Lillie P. Bliss

Lizzie Plummer Bliss was born in 1864 in Boston, Massachusetts, as a daughter of textile merchant Cornelius Newton Bliss (1833–1911) and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Bliss, born Plummer (1836–1923). Since childhood, her family and friends called her Lillie P. Bliss. Of her three siblings, only her brother, Cornelius Newton Bliss, Jr., born in 1874, reached adulthood. When she was two years old, her family moved to New York City. She did not go to school but was taught by private tutors. Her father held the office of United States Secretary of the Interior under President William McKinley from 1897 to 1899. As his wife was often ill and indisposed, his daughter frequently accompanied him to official events in Washington, D.C., during this time.

At receptions at the home of her parents, artistically inclined Lillie P. Bliss met actors like Walter Hampden, Ruth Draper and Ethel Barrymore. In her youth, her main artistic interests were of both classical and contemporary music. In her thirties, she began to promote financially young pianists and opera singers. She also supported the string quartet led by Franz Kneisel (1885–1917) (Kneisel Quartet) and promoted the Juilliard Foundation devoted to musical training. Among her friends were the music critic Richard Aldrich and the musician Charles Martin Loeffler.

One of her earliest encounters with modern art were exhibition visits at the Union League Club of New York. Her father was a member of this club and its president from 1902 to 1906. The club exhibited regularly works of living artists. For example, thirty-four paintings by Claude Monet were shown there in 1891. After her father's death in 1911, Bliss, who never married, lived with her mother in an apartment on 37th Street in Manhattan.

After the death of Arthur B. Davies in October 1928, several exhibitions were held to preserve his memory; Bliss borrowed many works of art for them. In the auction of his art collection, Bliss and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller were among the buyers and both developed a plan to form an institution devoted to organize exhibitions of modern art in New York. The steadfast refusal of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to exhibit art of the late 19th century and works by contemporary artists played a decisive role.

In late May 1929, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller invited Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan for lunch in order to discuss the establishment of a museum of modern art. Another invited guest was art collector A. Conger Goodyear, who had previously served as a board member of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, and who also participated in the meeting. Goodyear agreed to chair this circle as president, Bliss became his deputy and Rockefeller was given the role of treasurer. A short time later they were joined by art historian and collector Paul J. Sachs, a friend of Rockefeller, publisher Frank Crowninshield, a friend of Bliss, and Josephine Porter Boardman, a friend both to Bliss and Rockefeller, who hosted a literary salon in New York. On November 7, the first exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art opened in rented spaces in the Heckscher Building at 730 Fifth Avenue at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street in Manhattan. Bliss contributed some paintings from her collection to the first exhibition, entitled Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, Van Gogh.