<P> 291 is the commonly known name for an internationally famous art gallery that was located in Midtown Manhattan at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York City from 1905 to 1917 . Originally known as the "Little Galleries of the Photo - Secession", the gallery was created and managed by photographer Alfred Stieglitz . </P> <P> The gallery is famous for two reasons . First, the exhibitions there helped bring art photography to the same stature in America as painting and sculpture . Pioneering artistic photographers such as Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Gertrude Käsebier and Clarence H. White all gained critical recognition through exhibitions at 291 . Equally important, Stieglitz used this space to introduce to the United States some of the most avant - garde European artists of the time, including Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin, Henri Rousseau, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brâncuși, and the Dadaists Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp . </P>

The gallery at 291 fifth avenue in new york was established by