Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
The place behind the collection.
Three founders, a building on 53rd Street and a garden in the middle of Midtown offer several ways into the story of MoMA.
On this page
A museum for modern art
The Museum of Modern Art was conceived in 1929 by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan, and opened that November on Fifth Avenue.
Its collection now numbers about 200,000 works.
A home on 53rd Street
Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone designed the museum’s International Style building at 11 West 53rd Street, opened in 1939.
Later architects, including César Pelli, Yoshio Taniguchi and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, extended it over the following decades.
A garden in Midtown
Philip Johnson redesigned the museum’s garden in 1953 as the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden.
This history belongs to the place and the people who shaped it. The History page offers a longer introduction, and the timeline gives a short route through selected milestones.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
