Foreword / Glenn D. Lowry -- Introduction / Harriet S. Bee and Michelle Elligott -- 1929-1939 : the first ten years -- 1940-1953 : road to victory -- 1954-1964 : masters of modern art -- 1965-1972 : word and image -- 1973-1984 : transformations -- 1985-1994 : allegories of modernism -- 1995-2004 : modern contemporary.

"This volume chronicles the Museum's story from its opening, ten days after the stock market crash of 1929, in a few rented rooms in a midtown office building, up to the present day, in its new building on West Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth streets. The book presents a pictorial and documentary review of each year, and each important period, of the Museum's history. It tells the story of how The Museum of Modern Art, New York, began as a small set of art galleries inaugurated by three ladies of means who had a passion for modern art. Through a selection of photographs, official documents, letters, quotations, newspaper clippings, cartoons, and other ephemera, the complex and multilayered history of the Museum unfolds in a visual march through time, revealing the extraordinary vision of a determined group of individuals who had the ability and courage to translate their vision into reality."--BOOK JACKET.