Marc Chagal I and the Village (1911). MoMA. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the world’s largest contemporary and modern art assemblage, has been in the avant-garde of modern art collecting for almost a century. Founded in 1929 by three enterprising society women who were art collectors and patrons, it has a dual mission of recognizing the best contemporary artists and being a repository of the best examples of modern art. The first goal is currently served by the “Cézanne Drawings” exhibition (ongoing through September 2021) and the upcoming “Reuse, Renew, Recycle: Recent Architecture from China” (September 2021–January 2022). As for the second MoMA goal, it is amply satisfied by the museum’s always growing collection of about 200,000 artworks (including paintings, architectural drawings, photographs, sculptures, ceramics, textiles, and documents), of which 90,000 can be viewed online. Only a small fraction, however, are able to be on display at any given time at MoMA’s recently renovated building in midtown Manhattan.
