--- description: MoMA opened 85 years ago — but not in the building art aficionados know today title: New York City Museum of Modern Art History: Then and Now Photos image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt50d32c893a752b7a/69876459e53abad11c4d56be/moma-then-now.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [History](/section/history/) ## History Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Art](/tag/art/) ## Art Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # The Museum of Modern Art, Then and Now  by [Lily Rothman](/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Nov 7, 2014 2:00 PM CUT  Left: The Heckscher building circa 1925; Right: The current day Museum of Modern Art and its outdoor sculpture garden. Left: The Heckscher building circa 1925; Right: The current day Museum of Modern Art and its outdoor sculpture garden.Edwin Levick—Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Timothy Hursley—The Museum of Modern Art/AP  by [Lily Rothman](/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Nov 7, 2014 2:00 PM CUT When the first-ever exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City opened 85 years ago, on Nov. 7, 1929, the “museum” wasn’t exactly the institution today’s visitors might expect. At the time, the city’s museum crown was indisputably in the hands of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met did not share the spotlight and the Met did not do modern. In return, artists of the time had turned up their noses at its hallowed halls; viewing it, as TIME [phrased](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,737897,00.html "undefined") it back then, “only as a trysting place for shopgirls and their beaux, a shelter for nurse-girls and babies on rainy days, a ‘point of interest’ for out-of-towners.” When seven collectors and patrons — including Mrs. John Davison Rockefeller Jr. and _Vanity Fair_ editor Frank Crowninshield — announced that September that they would open a Museum of Modern Art to bridge the gap, the museum was actually a few rooms in the Heckscher Building, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. Not having a proper museum, it turned out, didn’t really make a difference: the following March, TIME [reported](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,738790,00.html "undefined") that 1,500 people a day visited the museum — and that the trustees of the institution would have to start charging admission, 50 cents a head, in order to better manage the flow of visitors. In 1932, the museum moved to a site on 53rd Street that, over the years, would evolve into the building MoMA inhabits today, with six floors of galleries instead of six rooms. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3559798/moma-history/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3559798/moma-history/"},"headline":"The Museum of Modern Art, Then and Now","datePublished":"2014-11-07T14:00:22.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T11:15:36.510Z","description":"MoMA opened 85 years ago — but not in the building art aficionados know today","url":"https://time.com/3559798/moma-history/","keywords":["Art","New York City","NYC","Museum","Museum of Modern Art"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt50d32c893a752b7a/69876459e53abad11c4d56be/moma-then-now.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt50d32c893a752b7a/69876459e53abad11c4d56be/moma-then-now.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"The Museum of Modern Art Then & Now","caption":"The Museum of Modern Art Then & Now","creditText":"Edwin Levick—Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Timothy Hursley—The Museum of Modern Art/AP","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/art/","name":"Art"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3559798/moma-history/","name":"The Museum of Modern Art, Then and Now"}}]}] ```