MoMA Marks the Nation’s 250th Anniversary with a Dynamic Summer Program and Membership to Celebrate Community and Creativity

Joseph Pickett. Manchester Valley. 1914-18?. Oil with sand on canvas, 45 1/2 x 60 5/8″ (115.4 x 153.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

A Special Exhibition, Film Series, Public Art-Making Project, and Free Membership for New York State Arts Teachers Intended to Inspire Connection Through Art

The Museum of Modern Art will mark the nation’s 250th anniversary with a series of summer programs and a free membership for New York State arts educators.

An exhibition on the Museum’s third floor will feature folk art collected by one of MoMA’s three founders, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. It will highlight America’s vibrant tradition of vernacular art-making, and the key role that folk art played in MoMA’s early history. A film series focused on immigration and the American dream will reflect on the historically unprecedented movement and mixture of peoples that has inspired creativity in the US. Honoring the American ideal of “one out of many,” a collective art-making project will invite visitors to collaboratively create a work of art that will be hung on the walls of the Donald and Catherine Marron Family Atrium, representing the community of individuals who have come together at the Museum. To encourage creativity among future generations and beyond the walls of MoMA, today the Museum launched a complimentary two-year membership, available to New York State arts educators teaching pre-K through grade 12.

“This mix of programming, and the launch of a new membership intended to inspire arts educators, will underline and explore how vital creativity and community are to our nation, and how they will continue to shape what it can become,” said Christophe Cherix, The David Rockefeller Director, MoMA.

The Museum’s program and arts educator membership will include:

American Folk Art: Revisiting the Collection of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

June 13–August 9, 2026

3 South Galleries

The American folk art collected by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller—one of the three founders of MoMA, with Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan—was integral to the Museum’s early history, when folk art was positioned as an important antecedent to modernism. Works from Rockefeller’s collection were shown in the 1932 exhibition American Folk Art: The Art of the Common Man in America, 1750–1900, and several examples entered the Museum’s holdings in 1939 as a gift in celebration of MoMA’s 10th anniversary. Following the Museum’s 2024 presentation of Lillie P. Bliss: Birth of the Modern, this exhibition will showcase some 50 objects from Rockefeller’s collection (now held by the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg), including celebrated paintings such as Edward Hicks’s The Peaceable Kingdom (1832–34). A range of objects, both decorative and functional, made by craftspeople and other individuals who had not received formal artistic training will also be featured, from painted portraits and illustrated birth certificates to weathervanes, wooden toys, theorem paintings, and mourning pictures. These works will be presented in dialogue with selected paintings and sculptures in MoMA’s collection by modern artists who were inspired by or championed American folk art, including Elie Nadelman and Charles Sheeler, and by artists like John Kane and William Edmonson, who represent the ongoing relevance of self-taught artistic practices in the early 20th century. The exhibition will be accompanied by a 72-page, fully illustrated catalogue celebrating the collection.

American Folk Art: Revisiting the Collection of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller is curated by Starr Figura, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, and Lydia Mullin, Manager, Collection Galleries, Department of Curatorial Affairs, with Rachel Rosin, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints; and with the collaboration of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Immigrant Nation: People in Transit

July–August 2026

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters

Immigration was at the heart of America’s evolution and transformation even before the founding of the United States. The nation, like the art of film, has emerged from multiple cultures, languages, and origins, and immigration has been one of cinema’s recurring themes from the start.

The series Immigrant Nation: A People in Transit will screen more than 100 short and feature-length films about the movement of people in search of a better future and the communities that emerge from that dream. A rich variety of international cinema from Belgium, Chile, China, Colombia, Côte D’Ivoire, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Italy, Mauritania, Mexico, Senegal, Sweden, and Switzerland will provide a cinematic perspective on immigration throughout all regions of the world.

A full schedule will be announced at moma.org/film at a later date.

Immigration Nation: People in Transit is organized by Francisco Valente, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Film.

Wish Quilt: An Interactive Activity

June 13–August 9, 2026

The Donald and Catherine Marron Family Atrium

Inspired by The Quilting Party (1850), a work on view in American Folk Art: Revisiting the Collection of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, this program will invite visitors to contribute to the collective production of a “wish quilt” through drop-in workshops held during the Museum’s public hours.

Participants in the workshops will create an eight-by-eight-inch design, using an array of precut shapes in a variety of materials and a ready-to-hang sticky board. The squares will be installed on the walls of the Donald and Catherine Marron Family Atrium to form a giant collaborative artwork representing the community of individuals who have come together at the Museum.

Arts Educator Membership

Ongoing

MoMA is inaugurating a complimentary two-year membership for active New York State arts educators teaching visual arts, media arts, music, dance, or theater in pre-K through grade 12. Benefits include unlimited free admission, $5 guest tickets, free film tickets, invitations to Member Evenings and Previews, and discounts at MoMA stores and cafés. Arts educators may submit an application at the Membership desk during their next visit or online at moma.org/artseducator.

SPONSORSHIP:

American Folk Art: Revisiting the Collection of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller is made possible by Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III.

Arts Educator Memberships are made possible by Candace King Weir.

Wish Quilt: An Interactive Activity is made possible by Paula Crown.