Museum of Modern Art

MoMA was founded in 1929 by three women - Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan - at a point when no major American museum was collecting modern work seriously, and its acquisitions and exhibitions did much to fix what the twentieth-century canon would be. Van Gogh's The Starry Night, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Monet's Water Lilies triptych and Dali's The Persistence of Memory are all here. It also collects design and architecture as art, which is why a Bell helicopter and a self-aligning ball bearing sit in the collection alongside the paintings. A 2019 expansion by Diller Scofidio + Renfro with Gensler added about 4,400 square metres of gallery space.

What's there

• The Starry Night and Les Demoiselles - the two everyone comes for.
• Design and architecture collected as art - including a helicopter.
• A 2019 expansion - about 4,400 square metres more gallery space.
• Founded in 1929 by three collectors - all of them women.

When to go

Year round; Friday evenings are free and correspondingly packed. Half a day.

Good to know

It is extremely crowded, and the Van Gogh room worst of all. Tickets are expensive and timed. The collection rotates, so a specific work may be off view. Free Friday queues start well before opening of that slot.

Nearby

Rockefeller Center is a block east; Central Park is north.

Key facts