The Museum Archives was established in 1989 to collect, organize, preserve, and make accessible documentation concerning the Museum's art-historical and cultural role in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is also an internationally recognized center of research for primary source material concerning many aspects of modern and contemporary art.

Finding aids to many of our collections are now online; please visit our Holdings page where you can view and search our collections. To ask us a question or to make an appointment, use our online form.

The holdings include millions of historical institutional records, such as exhibition files; research papers and correspondence of former Museum curators, directors, staff, and trustees (including Alfred H. Barr, Jr.); newsclippings; and over 3,000 sound and video recordings of Museum events. In the photographic archives, there are tens of thousands of images of past exhibition installations, special events, the Museum's building and grounds, and works of art included in temporary exhibitions. Also included are photographic materials depicting artists and other personalities.

The Museum Archives also includes an Oral History Project, which is responsible for preserving the spoken word and bridging gaps in written documentation. There have been interviews with MoMA family, including former Trustees, donors, administrators, curatorial staff, building project staff, close observers of the Museum's program, and others. Increasingly, interviews with artists are being undertaken to discuss the role of the Museum in the life of the artist, as well as to interview the artist about works of art in the Museum Collection and to discuss the artist’s process, use of materials, and the larger context within which a particular work of art was made.

In addition, the Museum Archives collects archival materials that originated from external sources, but which enhance and complement the mission of the Museum Archives. These private archives may be the papers or business records of artists, collectives, galleries, dealers, art historians, critics, etc.

The Museum Archives website was generously funded by the Trustee Committee on Archives, Library, and Research.