Who was John Quinn?

A question for anyone who cares about modernist art: why is John Quinn not better known? He should be celebrated as one of the most remarkable people in the history of advanced taste in the United States, a dedicated supporter of vanguard literature and art who profoundly influenced the course of modernism in America. Yet despite his having assembled a collection of over 2,000 significant modern paintings, sculptures, and works on paper in a little over a decade, and despite his having lent a prodigious number of works to the celebrated 1913 Armory Show, say the name “John Quinn” and the response is usually a puzzled “Who?” Other...