Founded in 1929 by Lillie P. Bliss, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Mary Quinn Sullivan, and four other founding Trustees, The Museum of Modern Art was the first museum devoted to the modern era. Beginning with the innovative European art of the 1880s, the collection contains unparalleled holdings in every ensuing period of visual culture up to the present day, including such distinctly modern forms as film and industrial design in addition to more traditional mediums. Now numbering some 150,000 objects, the collection offers an unparalleled overview of modern and contemporary art.
The museum reopened in November 2004 on its original site in a new building designed by architect Yoshio Taniguchi. The new structure extensively expanded gallery space and added a soaring light-filled atrium 110 feet high. The walls themselves were designed to seem as if they float in space, reinforcing the idea that the building itself is an attraction.
The masterpieces in the permanent collection are too numerous to mention—among them Van Gogh's The Starry Night, Dalí­'s The Persistence of Memory, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon—and the collections of contemporary architecture, design, and photography could fill museums of their own.