The original idea of ​​a modern art museum was developed in 1928 mainly by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr.) and two of his friends, Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan. Their group became known by various nicknames, including "the Ladies", "the daring ladies", and "the adamantine ladies" (It. The Ladies adamantine). As the headquarters of the museum they designed they rented a rather modest building and opened it to the public on November 7, 1929, 9 days after the Wall Street collapse. Abby invited A. Conger Goodyear, previously chairman of the board of directors of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, to become president of the new museum. Rockefeller herself assumed the role of treasurer. It was one of the first American museums to be entirely dedicated to modern and avant-garde art (see also the Gallatin Gallery of Living Art and the European Société Anonyme of K.Dreier). 

Goodyear convinced Paul J. Sachs and Frank Crowninshield to join him as members of the board. Sachs, co-director and editor of the prints and drawings section of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, was commissioned to find the editors. Goodyear asked him to suggest a director and he proposed Alfred H. Barr Jr., a promising young pupil. Under Barr's guidance, the museum's collection, which originally consisted of only eight prints and a design obtained through a donation, quickly expanded. In November 1929 the first successful exhibition was held, in which works by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, and Seurat were exhibited.

Umberto Boccioni
The city that rises, 1910
Unique forms of continuity in space, 1913
Paul Cézanne
Snow melted in Fontainebleau, 1879-1880
Bather, around 1885
Still life with apples, 1895-1898
Road to Montgeroult, 1898
Marc Chagall
Me and the village, 1911
Birthday, 1915
Salvador Dalí
The persistence of memory, 1931
Edgar Degas
From the milliner, about 1882
Claude Monet
The Japanese bridge
Bath with water lilies, 1918
Water lilies, 1918
Blue water lilies, 1918
Pablo Picasso
Self-portrait - I, the king, 1901
Two acrobats with dogs, 1905
Boy leading a horse, 1905-1906
Les demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907
Reservoir at Horta de Ebro, 1909