Looking for iconic works throughout MoMA’s galleries? We’ve got you covered. Follow this self-guided tour of unmissable artworks to experience an overview of the history of modern art in one visit. You’ll find these works on Floors 5, 4, and 2, tap on the gallery numbers below to see their location on our map. Let’s start on Floor 5.
Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon 🟫
Floor 5, Gallery 502 The Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Galleries
Painted when Pablo Picasso was 25 years old, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon has been traditionally presented as the beginning of Cubism—the use of splintered forms and shifting vantage points that revolutionized art in the years prior to World War I. Picasso kept this painting hidden in his studio for nearly 20 years, almost as if he knew how radically ahead of its time it was.
Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel 🚲
Floor 5, Gallery 505 The Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Galleries
This is modern art in all its provocative glory. One of the earliest “Readymades,” a groundbreaking form of art invented by Marcel Duchamp, this is a bicycle wheel stuck in the seat of a stool—but you could’ve figured that out. What’s interesting is the statement it makes: art is whatever an artist says it is. Duchamp declared that when it comes to art, “ideas are more important than the actual visual realization.”
Constantin Brâncuși’s Bird in Space 🪿
Floor 5, Gallery 508 The David Geffen Wing
How can you tell what’s art and what’s not? When Constantin Brâncuși was transporting his sculptures from Europe to the United States in 1926, customs officials refused to acknowledge they were art—to them it just looked like industrial parts. Defending his work, Brâncuși sued the US government. Find out how the story ends by listening to the audio stop for Maiastra, another Brâncuși sculpture on display in this gallery.
Tarsila do Amaral’s The Moon 🌚
Floor 5, Gallery 509 The David Geffen Wing
Tarsila do Amaral said “I want to be the painter of my country.” Inspired by the landscapes and people of her native Brazil, she incorporated this imagery with a modernist vocabulary she experienced in Paris. Galvanized by artists she met there, like Picasso and Brâncuși, do Amaral produced a body of work that brought a distinctly Brazilian voice to the development of modern art.
Claude Monet’s Water Lilies 🪷
Floor 5, Gallery 515 The David Geffen Wing
Unique to modern art was the idea that not everything had to be contained within the picture frame. Claude Monet paints his sky not above, but reflected within the immersive lily pond, which is almost abstract in its lack of a focal point. Revolutionary in his day, these monumental paintings went on to inspire the Abstract Expressionist artists working in New York decades later—which we’ll come to on Floor 4.
Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series 🚂
Floor 5, Gallery 520 The Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Galleries
Who gets to tell their story? Here, across 30 painted panels, Jacob Lawrence tells the story of the mass migration of African Americans from the rural South to Northern cities in the US after World War I from a personal perspective, as “a child of the Great Migration.” A barrier-breaker, Lawrence is the first African American artist whose work was collected by MoMA.
Jackson Pollock’s One Number 31, 1950 🎨
Floor 4, Gallery 401 The David Geffen Galleries
In the late 1940s, Henri Matisse turned to paper as his primary medium and scissors as his chief implement, introducing a new art form that came to be called the cut-out. His Swimming Pool is a cut-out at a large, immersive scale, and it’s going off view for several years after the holiday season. Take a dip while you still can, and celebrate a restlessly inventive artist through other cut-outs displayed in Gallery 406.
Robert Rauschenberg’s Canyon 🦅
Floor 4, Gallery 408 The David Geffen Wing
At the beginning of his career, Robert Rauschenberg was seen by some as the next big Abstract Expressionist, but he had other ideas. He took stuff found on the streets of New York and put it in his art. Elevating everyday objects to the level of high art took modern art in a new direction.
Yayoi Kusama’s Accumulation No. 1 🪑
Floor 4, Gallery 412 The David Geffen Wing
This is the first sculpture Yayoi Kusama ever made, and it shocked critics. Had a man made this sculpture of a chair covered in phallus-like protrusions, would it have provoked the same reaction? Women artists, especially at this time, had to contend with a lot of discrimination, but Kusama never held back. She would sit on this chair and make phone calls, proving herself, in her own way, to be above men.
Faith Ringgold’s American People Series #20: Die 🇺🇸
Floor 4, Gallery 415 The David Geffen Galleries
Faith Ringgold explicitly references Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica in her commanding work from 1967, creating a new icon from an old one. At the time she made this work, riots were erupting in the streets around the country and Ringgold felt compelled to capture the moment. She asked herself, “How could I, as an African American woman artist, document what was happening all around me?” This work was her answer.
Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night 🌙
Floor 2 South
No visit to MoMA would be complete without a viewing of The Starry Night. Over this holiday season, Van Gogh’s mesmerizing night sky is currently on display in an exhibition about one of the Museum’s cofounders, Lillie P. Bliss. It was thanks to her visionary legacy that MoMA was able to acquire this iconic work.
Joan Mitchell’s Ladybug 🐞
Floor 2, Gallery 201
While some modern artists found new ways of expressing their interior world, thoughts, and emotions, Joan Mitchell is an artist who used abstract art to capture a sense of the world around her. This work might not be what comes to mind when you hear “landscape painting,” but Mitchell expands the term beyond what nature looks like, to capture “what it leaves me with.”
Glenn Ligon’s Warm Broad Glow 🌟
Floor 2, Gallery 209 The David Geffen Wing
“Any expression of Black joy is a kind of resistance,” Glenn Ligon says in our audio guide. While the words in this work were written by Gertrude Stein nearly 100 years ago, Ligon’s neon sculpture comments on race and identity in the United States today. You can find lots of other creative commentary about social conditions around the globe in the art on this floor.
Christian Marclay’s The Clock 🕰️
The Clock, by Christian Marclay, is a 24-hour montage composed of around 12,000 clips taken from the past 100 years of film and television. Each clip depicts the time: James Bond checks his watch at 12:20 a.m., a pocket watch ticks aboard the Titanic at 11:53 a.m., Meryl Streep turns off an alarm clock at 6:30 a.m. The time you see on screen syncs up with the time you’re watching it, so The Clock is a functional timepiece!
Listen to more 🎧
Want to hear more? Find our audio playlists at moma.org/audio, or on MoMA’s guide on the free Bloomberg Connects app.
Eating and shopping 🍝 🛍️
- If you’re looking for for gifts, you’ve come to the right place! Visit any store in the Museum or venture to a MoMA Design Store (across from our main entrance on 53rd Street and in Soho) for all your gifting needs.
- Hungry? We’re not just a destination for art, we’re also a destination for good food. Whether you’re looking for fine dining, simple pasta for the kids, or coffee, snacks, or a festive hot chocolate, we’ve got options for you. Check out our restaurant guide.