New York Museum of Modern Art description and photos - USA: New York (Topic)

Museum of Modern Art description and photos - USA: New York. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photographs and a map showing the nearest significant objects. The title in English is Museum of Modern Art.

Photo and Description

The New York Museum of Modern Art is usually called 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 complete overview of modernist and contemporary art, including painting, sculpture, design, architecture, photography, books, films and the Internet media.

The idea of creating a museum came to the minds of three energetic ladies of the last century - his wife John Rockefeller Jr Abby Aldrich and her best friends Lilly Plummer Bliss and Mary Queen Sullivan (this trio was called the "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 the launch of the project was chosen in a peculiar way: only 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., of contemporary art did not understand 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, President Franklin Roosevelt addressed them by 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 frames from films, 300 thousand books and documents.

The museum collection includes paintings by Paul Cezanne, 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), The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, The Avignon Girls by Pablo Picasso, The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali, Water Lilies ”by Claude Monet (a 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" perished in the fire. The museum specially 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 Leger, 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.

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Topic: New York Museum of Modern Art description and photos - USA: New York.