On this day: MoMA, New York City

See more from my On This Day series here, where I celebrate travel memories on their trip anniversaries.

On December 6, 2017, I was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Following a morning exploring Lower Manhattan and crossing part of the Brooklyn Bridge, we headed back up island to visit the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Midtown.

The idea for MoMA was developed in 1929 by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and her two friends, Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan. The museum started off in modest quarters within the Heckscher Building at 730 Fifth Avenue, opening nine days after the infamous Wall Street Crash. At the time, it became America’s premier museum devoted exclusively to modern art, and the first of its kind in Manhattan to display works of European modernism. In 1939, it relocated to its permanent setting on 53rd Street, and has since undergone several rounds of expansion and renovation over the decades.

Today, MoMA holds one of the finest collections of modern Western masterpieces in the world, with over 150,000 individual pieces, approximately 22,000 films, and 4 million film stills. An admission fee of $25 USD per adult grants visitors access to highlights including works from Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, and Jackson Pollock, amongst those of numerous other renowned artists. This was undoubtedly my favourite of the museums we visited in New York City.