Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

The Museum of Modern Art opened nine days after the 1929 stock market crash, founded by three collectors who wanted a New York home for modern art. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss, and Mary Quinn Sullivan recruited A. Conger Goodyear, who had been fired from a Buffalo gallery board for buying a Picasso, to run the new institution. Director Alfred Barr shaped MoMA's pioneering approach, treating film, photography, and design as seriously as painting and sculpture. The first exhibition featured Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, and Van Gogh.

Van Gogh's The Starry Night, acquired in 1941 from the Bliss bequest, became the museum's most recognized work. Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and works by Monet, Seurat, and Delaunay trace modern art's evolution. The collection has grown from eight prints and one drawing to over 150,000 paintings, sculptures, photographs, and design objects. MoMA pioneered the inclusion of industrial design and architecture in museum collections. The current midtown Manhattan building has expanded multiple times, most recently in 2019 with galleries designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.