Luhan, Mabel Dodge (1879-1962)

US hostess, promoter of art and social causes, and author. She led literary and artistic salons in Florence, Italy, and New York, supporting the advent of modernist thought and culture, from the famous Armory Show of 1913 to Gertrude Stein's prose and Sigmund Freud's psychology. She then spent many years in New Mexico, where she became drawn to the culture of the Pueblo people. She published several books, including Lorenzo in Taos (1932) and Winter in Taos (1935). Luhan was born Mabel Ganson into a moderately wealthy family in Buffalo, New York. She studied briefly in New York City and near Washington, DC, before entering Buffalo society in 1897.