Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Thesis - Open Access - With Distinction

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Art Business

First Advisor

Betsy Thomas

Second Advisor

Judith Prowda

Abstract

This dissertation explores the lives and impact of the three Stettheimer sisters, Florine, Carrie and Ettie, cultural innovators, and major influencers of a distinctive, feministic strand of American modernism in New York between 1914 and 1950. The Stettheimer sisters did not use their privilege to assimilate into society but to create an alternate artistic universe, resisting the male hierarchies of the dominant avant-garde. By controlling a salon, an intellectual and creative social center where artists, writers, and intellectuals such as Marcel Duchamp, Georgia O’Keeffe and Carl Van Vechten held court, they were able to create an environment in which femininity, art, intellect, and performance flourished according to their regimes. Through academic feminist theory, curatorial studies, and archival sources, this thesis reassesses the Stettheimer’s no longer as strange characters but as the cornerstones of early American culture in the twentieth century. Their indulgence in performance, virtual home, and joint authorship provides the required counterargument to the belief of individual male genius as modernism. This thesis questions the role played by their gender, their class, their Jewishness, and their need to not adhere to old fashioned professional standards in contributing to their stature and ultimate anonymity. Attributing Florine to her paintings, Carrie to her salon design and dollhouse, and Ettie to her writings, the study argues that the three sisters should be re-included in the modernist canon by mapping their artistic and conceptual labor. It further suggests that the legacy calls for a broader understanding of modernism, including the interdisciplinary, domestic, and socially performative production of culture. The proto-feminist artistic practice of the Stettheimer sisters was elite and radical, ephemeral and visionary, modernism viva voce as it was painted or written.

Distinction

1

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