Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York. The world's pre-eminent collection of visual arts from the late 19th century to the present day. It was founded in 1929 by a group of seven well-connected art lovers, among whom were Lillie P. Bliss and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. In May 1929 they formed a committee, and in summer of the same year they appointed a director ( Alfred H. Barr—an inspired choice), rented premises in the loft of an office building on Fifth Avenue, and issued a brochure entitled A New Art Museum, which set out some of their aims. Their immediate purpose was to hold ‘some twenty exhibitions during the next two years', but the ultimate objective was ‘to acquire, from time to time, either by gift or purchase, the best modern works of art … It is not unreasonable to suppose that within ten years New York, with its vast wealth, its already magnificent private collections and its enthusiastic but not yet organized interest in modern art, could achieve perhaps the greatest museum of modern art in the world.’ Barr was even more ambitious in his plans (and amazingly clear-sighted in the way he envisioned the future broad scope of the collection); he proposed that ‘In time the Museum would probably expand beyond the narrow limits of painting and sculpture in order to include departments devoted to drawings, prints, and photography, typography, the arts of design in commerce and industry, architecture (a collection of projets and maquettes), stage designing, furniture and the decorative arts. Not the least important collection might be the filmotek, a library of films.’

In October 1929 the seven founders held their first formal meeting as trustees; the industrialist A. Conger Goodyear (1877–1964) was elected president, Miss Bliss was vicepresident, and Mrs Rockefeller was treasurer. Later in the same month, seven more trustees were elected, including Duncan Phillips. The museum's first exhibition, ‘Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, Van Gogh', opened on 8 November, accompanied by a catalogue illustrating almost all of the 101 works on show. The exhibition was a great success, attended by 47,000 people in its four-week run, with 5,400 packing the galleries on the last day (the landlord of the building threatened to cancel the lease because the crowds were clogging the elevators). By the end of the year the Museum had also bought its first acquisitions—eight prints and a drawing—and Goodyear had presented the first sculpture to enter the collection, a nude torso by Maillol. The first painting acquired by the museum was Hopper's House by the Railroad (1925), given by Stephen C. Clark, one of the trustees, early in 1930. A trickle of other gifts followed, but the core of the permanent collection was established by Lillie Bliss's bequest at her death in 1931. (The phrase ‘permanent collection’ was abandoned in 1941 in favour of ‘museum collection', as it was the policy to sell works that were regarded as surplus in order to raise funds.)

In 1932 the museum moved to larger premises at 11 West 53rd Street. The collection was at this time growing slowly during the Depression years, but in 1935 it was given its first purchase fund by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, one of her many benefactions to the museum. In 1937 it moved temporarily to the Rockefeller Center to allow the construction of a new building at the site in West 53rd Street (this remains the museum's home, but it has since expanded enormously in size in various stages). In 1939 the new premises opened and the museum celebrated its 10th anniversary with an exhibition entitled ‘Art in Our Time', in which all its departments were represented: Painting and Sculpture, Drawings and Prints, Architecture, Industrial Design, Posters, Film, and Photography. Among the exhibits was Picasso's recently acquired Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, now the most famous work in the collection. The catalogue of the exhibition recorded that in its first decade the museum had held 112 exhibitions attended by about one-and-a-half million people. By this time the balance of its collections and activities had moved strongly from 19th-century to 20th-century art: in the words of the ‘Art in our Time’ catalogue, ‘our aim has been to present to the public the living art of our own time and its sources'.

In 1943 the museum announced that Barr had resigned as director ‘to devote his full time to writing the works on modern art which he has had in preparation and which heavy directorial duties have made it impossible for him to undertake'; however, he continued to work at the museum until his retirement in 1967, first as director of research and then from 1947 as director of museum collections (the varied titles are somewhat confusing; there was no overall director again until 1949, the Museum being run in the intervening period by a committee, and Barr remained MOMA's dominant presence). Another distinguished scholar of modern art, James Thrall Soby, was briefly director of the department of painting and sculpture, 1943–5. In 1944 he wrote an article for Museum News explaining MOMA's acquisitions policy: ‘In recent years the Museum has sometimes been berated for not buying more painting and sculpture by American abstract and Expressionist artists [members of American Abstract Artists had in fact picketed the museum in 1940] … But it should be remembered that the Museum does not exist for the direct benefit and patronage of artists. We do not consider it our job to force contemporary art in one direction or another through propaganda or patronage, much as enthusiasts for a particular dogma would like to have us do so. For in the final analysis it is not our job to lead artists, but to follow them—at a close yet respectful distance.’ In spite of such robust words of defence, as MOMA grew in size and prestige, its power to make reputations was generally acknowledged. Alexander Calder, for example, wrote in 1966 that ‘I have long felt that whatever my success has been’ was ‘greatly as a result of the show I had at MOMA in 1943'.

In 1947 MOMA came to an arrangement with the Metropolitan Museum, New York, whereby it was to sell to the Metropolitan ‘paintings and sculptures which the two museums agree have passed from the category of modern to that of “classic”', with the proceeds being used to buy new works for MOMA. In 1953, however, the board of trustees announced a change of policy, described by Barr as follows: ‘A permanent nucleus of “masterworks” was to be selected under the supervision of the Board. In accordance with this new policy, the 1947 agreement with the Metropolitan Museum was terminated; the Museum of Modern Art would no longer sell … its “classical” paintings in order to purchase more “modern” works. Instead it would permanently place on view masterpieces of the modern movement beginning with the latter half of the nineteenth century.’

In 1953 MOMA added the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, designed by the celebrated architect Philip Johnson (1906– ), who had two periods in charge of the museum's Department of Architecture and has also been a generous benefactor of works of art from his own collection. Johnson remodelled the sculpture garden in 1964 when he added a new east wing to the museum. In 1966 MOMA was again greatly enlarged when it took over the adjacent premises formerly occupied by the Whitney Museum. When Alfred Barr retired the following year, MOMA had become such a huge institution that it employed more than 500 people. In 1976 it announced plans for a new west wing. To help finance this it sold the air rights over the museum to a property developer, who built an apartment block—Museum Tower—over the new wing, which was opened in 1984. In 1996 MOMA bought adjacent land for further expansion.