Modern Mother: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and the Visionary Women Who Founded The Museum of Modern Art
Date of Award
2025
Document Type
Thesis - Open Access
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Fine and Decorative Art and Design
First Advisor
Agnes Berecz
Second Advisor
Matthew Nichols
Abstract
This thesis analyzes the role that women played in founding The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1929 during an era in which the prevailing attitude toward modern art in America was one of bewilderment and derision. MoMA was founded by three women: Lillie Plummer Bliss, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and Mary Quinn Sullivan. At a time when their male counterparts were more focused on collecting Renaissance and Old Master paintings, French decorative arts, Chinese porcelain and medieval tapestries, these women chose to collect modern art. Avant-garde art, which was shown en masse to the American public in 1913 at the Armory Show, was widely dismissed at the time as nonsensical, and even dangerous. Yet Bliss, Sullivan and Rockefeller forged ahead in collecting it and deliberately strategized to establish a museum for modern art in New York, one of the few major cities in the world that did not have a museum dedicated solely to the vanguard art of the day. I argue that these women were well placed to play a founding role for a modern art museum in New York. They filled a void that their male peers did not occupy. In particular, I focus on the instrumental part Abby Aldrich Rockefeller played in launching this museum and quietly guiding it to become the successful museum it is today.
Recommended Citation
Dowling, Sophie, "Modern Mother: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and the Visionary Women Who Founded The Museum of Modern Art" (2025). MA Theses. 222.
https://digitalcommons.sia.edu/stu_theses/222
Included in
American Art and Architecture Commons, Modern Art and Architecture Commons, Museum Studies Commons