Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. The institution was conceived in 1929 by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss, and Mary Quinn Sullivan. Initially located in the Heckscher Building on Fifth Avenue, it opened just days after the Wall Street Crash. The museum, America's first devoted exclusively to modern art, was led by A. Conger Goodyear as president and Abby Rockefeller as treasurer, with Alfred H. Barr Jr. as its first director. Under Barr's leadership, the museum's collection rapidly expanded, beginning with an inaugural exhibition of works by European modernists. Despite financial challenges, including opposition from John D. Rockefeller Jr., the museum moved to several temporary locations in its early years, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. eventually donated the land for its permanent site.
This article is about the museum in New York City. For other uses, see Museum of Modern Art (disambiguation) and Moma (disambiguation).Established
During the 1930s and 1950s, MoMA gained international recognition with landmark exhibitions, such as Barr's influential "Cubism and Abstract Art" in 1936, a retrospective of Pablo Picasso's works organized in 1939-40 and the "Indian Art of the United States" exhibition in 1941. Abby Rockefeller's son, Nelson, became the museum's president in 1939, playing a key role in its expansion and publicity. His brother, David Rockefeller, joined the board in 1948 and continued the family's close association with the museum. Significant events during this period included a major fire in 1958, which destroyed a painting by Claude Monet and led to the evacuation of other artworks. The museum's architectural evolution also continued, with a redesign of the sculpture garden by Philip Johnson and relocation to its current home designed by Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone, which opened in 1939.
In later decades, the controversial decision to withdraw funding from the antiwar poster "And Babies" in 1969, and the subsequent protests, highlighted the museum's involvement in contemporary sociopolitical issues. It was also among several institutions to aid CIA in its efforts to engage in cultural propaganda during the Cold War.[2] Major expansions in the 1980s and the early 21st century, including the selection of Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi for a significant renovation, nearly doubled MoMA's space for exhibitions and programs. The 2000s saw the formal merger with the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, and in 2019, another major renovation added significant gallery space.
In 2022, MoMA was the 17th most-visited art museum in the world and the 4th most-visited museum in the United States. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th-century to the present, and includes over 200,000 works of architecture and design, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, prints, illustrated and artist's books, film, as well as electronic media.[3] The museum is considered one of the most influential cultural institutions globally devoted to modern and contemporary art.[4] At the same time, MoMA has long faced criticism for developing and perpetuating Eurocentric narratives of modernism and for its insufficient focus on expanding access to socioeconomically underprivileged groups.[5][6][7] The museum has been involved in controversies regarding its labor practices, and the institution's labor union, founded in 1971, has been described as the first of its kind in the U.S.[8] The MoMA Library includes about 300,000 books and exhibition catalogs, more than 1,000 periodical titles and more than 40,000 files of ephemera about individual artists and groups.[9] The archives hold primary source material related to the history of modern and contemporary art.[10]
Attendance[edit]
The museum attracted 2,190,440 visitors in 2022, making it the 4th most-visited museum in the United States, and the third most-visited U.S. art museum. This attendance was 89 percent higher than in 2021, but still well below the pre-COVID attendance in 2019.[11]
The MoMA occasionally has sponsored and hosted temporary exhibition houses, which have reflected seminal ideas in architectural history.
The MoMA is organized around six curatorial departments: Architecture and Design, Drawings and Prints, Film, Media and Performance, Painting and Sculpture, and Photography.[84]
Considered by many to have the best collection of modern Western masterpieces in the world, the MoMA's holdings include more than 150,000 individual pieces in addition to roughly 22,000 films and 4 million film stills. (Access to the collection of film stills ended in 2002, and the collection is stored in a vault in Hamlin, Pennsylvania.[85]). The collection houses such important and familiar works as the following:
Management[edit]
Attendance[edit]
MoMA attracted 706,060 visitors in 2020, a drop of sixty-five percent from 2019, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It ranked twenty-fifth on the List of most visited art museums in the world in 2020.[104]
MoMA has seen its average number of visitors rise from about 1.5 million a year to 2.5 million after its new granite and glass renovation. In 2009, the museum reported 119,000 members and 2.8 million visitors over the previous fiscal year. MoMA attracted its then highest-ever number of visitors, 3.09 million, during its 2010 fiscal year;[105] however, attendance dropped 11 percent to 2.8 million in 2011.[106] Attendance in 2016 was 2.8 million, down from 3.1 million in 2015.[107]
The museum was open every day since its founding in 1929, until 1975, when it closed one day a week (originally Wednesdays) to reduce operating expenses. In 2012, it again opened every day, including Tuesday, the one day it has traditionally been closed.[108]
Admission[edit]
Since 2011,[109] the Museum of Modern Art has charged an admission fee of $25 per adult.[110] Upon MoMA's reopening in 2004, its admission cost increased from $12 to $20, making it one of the most expensive museums in the city.[50] However, it has free entry on Fridays after 5:30pm, as part of the Uniqlo Free Friday Nights program. Many New York area college students also receive free admission to the museum.[111]
Finances[edit]
A private non-profit organization, MoMA is the seventh-largest U.S. museum by budget;[112] its annual revenue is about $145 million. In 2011, the museum reported net assets (which does not include the value of the art) of just over $1 billion.
Unlike most museums, the museum eschews government funding, instead subsisting on a fragmented budget with a half-dozen different sources of income, none larger than a fifth.[113] Before the economic crisis of late 2008, the MoMA's board of trustees decided to sell its equities in order to move into an all-cash position. An $858 million capital campaign funded the 2002–04 expansion, with David Rockefeller donating $77 million in cash.[112] In 2005, Rockefeller pledged an additional $100 million toward the museum's endowment.[114] In 2012, Standard & Poor's, a nationally recognized statistical rating organization, raised its long-term rating for the museum as it benefited from the fundraising of its trustees.[115] After construction expenses for the new galleries are covered, the Modern estimates that some $65 million will go to its $650 million endowment.
MoMA spent $32 million to acquire art for the fiscal year ending in June 2012.[116]
MoMA employed about 815 people in 2007.[113] The museum's tax filings from the past few years suggest a shift among the highest paid employees from curatorial staff to management.[117] The museum's director Glenn D. Lowry earned $1.6 million in 2009[118] and lives in a rent-free $6 million apartment above the museum.[119]
MoMA was forced to close in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.[120] Citing the coronavirus shutdown, MoMA fired its art educators in April 2020.[121] In May 2020, it was reported that MoMA would reduce its annual budget from $180 to $135 million starting July 1. Exhibition and publication funding was cut by half, and staff reduced from around 960 to 800.[120]
Strike MoMA is a 2021 movement to strike the museum targeting what its supporters have called the "toxic philanthropy" of the museum's leadership.[122][123]