THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
FIRST LOAN EXHIBITION NEW YORK NOVEMBER 1929
Alfred H. Barr, Jr. [foreword]
Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART FIRST LOAN EXHIBITION NEW YORK NOVEMBER 1929. New York: Museum of Modern Art, November 1929. First edition [3,000 copies]. Quarto. Thick printed wrappers with black cloth spine. 52 pp. + 98 black and white plates. Cataloged works include 28 by Van Gogh, 18 by Seurat, 19 by Gauguin and 35 by Cezanne. Spine crown and heel lightly worn. Wrappers lightly toned edgeworn. Pencil checkmark to margin of foreword. A very good or better copy.
8.5 x 11 exhibition catalog with 52 pages followed by 98 black and white illustrations. Catalog of the Museum of Modern Art's first exhibition in 1929.
From the colophon: This catalog was issued in November 1929 by the Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was printed at the Conde Nast Press Greenwich Conn. on De Jonge art mat paper. The half-tone plates were made by the Gill Engraving Company. FIRST EDITION 3000 COPIES.
The idea for The Museum of Modern Art was developed in 1929 primarily by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (wife of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.) and two of her friends, Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan. They became known variously as "the Ladies," "the daring ladies" and "the adamantine ladies". They rented modest quarters for the new museum in the Heckscher Building at 730 Fifth Avenue (corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street) in Manhattan, and it opened to the public on November 7, 1929, nine days after the Wall Street Crash. Abby had invited A. Conger Goodyear, the former president of the board of trustees of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, to become president of the new museum. Abby became treasurer. At the time, it was America's premier museum devoted exclusively to modern art, and the first of its kind in Manhattan to exhibit European modernism.
Goodyear enlisted Paul J. Sachs and Frank Crowninshield to join him as founding trustees. Sachs, the associate director and curator of prints and drawings at the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, was referred to in those days as a collector of curators. Goodyear asked him to recommend a director and Sachs suggested Alfred H. Barr, Jr., a promising young protege. Under Barr's guidance, the museum's holdings quickly expanded from an initial gift of eight prints and one drawing. Its first successful loan exhibition was in November 1929, displaying paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, and Seurat.
First housed in six rooms of galleries and offices on the twelfth floor of Manhattan's Heckscher Building, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, the museum moved into three more temporary locations within the next ten years. Abby's husband was adamantly opposed to the museum (as well as to modern art itself) and refused to release funds for the venture, which had to be obtained from other sources and resulted in the frequent shifts of location. Nevertheless, he eventually donated the land for the current site of the museum, plus other gifts over time, and thus became in effect one of its greatest benefactors.