INDIANAPOLIS.- The Indianapolis Museum of Art presents “Gifts of the Gamboliers” on view through June 8, 2009. Imagine this: on a chilly February day in 1913, you amble into the 69th Regiment Armory Building in New York City and come face-to-face with Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. Jumpin’ jehosophat! Over the course of its brief history, nothing had shaken the delicate sensibilities of the American art world like the works on display in the International Exhibition of Modern Art. Better known as “The Armory Show,” it introduced Americans to such revolutionary artists as Duchamp, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.

While many visitors and critics were shocked, Mary Quinn was smitten with the modernism on display. So smitten, in fact, that the drawing instructor and Indianapolis native, who had recently returned from a year-long stay in Europe where she had encountered the ideas behind some of the art in the show, became one of the country’s earliest advocates for modern art. After marrying wealthy attorney Cornelius Sullivan in 1917, she also became one of New York’s best-known collectors, and eventually one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art, along with her friends Lizzie P. Bliss and Abby Aldrich (Mrs. John D.) Rockefeller.

But Mary Quinn Sullivan didn’t forget her hometown. In 1927, she rallied a few like-minded modernists in Indianapolis and formed “The Gamboliers”, a group dedicated to collecting examples of work by some of the contemporary artists who were revolutionizing (and in the process scandalizing) the art world. The Gamboliers—who counted such prominent names as Lilly, Clowes, Bobbs, Ayres, Griffith, Noble, Fesler and Woollen among their members—took their name from an old, traditional drinking ballad:
Like every jolly fellow
I takes my whiskey clear,
For I'm a rambling rake of poverty
And the son of a gambolier.

The Gamboliers had as their primary purpose the purchase of modern art for the Herron Art Institute, predecessor of the IMA. Gifts of the Gamboliers, focuses on the lithographs, screenprints, drawings and etchings they bought. Their acquisitions formed the foundation of the Museum’s Modern art collection.

The story of The Gamboliers is, in essence, the story of Mary Quinn Sullivan. In fact, said Annette Schlagenhauff, the IMA’s associate curator of prints, drawings and photographs and curator of the upcoming exhibition, Sullivan was the primary focus of her research. “She was an amazingly behind-the-scenes person,” said Schlagenhauff. “She didn’t seem to want the limelight.”

Instead, she shined a spotlight on the art and artists she championed. Radical in her artistic tastes, Sullivan was fiscally conservative, at least when buying art on behalf of The Gamboliers. The group’s members paid dues of $25 annually and allowed the New York-based Sullivan to acquire the artworks. By November 1929, she had purchased and shipped 161 works by such luminaries as Henri Matisse, Raoul Dufy, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Georges Braque, Arthur B. Davies, Walt Kuhn and Reginald Marsh. The following year, she sent along two drawings by Amedeo Modigliani.

Sullivan’s specialty was finding bargains: 85% of her purchases cost $10 or less and none exceeded $250. The total price tag for everything she bought was just over $2,000. While the Museum’s agreement with The Gamboliers stipulated it had the right to refuse any of the group’s acquisitions, it accepted more than 150.

Following the death of her husband in 1932, Sullivan opened a gallery in New York and ceased buying art for The Gamboliers. The group disbanded soon afterwards. But over the course of its brief life, it managed to open eyes and minds to the value of Modern art and to inspire some local collectors like Caroline Marmon Fesler who went on to acquire more modern works for the Museum.

“At that time, there was a small group of people in this country who were interested in collecting Modern art,” said Schlagenhauff, “and fortunately for us, Mary Quinn Sullivan was one of them. She was a remarkable woman.”