Museum of Modern Art, comprehensive collection of primarily American and European art ranging from the late 19th century to the present that was established in New York City in 1929, with Alfred H. Barr as the founding director. According to the museum’s founding trustees—especially Lillie P. Bliss, Mary Quinn Sullivan, and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller—the museum would be dedicated exclusively to the most progressive tendencies in modern art. The museum’s holdings of Cubist, Surrealist, and Abstract Expressionist paintings are especially extensive: it is home to Pablo Picasso’s pivotal Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). Besides paintings, sculpture, and graphic art, the museum was