Inventing the Modern

Profiles of fourteen women who transformed the country's foremost modern art museum in its fledgling years. Founded in 1929, The Museum of Modern Art owes much of its success to a group of remarkable women who shaped its future during its first decades. Because there were few precedents for a museum devoted to modern art, MoMA was free to invent itself without the requirements-professional experience, competitive salaries-that traditionally limited an art institution's jobs to men. At MoMA women were able to create and define their roles as founders, patrons, curators, and department directors, changing, as they did so, the course of art history. In this volume, readers are transported to the grit and glamour of midtown Manhattan in the 1930s and '40s through profiles of fourteen pioneering figures who made an indelible mark not only on MoMA but on the culture of their time.

Foreword by Anna Deavere Smith Introduction by Ann Temkin and Romy Silver-Kohn 1. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller by Mary Schmidt Campbell 2. Lillie P. Bliss by Kate Walbert 3. Mary Quinn Sullivan by Nell Irvin Painter 4. Margaret Scolari Barr by Lanka Tattersall 5. Ernestine Fantl Carter by Juliet Kinchin 6. Iris Barry by Farran Smith Nehme 7. Elodie Courter by Romy Silver-Kohn 8. Sarah Newmeyer by Sloane Crosley 9. Dorothy Miller by Mary Gabriel 10. Dorothy Dudley by Roberta Smith 11. Nancy Newhall by Brenda Wineapple 12. Elizabeth Mock by Jennifer Gray 13. Olga Guggenheim by Ann Temkin 14. Jean Volkmer by Anne Umland