Museum of Modern Art

New York City’s premier modern art museum, the MoMA is located on 53rd Street in between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in midtown Manhattan. As the name suggests, it is dedicated to modern art, which broadly encompasses the period from the 1860s to the 1970s. To this end, the MoMA has an extensive Abstract Expressionist, Cubist, and Surrealist collection, which includes works by renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, and Henri Matisse. The MoMA also highlights contemporary art, often showcasing works by living artists.

This museum is worth a visit for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of the art world; visitors will be able to enjoy both pivotal works by the greats of the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as fascinating installations and other art by the world’s best living artists.  

The History of the MoMA 

In 1929, Abby Adlrich Rockefeller — the wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr., son of the one-time richest man in America — and her friends came up with the idea for what is now the Museum of Modern Art. The museum was first housed at 730 Fifth Avenue, and it moved a number of times over the first decade of its existence. Notably, John D. Rockefeller Jr. himself was largely opposed to the idea of modern art, and for a long while did not give his wife any funds for the MoMA.  

It rose to early fame with retrospective exhibits on famed artists of the 19th century, including a Vincent van Gogh exhibit in 1935 — which collected 66 of his oil paintings — and a Pablo Picasso show from 1939-1940. Its current location in midtown opened the same year, in 1939, though it has since been renovated.  

Nowadays, the institution also operates an affiliated museum, MoMA PS1, in Queens. It opened in 2000 as a merger between MoMA and the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center with the goal of promoting the study and appreciation of contemporary art. To do so, MoMA PS1 regularly hosts innovative exhibits highlighting artists like Kimsooja, Janet Cardiff, Keith Sonnier, and Judy Rifka.  

MoMA Collection 

The MoMA collection, which contains approximately 200,000 works, is organized into six different departments of curation: Architecture and Design, Drawings and Prints, Film, Media, and Performance, Painting and Sculpture, and Photography. The MoMA library, meanwhile, has over 320,000 artists’ books, books, periodicals, and research files, as well as material pertaining to the MoMA’s history.  

Some of the most notable works housed in the MoMA include Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory, Roy Lichtenstein’s Drowning Girl, a Claude Monet Water Lilies triptych, van Gogh’s Starry Nights, and Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans. Other prominent artists who have works in the MoMA collection include Piet Mondrian, Giorgio de Chirico, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and many more.  

Click here for an overview of the MoMA’s current exhibits, which draw from its permanent collection and feature retrospectives and other special exhibits.  

How to Visit the MoMA 

The MoMA is open daily from 10:30am to 5:30pm; on Saturdays it stays open until 7:30pm. The museum is home to a restaurant, The Modern, as well as three cafés, all of which can be a good spot to take a break from browsing the exhibitions.  

Tickets can be purchased here. They include admission to all MoMA galleries and special exhibits. The cost is $25 for adults, and there is free admission for children under 16.  

Experience one of the world’s best modern art collections with a visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.