★Inventing the Modern: Untold Stories of the Women Who Shaped the Museum of Modern Art. Museum of Modern Art. Sept. 2024. 424p. ed. by Ann Temkin & Romy Silver-Kohn. ISBN 9781633450790. $45. FINE ARTS

This title excavates 14 hidden histories of women during the scrappy early years of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), opened in 1929. A varied roster of women scholars, curators, and authors come together to tell their stories, intentionally underscoring the network rather than the heroic pantheon of MoMA. Paid less than male colleagues and often expected to resign upon marriage or motherhood, these women saw the significance of modern art and defied social expectations to bring it to the public. Margaret Scolari Barr—wife but also translator, adviser, and collaborator of MoMA’s first director Alfred H. Barr—even helped liberate artists from Nazi Germany. Without its cofounding trio of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss, and Mary Quinn Sullivan, as well as first film curator Iris Barry, first registrar Dorothy Dudley, first conservator Jean Volkmer, major donor Olga Guggenheim, their colleagues in this volume, and many other unsung heroines, the MoMA of today would not exist. VERDICT For readers curious about how museums work, this engaging new look at MoMA’s origins will whet appetites for further scholarship on these fascinating figures.