MoMA's Move to 53rd Street in Hip Hop Style
After moving through three temporary locations, MoMA opened its custom-built, modernist home on West 53rd Street in May 1939. Designed by Philip Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone, the building's glass-and-steel facade shook up the traditional, classical museum architecture of New York City.
Chapter 1
The blueprint of 1929
Chapter 2
Masterpieces on the mic
Chapter 3
Chopping samples and rebuilding the block
Chapter 4
Street level to high art
Ch 1 · The blueprint of 1929
diego The 1929 MoMA Blueprint
We built a blueprint to change the museum, putting film and design next to painting.
Fun Fact
MoMA's first home: The museum originally opened in a rented six-room office suite on the 12th floor of Manhattan's Heckscher Building in 1929.
Glossary
museum (noun)
A building or institution dedicated to the acquisition, preservation, and exhibition of objects of artistic, historical, or scientific value. In November 1929, three wealthy female patrons established the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.
A building or institution dedicated to the acquisition, preservation, and exhibition of objects of artistic, historical, or scientific value. In November 1929, three wealthy female patrons established the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.
Quiz
Which architectural duo designed MoMA's landmark modernist building on West 53rd Street, opened in 1939?
Quiz
What shape did Alfred Barr Jr. use as a metaphor for how MoMA's collection should move through time?
Quiz
What major economic crisis occurred just nine days before MoMA opened its doors in November 1929?
Quiz
Which artist's painting, "The Bather," was MoMA's very first major acquisition in 1934?