Throughout its 30 years, owner Martin Muller has striven to keep the gallery's challenging, museum quality program at the forefront of the art world.

Early landmarks included being the first gallery to show Andy Warhol in the Bay Area (1982), and holding the first exhibition on the West Coast (in a gallery or museum) of the Russian Avant-Garde 1910-1930 (1980, 17 more retrospectives have since been mounted).

In the 1990s Modernism highlighted its strong abstract program with the exhibition of "Four Abstract Classicists" (1993), a recreation of the show presented by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1959, while at the same time introducing America to the confrontational, and ofttimes disturbing, conceptual works of Austrian born artist Gottfried Helnwein (1992).

This year Modernism celebrates its 30th anniversary, and with it many more firsts of recent years, including the first major exhibition of the works of Le Corbusier on the West Coast(2003), and in 2006, the first major retrospective in the U.S. of the paintings, drawing, collages, and photographs of Erwin Blumenfeld.

In addition to the milestones above, Modernism prides itself on the scope of its program: Historical exhibitions encompass areas including Dada, Cubism, Surrealism, Vorticism, German Expressionism, and foremost, the Russian Avant-Garde 1910-1930.