Board:
