Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

Introduction

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), located in Midtown Manhattan, was founded in 1929 as an institution devoted to the art of the modern era. Its collection spans painting and sculpture, photography, film, architecture and design, prints, drawings, media, and performance, making it one of the most influential modern and contemporary art museums in the world.

Art and Artists

Representation is one of MoMA’s strongest areas. Its holdings include substantial work by Jewish artists and Jewish-themed works, including pieces by Marc Chagall, Deborah Kass, Elaine Lustig Cohen, and others. Israeli artists are also well represented, including Michal Rovner, Yael Bartana, Sigalit Landau, and several artists whose work has appeared in exhibitions or film programming during the past decade.

MoMA also publishes a provenance research project explicitly focused on Holocaust- and Nazi-era ownership questions. For a contemporary museum, where Nazi-era provenance research is not part of the standard score, this stands out against peer institutions as a particularly strong transparency practice.

Policies

MoMA’s visitor guidelines provide strong, content-neutral rules around political activity in the museum, including restrictions on leafleting, signature gathering, picketing, charitable solicitation, and press conferences. Those rules give the museum a clear framework for preventing disruption inside the galleries.

The most visible gap is accountability for bias and discrimination. Visitors can reach the museum through general contact channels, but there is no clearly identified public mechanism for reporting a bias or antisemitism incident. No public evidence was found of a policy explicitly prohibiting antisemitism. A more visible reporting pathway and clearer public protections would strengthen an otherwise well-developed institutional framework.

Community Engagement and Programming

MoMA has built a sustained record of Jewish-focused programming, including a 2026 offsite tour at the Jewish Museum, a residency conversation engaging Jewish memory in Kaunas, a multi-part performance lecture drawing on Sukkot, and film programming connected to Jewish and Israeli identity. Its direct institutional partnership record is more limited, but its recent collaboration with the Jewish Museum demonstrates a pathway for deeper engagement.

MoMA recognizes several other heritage and affinity months but has historically not recognized Jewish American Heritage Month.

Problematic Events

MoMA has faced some anti-Israel activism from employees and protesters. A February 2024 employee letter called for an unconditional ceasefire and consideration of Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) boycott principles. That same month, more than 500 protesters occupied the museum’s atrium, accused trustees of supporting “genocide, apartheid, and settler colonialism,” and prompted MoMA to close for the remainder of the day. Later that year, protesters demonstrated outside the museum during a World Jewish Congress event honoring Ronald Lauder, MoMA’s Honorary Board Chair.

Bottom Line

MoMA shows that a contemporary museum can meaningfully represent Jewish and Israeli artists and also create substantive Jewish cultural programming. Its next step is institutional: clearer reporting, more explicit antisemitism protections, deeper Jewish organizational partnerships, and Jewish American Heritage Month recognition would bring its policies and public engagement closer to the strength of its artistic record.