"The Stein Salon Was The First Museum of Modern Art"

So says James Mellow. But this isn't a saying to be debated. 

Stein said she wanted to be historical, and there is no doubt that she was. Her salon in Paris attracted the modern thinkers of the time and it is where Stein cultivated her love for art, writing, and modernism. Visitors included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse. 

In her salon, Stein became a mentor and critic to the people who visited her. Hemingway even talked about the salon in his memoir A Moveable Feast.

I find Stein to be a modern-day Germaine de Stael. De Stael, a fierce opponent of Napoleon, was considered a modernist of her time. De Stael also had salons, which attracted the educated and open-minded.