Museums, 1929
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), founded in 1929 as an educational institution, is dedicated to acquiring the best modern works of art on the market. Located in a 630,000-square-foot facility in New York City, New York, MoMA’s collections are exhibited within five sections: Architecture and Design, Drawings, Film and Media, Painting and Sculpture, Photography, and Prints and Illustrated Books. Established in 1932, the Architecture and Design section holds the distinction of being the world’s first curatorial department dedicated to architecture and design. The Design collection includes more than 3,000 objects, such as appliances, furniture, textiles, and sports cars. There are more than 4,000 items related to topography, posters, and other combinations of text and images in the graphic design collection. The Drawings section has on display a comprehensive range of historical drawings in pencil, ink, and charcoal, apart from watercolors, gouaches, collages, and works in mixed mediums. Film and Media, founded in 1935, exhibits more than 22,000 films and four million film stills. Original negatives of the Biograph and Edison companies, and the world’s largest collection of D.W. Griffith films are prominent of them. Begun in 1970, the video collection consists of more than 1,000 works dating from the 1960s to the present. Among the highlights are educational pieces, broadcast documentaries, and works by video artists. The Painting and Sculpture section includes more than 3,200 works of modern paintings and sculpture, dating from the late 19th century to the present. Found in the Photography department is a diverse collection of more than 25,000 images taken by famous artists, journalists, scientists, and amateurs. The Prints and Illustrated Books section showcases more than 50,000 works dating from the 1880s to the present date. Woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, and prints are some of them. In addition, a collection of more than 160,000 books and exhibition catalogs, and more than 40,000 vertical files of announcements and ephemera about individual artists, can be seen in the museum’s library. The museum conducts exhibitions focusing on significant recent developments in the visual arts. International programs are also organized to build relationships between the museum and arts institutions and museum professionals around the globe. The Education Department of MoMA functions exclusively to provide the public with easy access to the museum’s collection and exhibitions. A number of restaurants and cafes operated by Danny Meyer's acclaimed Union Square Hospitality Group, and a store carrying a range of art reproduction, design objects, and books are within the museum premises. The oldest and second largest non-profit art center in the nation, P.S.1 is an affiliate of the MOMA. It is exclusively devoted to the enhancement of contemporary art.
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