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MoMA courses offer adults the rare opportunity to study modern and contemporary art with leading art specialists during and after public hours in the Museum's galleries and multimedia classrooms. These discussion-oriented classes are taught by university professors, artists, and Museum staff. Enrollment is limited to twenty per course (twelve for studio courses), so sign up today.

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Course guidelines and frequently asked questions

EVENING COURSES
STUDIO COURSES
DAYTIME COURSES

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FALL 2010

EVENING COURSES

A Survey of Contemporary Photography Since the 1960s

Please note that the course dates have changed.
Eight Wednesdays, 8:10–10:00 p.m., 9/15, 9/22, 9/29, 10/6, 10/27, 11/3, 11/10, 11/17 (no classes on 10/13, 10/20)
$415; $355 for members
Instructor: Béatrice Gross

This course will discuss the growing importance of photography and photography-based art since the 1960s. Revisiting codes of representation, many contemporary photographers have been questioning the status and value of photography in society, producing and reproducing endless photographic images—family snapshots, advertising, and fashion, but also news and surveillance pictures—as well as images in the traditional hierarchy of the fine arts. The course explores in a comparative and contextualized manner the various shapes the medium has taken, from the continuation of the "straight photography" and documentary style tradition, Conceptual photography, and performance-based photography to the most recent developments of staged or constructed photography and digital photography.

Béatrice Gross is an independent curator and art critic based in New York.

Henri Matisse

SOLD OUT

Please note that the course dates have changed.
Five Thursdays, 7:00–8:50 p.m., 9/16, 9/23, 9/30, 10/7, 10/14
$260; $220 for members
Instructor: Jennifer Farrell

Drawing on MoMA's collection and the exhibition Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917, this course surveys the paintings, sculptures, and graphic works of Henri Matisse from the early color experiments of his late Post-Impressionist and Fauvist periods to his painted collages and cut-outs of the 1950s.

Jennifer Farrell (PhD, Graduate Center of City University of New York, and Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program) has taught at several universities, including Yale University, New York University, the American University in Paris, and the School of Visual Arts.

Modern and Contemporary Art, 1945 to Today

Eight Mondays, 6:00–7:50 p.m., 9/20, 9/27, 10/4, 10/18, 10/25, 11/1, 11/8, 11/15 (no class on 10/11)
$415; $355 for members
Instructor: Paula Burleigh

This course examines major artists, artworks, and movements since World War II. Through close study of works on view at MoMA, students gain a keen understanding of important art historical moments through the techniques, materials, and subject matter that define them—from the bold painterly gestures of the New York School and the cool hand of Neo-Dada and Pop, to Minimalism's exploration of form in space and Conceptual art’s radical shift to an idea-based practice. We follow these approaches and themes as artists redefine them (post-Minimalism, Neo-Expressionism, Neo-Geo) and also look more broadly at the development of installation-based, multimedia, and post-studio practices through today.

Paula Burleigh (MA, Case Western Reserve University) is currently working on her PhD in Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center. A specialist in European and American art of the twentieth century, she teaches at Baruch College.

History of Photography, from 1839 to Today

Eight Mondays, 6:00–7:50 p.m., 9/20, 9/27, 10/4, 10/18, 10/25, 11/1, 11/8, 11/15 (no class on 10/11)
$415; $355 for members
Instructor: Diana Bush

This course surveys the history of photography from the late 1830s to the diverse photographic practices of contemporary artists. Based around images on view in the exhibitions Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography, The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today, and New Photography 2010, lectures and class discussions will encourage facility in visual analysis and familiarity with the complex and often contradictory functions of the photographic image. At the same time, this course introduces the challenges of writing the history of photography as a discipline that operates both inside and outside greater histories of modernism and modern art.

Diana M. Bush, (MPhil, Columbia University) is an independent educator in the MoMA Department of Education.

The Body on Display: Performance Art, 1970 to Today

Five Mondays, 7:00–8:50 p.m., 9/20, 9/27, 10/4, 10/18, 10/25 (no class on 10/11)
$260; $220 for members
Instructor: Jovana Stokic

Since 1970 the flourishing of performance art has not only radically influenced other art forms, from theater to photography to music, it has also become pervaded popular culture, media, and social attitudes. A surge of blockbuster shows in New York this past spring has confirmed performance art's ability to engage its audience directly in order to complete the work that the artist began.

This course places a special emphasis on the recent spectacular success of Marina Abramović's MoMA retrospective The Artist Is Present. MoMA's first comprehensive exhibition of one performance artist's work investigated the legacy of performance art in the 1970s, the plausibility of its repetition, and the urgency of its preservation. To provide a context for the discussion of performance art today, a broader discursive history of performance art will be charted by summing up major contributions from the late 1960s and early 1970s until today. This course will offer a dynamic narrative that sums up performance art's multifold strategies of translating its ephemeral nature into installations, films, videos, and photographic works. Seminal works by prominent performance artists (Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys, Valie Export, Joan Jonas, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Martha Rosler, and Tino Seghal) will be discussed. The course will also analyze the changed status of the artist's body when it becomes represented in performance within a contemporary museum context.

Jovana Stokic (PhD, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) was a fellow at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, and a researcher at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and is the curator of performance at Location One.

"Architecture or Revolution": Modern Design and Social Engagement

Five Mondays, 6:30–8:20 p.m., 9/20, 9/27, 10/4, 10/18, 10/25 (no class on 10/11)
$260; $220 for members
Instructor: Jennifer Gray

In his 1923 manifesto Vers une Architecture, French architect Le Corbusier mobilized architecture as an instrument of social reform: “It is a question of building which is at the root of the social unrest of today: architecture or revolution.” The idea that architecture could operate politically and help to transform society informed the modern avant-garde at every scale, from utopian urban plans to social housing experiments and proletariat workers clubs to rationalized kitchens, bathrooms, and furniture. This seminar will investigate significant points of intersection between modern design and social reform from 1900 to the present, exploring how design both indexed and facilitated broad cultural changes, including shifting labor patterns; gender roles; hygienics; the politics of democracy, socialism, and Fascism; and, more recently, questions regarding sustainable design, disparities in wealth, immigration, and the architecture of developing economies. Particular attention will be paid to current and upcoming exhibitions at MoMA, including Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen, Small Scale/Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement, and Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront.

Jennifer Gray (PhD Candidate, Columbia University) is a historian of modern architecture and theory, specializing in the built environments of the United States and Germany. Her research explores the relationship between political democracy, acculturation, the social sciences, cultural reform, and modern architecture in Chicago. She teaches and lectures at The Museum of Modern Art.

Modern Art, 1880–1915*

Five Mondays, 8:10–10:00 p.m., 9/20, 9/27, 10/4, 10/18, 10/25 (no class on 10/11)
$260; $220 for members
Instructor: Larissa Bailiff

This course introduces students to the key works and ideas of modern art, from late Impressionism to Cubism. Moving chronologically through the Museum's collection, students encounter an array of renowned and provocative objects—from paintings, sculptures, and collages that challenged the official Academy and revolutionized the conventions of representation, to photographs that capture the dynamism of modern life. Artists covered include Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Ernst Kirchner, Gustav Klimt, Vasily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, and many others.

*Students interested in this course may also wish to enroll in Modern Art, 1915–1945

Larissa Bailiff (PhD, ABD, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) is a specialist in nineteenth-century French art and social history. Formerly an associate educator at MoMA, she has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at both the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Pratt Institute.

Modern Art, 1915–1945*

Five Mondays, 8:10–10:00 p.m., 11/1, 11/8, 11/15, 11/22, 11/29
$260; $220 for members
Instructor: Larissa Bailiff

This course introduces students to the key works and ideas of modern art, from Dada, de Stijl, and the Bauhaus to the beginnings of the New York School. Moving chronologically through the Museum's collection, students encounter an array of renowned and provocative objects—from paintings that challenged the official Academy and revolutionized the conventions of representation, to photographs that capture the dynamism of modern life, to modernist buildings that fill city skylines. Artists covered include Marcel Duchamp, Constantin Brancusi, Paul Klee, Marcel Breuer, Hannah Hoch, Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, Salvador Dalí, and many others.

*Students interested in this course may also wish to enroll in Modern Art, 1880–1915.

Larissa Bailiff (PhD, ABD, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) is a specialist in nineteenth-century French art and social history. Formerly an associate educator at MoMA, she has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at both the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Pratt Institute.

Contemporary Art from the Collection

Eight Mondays, 8:10–10:00 p.m., 9/20, 9/27, 10/4, 10/18, 10/25, 11/1, 11/8, 11/15 (no class on 10/11)
$415; $355 for members
Instructor: Kim Conaty

Tracing the key issues and themes in artistic practice from the late 1960s through today, this course offers an overview of contemporary art with a special focus on works on view in the current MoMA installation Contemporary Art from the Collection. Through close study of these objects, we will examine both formal questions (such as medium specificity and material innovations) and broader cultural debates surrounding economics, politics, gender, and ethnicity that have permeated the art world over the last forty years. Beginning with central questions of the 1960s regarding the future of painting and the dematerialization of the art object, we will continue our discussion with work dealing with identity politics, the culture wars, authorship and appropriation, globalization, historical narratives, and a reemergence of aesthetics. Artists covered in this course, among many others, include Vito Acconci, Lynda Benglis, Daniel Buren, Paul Chan, Ellen Gallagher, General Idea, Liam Gillick, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Yoko Ono, Kara Walker, and Hannah Wilke.

Kim Conaty (PhD candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) is a curatorial assistant in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, where she has assisted with the recent exhibitions In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960–1976, Fluxus Preview, and Contemporary Art from the Collection.

Abstract Expressionism at MoMA

Eight Wednesdays, 6:00–7:50 p.m., 9/29, 10/6, 10/13, 10/20, 10/27, 11/3, 11/10, 11/17
$415; $355 for members
Instructor: Deborah A. Goldberg

The Abstract Expressionists, also known as the New York School, worked in a range of styles and prioritized abstraction to express emotion and subjectivity. Through an emphasis on process and formal qualities, including color and brushstrokes, they earned titles such as “color field” artists and “action painters.” This course closely examines MoMA's major collection-based exhibition Abstract Expressionist New York, which traces the development of Abstract Expressionism from the 1940s to the 1960s. Lectures will focus on various mediums and techniques, the history of the Museum's unrivalled collection, and the impact of Surrealism. We will cover individual artists, including Arshile Gorky, Barnet Newman, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and David Smith.

Deborah A. Goldberg (PhD, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts and lectures regularly for The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA. She coedited and contributed to the book Alexander Archipenko Revisited: An International Perspective (2008).

Exploring Issues in Contemporary Art Since 1980

Eight Wednesdays, 6:00–7:50 p.m., 9/29, 10/6, 10/13, 10/20, 10/27, 11/3, 11/10, 11/17
$415; $355 for members
Instructor: Roni Feinstein

This course examines developments in art during the past three decades. Students explore key themes in contemporary art, the debates they have inspired, and the circumstances they have aimed to address. Lectures consider the importance of appropriation, identity art, participatory aesthetics, art performance, and multimedia artistic practices. The impact of globalization, the art market/economy and politics will be discussed, as will the changing role of the art museum. Artists discussed include Cindy Sherman, David Salle, Jeff Koons, Félix González-Torres, Gerhard Richter, Marina Abramović, Maurizio Cattelan, Tino Sehgal, Gabriel Orozco, and many others.

Roni Feinstein (PhD, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) is an independent curator and art historian. She has written extensively for Art in America and also teaches at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies.

The Long Shadow: Picasso and Duchamp

Five Wednesdays, 8:10–10:00 p.m., 9/29, 10/6, 10/13, 10/20, 10/27
$260; $220 for members
Instructor: James Glisson

Rather than a comprehensive or chronological survey of twentieth-century art, this course begins with two artists whose obsessions and innovations would prove influential—sometimes directly, sometimes covertly—throughout the century. Built around close analysis and discussions of works in MoMA's collection by Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, the class will identify essential practices and preoccupations that go on to inform later art. Roughly, Picasso unravels the means (line, shadow, contour, and perspective) that are the tools of visual representation and turns the playful manipulation of these into the subject of his art. By contrast, Duchamp shifts art away from picture making entirely, focusing on selection, choice, and appropriation. The remainder of the course will examine how these intellectual concerns are repeated, transformed, and disavowed by a selection of artists working after 1950, including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and Mark Dion. Despite the incredible diversity of art of the last forty years, there are some underlying structural similarities that this course will help viewers to pick out.

James Glisson (PhD candidate, Northwestern University) is completing a dissertation on late-nineteenth-century American painting and the social dynamics of New York City. He has written for afterimage and currently writes on contemporary art for artforum.com.

Contemporary Painting: The Nineties and Noughties

Five Wednesdays, 8:10–10:00 p.m., 11/3, 11/10, 11/17, 12/1, 12/8 (no class on 11/24)
$260; $220 for members
Instructor: David Shaprio

Using the 2005 Saatchi Gallery show The Triumph of Painting as a thematic touchstone, this course will critically explore why and how the roles of painting changed in the 1990s and, to a greater extent, the 2000s. The course engages such topics as painting's immediate response to monumental pictorialist photography, the legacy of strategies learned from Pop and Abstract Expressionism, the reconfiguration of more distant historical movements, and the increasingly notable influence of modes of vision specific to the digital age.

David Shapiro is Editor‐in‐Chief of the contemporary art quarterly Museo. A painter by background, Shapiro has taught art history at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Parsons The New School for Design, and Pratt Institute.

Introduction to Modern Art

Eight Thursdays, 6:00–7:50 p.m., 9/23, 9/30, 10/7, 10/14, 10/21, 10/28, 11/4, 11/11
$415; $355 for members
Instructor: Heather Cotter

This course will serve as an introduction to modern art, looking at the various ways in which artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century challenged established traditions to continually reinvent the definition of modern art. Each week, students will consider the fundamental question, “What makes art modern?” as we encounter different art movements, including Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, and Surrealism. Discussions will be a central component of the course, giving students the opportunity to engage in a dialogue as we compare selected works of art each week. The comparisons are designed to promote close looking at art and will highlight the different choices artists make when considering how to approach a subject, which materials to utilize, or how to reflect particular moments in history.

Heather Cotter (MA, Boston University, and MEd with a specialization in art education, Harvard University) is a lecturer at The Museum of Modern Art.

The 1960s: Art and Life

Five Thursdays, 7:00–8:50 p.m., 9/23, 9/30, 10/7, 10/14, 10/21
$260; $220 for members
Instructor: Tom Williams

This course addresses the key art movements of the 1960s in relation to contemporary developments in society, politics, and intellectual life. It will begin with the revival of interest in Marcel Duchamp and Dadaism in the 1950s and conclude with a discussion of art and politics during the late 1960s and early 1970s. During the course of the term, we will discuss the Happenings, Pop art, Minimalism, Earth art, and Conceptualism, and we will look at the complex ways in which these movements responded to consumerism, technocracy, the sexual revolution, and contemporary social and political movements. The artists discussed during this course will include Eva Hesse, Douglas Huebler, Donald Judd, Allan Kaprow, Yayoi Kusama, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, and Andy Warhol. We will also address some of the precursors to the art of this period, including Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, and others.

Tom Williams (PhD, Stony Brook University) completed a dissertation on Claes Oldenburg, Eros, and the 1960s. He was a 2008–09 Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and has taught at New York University, the School of Visual Arts, and Dowling College.

Modern and Contemporary Art, 1945–1970*

Five Thursdays, 8:10–10:00 p.m., 9/23, 9/30, 10/7, 10/14, 10/21
$260; $220 for members
Instructor: Ágnes Berecz

This course examines major artists, artworks, and movements after World War II. Students explore the emergence of the New York School and its links to a new global economy centered in New York, Dada's revival and Pop art's flowering in mass consumer society, and Minimalism's formal refinement and emphasis on spatial context. During the course, students learn about works by Jackson Pollock, Jean Dubuffet, Francis Bacon, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, and others.

Ágnes Berecz (PhD, Université Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne) teaches modern and contemporary art history at the Pratt Institute, at The Department of Graduate Studies of The Fashion Insitute of Technology. Her writings have been published in Art in America, Artmargins and Praesens, as well as in European and U.S. exhibition catalogues.

Modern and Contemporary Art, 1970 to Today*

Five Thursdays, 8:10–10:00 p.m., 10/28, 11/4, 11/11, 11/18, 12/2 (no class on 11/25)
$260; $220 for members
Instructor: Ágnes Berecz

This course examines major artists, artworks, and movements from 1970 to the present. Students explore Conceptual art's fundamental questioning of art, the development of multimedia artistic practices, the revival of painting, the rise of a global art scene, and recent tendencies that are still being debated and defined. During this term, students learn about works by artists such as Joseph Beuys, Bruce Nauman, Robert Smithson, Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman, Félix González-Torres, Matthew Barney, Damien Hirst, and others.

Ágnes Berecz (PhD, Université Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne) teaches modern and contemporary art history at the Pratt Institute, at The Department of Graduate Studies of The Fashion Insitute of Technology. Her writings have been published in Art in America, Artmargins and Praesens, as well as in European and U.S. exhibition catalogues.

STUDIO COURSES

Collage Workshop: Materials and Techniques in Modern Collage

SOLD OUT

Eight Thursdays, 7:00–9:30 p.m. 9/23, 9/30, 10/7, 10/14, 10/21, 10/28, 11/4, 11/11
$555; $499 for members. Includes $35 fee for materials
Instructor: Ethan Greenbaum

Collage is one of the most influential artistic developments of the twentieth century, and it continues to have a profound impact on contemporary art. This studio course takes a hands-on approach to explore the techniques, materials, and history of collage through class exercises and tours of the MoMA galleries. Students will examine the role of collage in a variety of art movements, including Cubism, Surrealism, and Pop Art.

Each week will begin with a brief slide lecture about relevant artists, followed by in-class studio work. We will supplement projects with tours of paintings and collages in MoMA's collection. The course will explore techniques such as photo transfers, creating a monotype, and combining collage with acrylic paints. Artists discussed include Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Hannah Hoch, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, and many others.

Ethan Greenbaum (MFA in painting, Yale University) is an artist, teacher, and critic who regularly exhibits in New York and abroad. He is an art instructor at the Pratt Institute and visiting lecturer at a variety of schools, including Mica and Tyler School of Art. He is also a cofounder and editor of the highlights, a website devoted to artist writings and curatorial projects.

Materials and Techniques of Postwar Abstract Painting

Eight Wednesdays, 6:30–9:00 p.m., 9/29, 10/6, 10/13, 10/20, 10/27, 11/3, 11/10, 11/17
$570; $515 for members. Includes $50 fee for materials
Instructor: Corey D’Augustine

This class teaches students about postwar abstract painting from the perspective of the artist by examining the materials and techniques used in paintings of this period. Two introductory classes cover the basics of stretching and preparing a canvas, as well as mixing and applying paint; each subsequent class focuses on one artist who is well represented in MoMA's collection. Each class begins with a brief slide lecture to introduce the artist's work, followed by a visit to the galleries to view his or her materials and techniques first hand; then, each student paints a small canvas based on that artist’s work in the studio. Artists covered will include Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman, and Ad Reinhardt.

Corey D'Augustine is a painting conservator and an artist. He exhibits in New York and internationally.

DAYTIME COURSES

Movements, Manifestoes, Modernisms: Art and Politics in Modern and Contemporary Art

SOLD OUT

Eight Tuesdays, 11:00 a.m.–12:50 p.m., 9/21, 9/28, 10/5, 10/12, 10/19, 10/26, 11/2, 11/9
$415; $355 for members
Instructor: Margaret Wilkerson

What is the relationship between art and politics, and what form does political art take? Motivated by an understanding of art's various political functions, students will approach art as a vehicle through which a social-historical context can be realized in material and in image. Art is approached not only as a mirror of history, but as itself history. Specific movements to be examined include Italian Futurism, German Expressionism, Dada, Suprematism, Constructivism, Fluxus, and contemporary art. Works currently on view in MoMA's collection will provide the framework for the course, including those by Umberto Boccioni, Max Beckmann, Natalia Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich, Diego Rivera, Jacob Lawrence, Leon Golub, Jenny Holzer, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, Barbara Kruger, Félix Gonzáles-Torres, and Dinh Q. Lê.

Margaret Wilkerson (PhD, University of Maryland, College Park) is an adjunct professor of art history at New York University. She also lectures at the Whitney Museum and has recently taught courses at The New School and VCU School of the Arts.

Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement

Five Tuesdays, 2:30–4:20 p.m., 10/19, 10/26, 11/2, 11/9, 11/16
$260; $220 for members
Instructor: Jennifer Katanic

This course will consider the use of architecture as a conduit of social change. The MoMA exhibition Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement presents eleven noteworthy projects, either built or currently under construction, in underserved communities around the world. The architects featured in the exhibition confront inequality using the tools of design. They engage social, economic, and political conditions, developing post-utopian architectural interventions that begin with an understanding of the communities they serve.

Jennifer Katanic (PhD Candidate, the Graduate Center, City University of New York) is a specialist in modern and contemporary art, with an emphasis on Slavic studies. She is a lecturer in MoMA's Education department and works with International Art Guides as a contemporary art educator at Art Basel Miami Beach. She has taught art history at Rutgers University and City College, New York.