Curator, Ann Temkin: Margaret Scolari Barr was an art historian involved with MoMA's founding, and the wife of Alfred H. Barr, Jr., MoMA's founding director.
Art Historian, Margaret Scolari Barr: I remember vividly the incredible excitement that surrounded the museum in those early years. Everybody was saying, we could do this, we could do that. It was absolutely electric!
Ann Temkin: When MoMA opened in 1929, it was just in rented space. It was on the 12th floor of an office building. The first exhibition there was about Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat, who, during the last couple of decades of the 19th century laid the groundwork, for what would happen in the new century. That exhibition was a wild success.
Curator, Romy Silver-Kohn: MoMA was founded by three women, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan. For the most part, the founders let the museum staff have a lot of freedom, but they did wield power determining what the inaugural exhibition at the museum would be.
Several committee members, all men, were arguing for an exhibition featuring veteran American artists. The founders, on the other hand, were arguing forcefully for an exhibition of the French artists, who in their eyes, started the modern movement.
In a telegram from 1929, Frank Crowninshield, one of the Museum's founding committee members, says: "Sachs, Barr, and I wanted small show. But four ladies on committee solidly against us." He closes the telegram with, "Barr, Sachs, and I willing to join the adamantine ladies." Adamantine means unbreakable or unyielding. These ladies were not going to be stopped.