The Blissful Birth of the Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is one of New York City’s most renowned museums, home to the works of countless artists and attracting millions of visitors annually. Founded by art collector and patron Lillie P. Bliss and two other female associates in 1929, the museum has evolved to celebrate avant-garde art. Now on display at the MoMA, the Lillie P. Bliss and the Birth of Modern exhibition houses a vast collection of 40 modern works left behind by Bliss after she passed away at age 66. 

Bliss contributed to several advancements in modern art in New York prior to the establishment of the MoMA. She was introduced to modern art through the Armory Show of 1913, the first extensive modern art exhibition in America. As she helped organize and fund the event, she became fascinated with French post-impressionist works by artists such as Paul Cézanne, characterized by distinctive brushstrokes and vivid colors to evoke feelings within the viewer. 

Her advocacy for modern art continued, extending to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1921 with the assistance of some peers she had met from the Armory Show. Bliss successfully persuaded the Curator of Paintings, Bryson Burroughs, to allow her to coordinate the Loan Exhibition of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Art, a display of her passion for French modern art. Bliss personally added 12 works to the exhibition. Though the exhibition was criticized and called “dangerous” by the New York World newspaper for departing from norms, Bliss continued expanding her collection through visits to exhibitions of French modern art, some of which is currently featured in The Birth of Modern. 

Having accumulated an assortment of modern pieces from several contemporary artists, Bliss was motivated to establish a home for her growing collection. In November 1929, the MoMA officially made its debut with the Cézanne, Gaugin, Seurat, van Gogh exhibition. With a number of works anonymously lent by Bliss, the exhibit was met with great success and enthusiasm from the public. The MoMA continued to expand, even after Bliss’s death, which followed shortly after the opening of the museum, moving into larger spaces until its current location in midtown Manhattan in 1939.

Today, The Birth of Modern celebrates the legacy of Bliss and the foundational support that she bequeathed for the development of the MoMA. Upon walking into the exhibition, visitors are met with a timeline of Bliss’s life and her progression as an esteemed collector. Instinctively, the majority of visitors flock towards the exhibition’s highlight: Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh’s most famous painting, The Starry Night (1889). This quintessential painting embodies the fundamental attributes of post-impressionism: discrete marks of bright cerulean blues, cypress greens, and canary yellows melt together to capture the peacefulness of a village at night. 

The Starry Night is one of the few paintings in the exhibit not owned by Bliss but acquired by the museum after her passing. She had yearned for a Van Gogh piece towards the end of her life, cutting down expenditures to save up for the painting but failing to actually obtain it. A decade after her death, a letter from the MoMA’s first director, Alfred Barr, revealed that he was reminded of Bliss’s desire as a dealer while searching through the Bliss catalog. Thus, Barr reached out to the dealer, trading three pictures to add The Starry Night to Bliss’s collection in her honor.

Across Van Gogh’s masterpiece is Cézanne’s The Bather (1885), an oil painting featuring a young male figure with only his undergarments on and his hands on his hips as he pensively looks down. Cézanne used a neutral palette, surrounding the figure with rough strokes of a dull sky blue evocative of fog layered over an outdoor setting. The man is muscular, and he stands in a heroic pose. However, this contrasts with his apprehensive look and stiff posture, which is further accentuated by the dark outlines that define the figure. This painting and its subtle abstraction went on to be a fundamental building block for the development of Cubism, an art movement characterized by geometric shapes and flat perspectives.

Purchased by Bliss in 1921, The Bather was said to be one of her favorite pieces. In fact, Bliss would go on to collect over twenty paintings by Cézanne—his presence is unmissable in the Birth of Modern exhibition. The wall where The Bather hangs is dedicated to some of Cézanne’s other works, including Pines and Rocks (1897) and two watercolor studies.

In the final section of the exhibition, viewers are immersed in a number of works by Pablo Picasso, alongside works by French visual artist Henri Matisse and Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani. Picasso’s Green Still Life (1914), which came into Bliss’s collection at the Kelekian Sale in New York City in 1922, immediately catches visitors’ eyes. Its viridian green canvas and distorted depictions of everyday objects create a dynamic composition. Different patterns embellish the items: dots reminiscent of pointillism blanket parts of the table; miscellaneous stripes line the neck of a glass bottle. Despite the chaotic approach to this piece, the predominance of green maintains a soothing ambience and a sense of groundedness, uniting the objects together as one cohesive scene. Another addition to her avant-garde collection, the painting caught Bliss’s attention for its embodiment of modern art. She strongly believed that “[modern artists] have something to say worth saying and claim for themselves only the freedom to express it in their own way.” 

As granted by Bliss’s will, her bequest of about 120 works was left with the MoMA in 1934. Recognized as a “nucleus” for the MoMA’s soon-to-come collection by the New York Herald, her bequest allowed for more works of modern art to make their way into the MoMA in exchange for pieces that were already in Bliss’s collection. Though not featured in this exhibition, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) is a prime example, acquired in 1939 in exchange for Edgar Degas’ Jockeys on Horseback before Distant Hills (1884). 

Undoubtedly, Bliss has revolutionized the development of the museum and modern art. Her spirit is commemorated in the Birth of the Modern, and her profound contributions to the progress of modern art will forever live on in the walls of the MoMA.