National Women's History Month Celebrates Lillie P. Bliss

When The Museum of Modern Art first opened in 1929, with only a handful of artworks in its collection, it was more of an idea than a full-fledged institution. The Museum’s aspiration to establish a more robust collection was fulfilled when, in 1931, it received a bequest of more than 150 works from Lillie P. Bliss, one of three intrepid women who founded the Museum. A staunch advocate for modern art, Bliss had sought out the work of mostly late-19th-century French artists whose radical approaches to color, space, and form were controversial at the time.