Description
The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, is the art museum on 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan that made modern art a subject of its own. Its collection of more than 200,000 works runs from the late 19th century to today, and it welcomed over 2.6 million visitors in 2024.
The famous canvases are the draw. Look for The Starry Night by Van Gogh, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Picasso, The Persistence of Memory by Dalí and the Water Lilies triptych by Monet, each in a gallery that gets crowded.
MoMA is not only paintings. It has departments for photography, film, architecture and design, and the design collection goes from posters and chairs to a whole Bell 47D1 helicopter and video games, from Pac-Man to Minecraft.
Outside, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, redesigned by Philip Johnson in 1953, is a quiet pause of sculptures, trees and water in the middle of Midtown. Behind the scenes, the museum's library keeps about 300,000 books and exhibition catalogs, and its archives hold the history of modern art.
Three women and terrible timing: MoMA opened on November 7, 1929, nine days after the Wall Street Crash. Its founders were Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and her friends Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan, "the Ladies."
Abby's husband, John D. Rockefeller Jr., disliked modern art and refused to fund the museum, so it had to move three times in ten years. In the end he gave it the land on West 53rd Street. The real gamble, though, was its director.
Alfred H. Barr Jr., a young protégé of a Harvard curator, started from eight prints and one drawing. Under him MoMA became the first museum with departments of their own for photography and film.
His shows made history: Van Gogh in 1935, with 66 oils and 50 drawings, and the Picasso retrospective of 1939. That same year the museum moved into its modernist home, opened with a radio address by President Roosevelt.
MoMA has grown again and again since, most recently in 2019, when a renovation added significant gallery space.
Don't miss
• The Starry Night.
• Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and The Persistence of Memory.
• The Water Lilies triptych.
• The Sculpture Garden.
Did you know?
• The design collection includes a whole Bell 47D1 helicopter.
• In 1958 workmen smoking near paint cans started a fire that destroyed an 18-foot Water Lilies by Monet; the museum soon bought another one.
The famous canvases are the draw. Look for The Starry Night by Van Gogh, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Picasso, The Persistence of Memory by Dalí and the Water Lilies triptych by Monet, each in a gallery that gets crowded.
MoMA is not only paintings. It has departments for photography, film, architecture and design, and the design collection goes from posters and chairs to a whole Bell 47D1 helicopter and video games, from Pac-Man to Minecraft.
Outside, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, redesigned by Philip Johnson in 1953, is a quiet pause of sculptures, trees and water in the middle of Midtown. Behind the scenes, the museum's library keeps about 300,000 books and exhibition catalogs, and its archives hold the history of modern art.
Three women and terrible timing: MoMA opened on November 7, 1929, nine days after the Wall Street Crash. Its founders were Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and her friends Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan, "the Ladies."
Abby's husband, John D. Rockefeller Jr., disliked modern art and refused to fund the museum, so it had to move three times in ten years. In the end he gave it the land on West 53rd Street. The real gamble, though, was its director.
Alfred H. Barr Jr., a young protégé of a Harvard curator, started from eight prints and one drawing. Under him MoMA became the first museum with departments of their own for photography and film.
His shows made history: Van Gogh in 1935, with 66 oils and 50 drawings, and the Picasso retrospective of 1939. That same year the museum moved into its modernist home, opened with a radio address by President Roosevelt.
MoMA has grown again and again since, most recently in 2019, when a renovation added significant gallery space.
Don't miss
• The Starry Night.
• Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and The Persistence of Memory.
• The Water Lilies triptych.
• The Sculpture Garden.
Did you know?
• The design collection includes a whole Bell 47D1 helicopter.
• In 1958 workmen smoking near paint cans started a fire that destroyed an 18-foot Water Lilies by Monet; the museum soon bought another one.