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The Museum of Modern Art in NYC was founded in 1929 by three visionary women: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Mary Quinn Sullivan and Lillie Plummer Bliss. When Bliss died at 66, in 1931, she left a large part of her art collection to the MoMA—a generous and transformative gift that changed the young museum’s direction.
Lillie P. Bliss and the Birth of the Modern brings together 40 works from Bliss’s collection, including paintings and works on paper by Cezanne, Redon, Seurat, and Picasso. Bliss was an early supporter of these groundbreaking artists at a time when modern art was not widely understood or appreciated in the US. Her unique bequeathal to the MoMA allowed sales to fund new acquisitions, most notably, Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night. The Bliss collection and gift provided the young MoMA with the means to expand and develop its important collection by adding seminal works by important modernists.
This visual lecture is presented by Professor Thomas Germano.