Museum of Modern Art
A defining collection of modern and contemporary art, design, photography and film.
The Museum of Modern Art began in 1929. Three patrons, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan, set it up to champion the art of their own time. It first had rented rooms in a Fifth Avenue office building. In 1939 it moved to its permanent home on West 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan. It was one of the first American museums dedicated wholly to modern art, and it did much to introduce European modernism to American audiences.
The building has grown in stages. The 1939 International Style building by Goodwin and Stone was followed by Philip Johnson's redesign of the sculpture garden in the 1950s. César Pelli expanded the museum in the 1980s, and Yoshio Taniguchi rebuilt it on a large scale in 2004. Most recently, Diller Scofidio + Renfro with Gensler added more gallery space and street-level public areas in 2019. The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden remains a quiet outdoor room at the heart of the complex.
Today the collection holds roughly 200,000 works from the late 19th century to the present, looked after by curatorial departments for architecture and design, drawings and prints, film, media and performance, painting and sculpture, and photography. Alongside the collection galleries, the museum runs a busy program of temporary exhibitions, film screenings and performances. MoMA PS1 in Queens is its sister institution.
Highlights
- Home to Van Gogh's The Starry Night and Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
- Also holds Matisse's Dance and Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans
- Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, redesigned by Philip Johnson
- Collection of roughly 200,000 modern and contemporary works
- Sister institution MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens
