subject: Museum Of Modern Art Moma [print this page] The museum's collection presents an unparalleled overview of contemporary and up to date art, including works of structure and design, drawings, painting, sculpture, images, prints, illustrated books and artist's books, film, and electronic media.
MoMA's library and archives hold over 300,000 books, artist books, and periodicals, as well as particular person recordsdata on more than 70,000 artists. The archives comprise main supply materials associated to the historical past of recent and up to date art. It also houses a restaurant, The Trendy, run by Alsace-born chef Gabriel Kreuther.
The thought for The Museum of Modern Artwork was developed in 1928 primarily by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (spouse of John D. Rockefeller Jr.) and of her mates, Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan. They turned recognized variously as "the Women", "the daring girls" and "the adamantine women". They rented modest quarters for the new museum in rented areas within the Heckscher Building at 730 Fifth Avenue (corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street) in Manhattan, and it opened to the general public on November 7, 1929, 9 days after the Wall Avenue Crash.
Abby had invited A. Conger Goodyear, the former president of the board of trustees of the Albright Artwork Gallery in Buffalo, New York, to change into president of the new museum. Abby became treasurer. At the time, it was America's premier museum devoted completely to modern art, and the primary of its form in Manhattan to exhibit European modernism.
Goodyear enlisted Paul J. Sachs and Frank Crowninshield to hitch him as founding trustees. Sachs, the associate director and curator of prints and drawings on the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard College, was referred to in these days as a collector of curators. Goodyear requested him to suggest a director and Sachs instructed Alfred H. Barr Jr., a promising younger protege.
Beneath Barr's steerage, the museum's holdings quickly expanded from an initial present of eight prints and one drawing. Its first successful mortgage exhibition was in November 1929, displaying work by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Czanne, and Seurat.
