Description of the attraction
The New York Museum of Modern Art is commonly referred to as MoMA, short for Museum of Modern Art. It is considered the most representative museum of its kind in the world. His collection is the most comprehensive overview of modernist and contemporary art, including painting, sculpture, design, architecture, photography, books, films and online media.
The idea of creating a museum came to the minds of three energetic ladies of the last century - the wife of John Rockefeller Jr. Abby Aldrich and her best friends Lilly Plummer Bliss and Mary Queen Sullivan (this trio was called "indestructible ladies"). Her friends were engaged in charity work and collecting, Abby was terribly rich - success was assured. In 1929, the ladies rented rather modest premises on Fifth Avenue for the new museum. The moment for launching the project was chosen in a peculiar way: just nine days after the Wall Street panic that marked the beginning of the Great Depression.
The path to success was not strewn with roses: Abby's husband, legendary John Rockefeller Jr., did not understand contemporary art and did not want to support the project. Only ten years later, Abby persuaded him to change his anger to mercy: a millionaire donated a piece of land in Manhattan, and architects Philip Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone built a museum building here in an international style. The official opening was attended by six thousand guests, addressed by President Franklin Roosevelt on the radio from the White House.
In 1929, the collection of the future museum contained eight engravings and one drawing; now its funds number about 150 thousand works. MoMA is also the owner of 22 thousand films, four million film frames, 300 thousand books and documents.
The museum collection includes paintings by Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Henri Rousseau, Jackson Pollock, sculptures by Auguste Rodin. The pride of MoMA is the masterpieces exhibited here: the first version of the famous Dance, written by Henri Matisse in 1909 (the second is in the St. Petersburg Hermitage), Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, Avignon Girls by Pablo Picasso, The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali, Water Lilies”by Claude Monet (triptych from the famous cycle, to which the master gave thirty years of his life). In 1958, a fire broke out on the second floor of the museum, and the "Water Lilies" died in the fire. The museum specifically bought the current version of the canvas to compensate the visitors for the loss. The exhibition also features works by prominent European and American masters: Georges Braque, Arshile Gorky, Fernand Léger, Aristide Maillol, Henry Moore, Jackson Pollock, Kenneth Noland.
The museum is still closely associated with the Rockefeller family, and this gives it tremendous opportunities. Free classical music concerts are held in the local Abby Aldrich Sculpture Garden on Sunday summer. In 2006, the museum building was reconstructed and expanded by the Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi. A tourist should take into account that it is almost impossible to bypass the exposition in one day - it is huge.
