Since the beginning of the 1930s, the Museum has maintained a strong and adventurous commitment to contemporary art that is somewhat uncommon for an institution of such an encyclopedic nature. The first acquisitions of works by Constantin Brancusi and Pablo Picasso laid the groundwork for a series of important gifts of large collections and individual masterpieces over the following decades. Henry Clifford, who served as curator of paintings from 1941 to 1965, also played a major role in the Museum's early interest in 20th-century art.

At the core of the holdings of modern art are the A. E. Gallatin and Louise and Walter Arensberg collections. Both were among the most significant collections of contemporary art formed during the 1920s and 1930s in the United States; together they established the Museum as one of the world's outstanding places in which to see modern art. These gifts also established the nature of the collection early on, as one especially rich in the work of particular artists such as Picasso, Duchamp, Brancusi, and Miro.

Philadelphia's twentieth-century holdings also represent an unusually close collaboration between artists and collectors. Gallatin, for example, a serious painter as well as collector, was a central figure in the American Abstract Artists group in New York. The Arensbergs formed their collection with the attentive help of their great friend Marcel Duchamp; indeed, the Museum is now home to the world's most important collection of Duchamp's work.

In 1971, a Department of Twentieth-Century Art was officially created. Anne d'Harnoncourt, who would go on to become the Museum’s Director and CEO, was named the first Curator of Twentieth-Century Painting. The holdings continued to grow in the decades that followed, with a number of major purchases and gifts bringing the work of artists such as Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, and Ellsworth Kelly to the galleries.

The department became known as the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art in 2000, and today is responsible for some of the Museum’s most groundbreaking exhibitions. The Live Cinema series of programs in the Video Gallery explores a diversity of video and filmwork, while new works by younger artists--many of which overturn conventional assumptions about what art can be--continue to enhance and distinguish the collections.