
Open Access
In 1930–31, Gottlieb Friedrich Reber, one of Europe’s most significant private collectors of the interwar period, went on an extensive journey to the United States. Drawing on previously unpublished archival material, this article reconstructs his activities within the North American art system for the first time. It shows how Reber acted as a mediator between the European and North American art systems, and how he contributed to a model of collecting that linked modernism to a “world art history” – especially in relation to the newly founded Museum of Modern Art, but also in exchanges with private collectors, art critics, and the press.