After Kneeling Woman, by the German artist Wilhelm Lehmbruck, had been labeled "degenerate art" and removed from the Kunsthalle Mannheim, The Museum of Modern Art purchased the sculpture through the Buchholz Gallery in New York in 1939. It was one of the three casts that had been banned from German museums in 1937. MoMA’s founding director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., announced the acquisition, writing, "The Kneeling Woman is one of the great masterpieces of modern sculpture and was so regarded in the native land of the artist for many years."