Registration for fall courses is now open.

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, so sign up today.

Ten-part courses are $520; $445 for members. Five-part courses are $260; $220 for members. Sign up for Museum membership starting at $75 and receive free admission to the Museum for a year and the discounted course prices.

FM headsets and neck loops for sound amplification are available for all courses.

Course guidelines and frequently asked questions

For more information on MoMA Courses, e-mail courses@moma.org or call (212) 408-8441.

FALL 2008 COURSE LIST

TEN-WEEK COURSES

Modern Art 1880–1945
SECTION I
Ten Mondays, 8:10–10:00 p.m., 9/22, 10/6, 10/20, 10/27, 11/3, 11/10, 11/17, 11/24, 12/1, 12/8, (no class 9/29 and 10/13)
Instructor: Larissa Bailiff

This course introduces students to the key works and ideas of modern art, from late Impressionism 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 Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and many others.

Larissa Bailiff (Ph.D., A.B.D., Institute of Fine Arts) is a specialist in nineteenth-century French art and social history. Currently an associate educator at MoMA, she has also lectured at other New York museums and has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at both the Fashion Institute of Technology and Pratt Institute.

Modern Art 1880–1945
SECTION II
Ten Wednesdays, 6:00–7:50 p.m., 9/24, 10/1, 10/15, 10/22, 10/29, 11/5, 11/12, 12/3, 12/10, 12/17 (no class 10/8, 11/19, and 11/26)
Instructor: Sarah Ganz

See course description above.

Sarah Ganz (PhD, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) is director of Interpretation and Research at MoMA and specializes in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century art.

Modern and Contemporary Art, 1945–Today
SECTION I
Ten Mondays, 6:00–7:50 p.m., 9/22, 10/6, 10/20, 10/27, 11/3, 11/10, 11/17, 11/24, 12/1, 12/8, (no class 9/29 and 10/13)
Instructor: Alexandra Schwartz

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's flowering in mass consumer society, Minimalism's formal refinement and emphasis on spatial context, Conceptual art's fundamental questioning of art, the development of multimedia artistic practices, and works made since the 1970s that are still being debated and defined.

Alexandra Schwartz (PhD, University of Michigan) is a curatorial assistant in MoMA's Department of Drawings. She is the coordinator of the Modern Women's Project and editor of Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interviews, Bits, Pages, by Ed Ruscha (The MIT Press, 2002).

Modern and Contemporary Art, 1945–Today
SECTION II
Ten Wednesdays, 8:10–10:00 p.m., 9/24, 10/1, 10/15, 10/22, 10/29, 11/5, 11/12, 11/19, 12/3, 12/10, (no class 10/8 and 11/26)
Instructor: Tom Williams

See course description above.

Tom Williams (PhD candidate, Stony Brook University) is currently completing a dissertation on Claes Oldenburg, eros, and the 1960s. He is also a 2008–09 critical studies fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

Drawing in the Expanded Field: Techniques and Concepts
Ten Mondays, 6:30–9:00 p.m., 9/22, 10/6, 10/20, 10/27, 11/3, 11/10, 11/17, 11/24, 12/1, 12/8, (no class 9/29 and 10/13)
Class size is limited to twelve students. Extra studio fee of $20 includes all materials.
Instructor: Ethan Greenbaum

This studio course explores modern and contemporary approaches to drawing, with an emphasis on the experimental, material, and conceptual aspects of a drawing practice. We explore a wide range of drawing techniques, including collage, multimedia, drawing as process, and abstraction. We also discuss modern art movements relevant to a contemporary drawing practice, including Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, and Minimalism. In-class exercises are interspersed with lecture tours of relevant works in MoMA's drawing collection. Artists discussed include Georges Seurat, Pablo Picasso, Agnes Martin, William de Kooning, Bruce Nauman, Kara Walker, Mark Lombardi, and many others.

Ethan Greenbaum (MFA in painting, Yale University) is an artist, teacher, and critic who regularly exhibits his work 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 co-founder and editor of The Highlights, a Web site devoted to artist writings and curatorial projects.

Contemporary Art: What Is Now? Art of This Decade, 1998–2008 SOLD OUT
Ten Mondays, 8:10–10:00 p.m., 9/22, 10/6, 10/20, 10/27, 11/3, 11/10, 11/17, 11/24, 12/1, 12/8, (no class 9/29 and 10/13)
Instructor: Haley Mellin

This course examines the development of contemporary art during the past decade, looking at the current global artscape in a modern, historical, and social context. The class untangles the threads of ideas and aesthetics that run through current work, showing the persistence of some and the momentary significance of others. Major movements in painting, photography, sculpture, and performance are examined, particularly in relationship to the New York art world. Among the topics discussed in relation to current work are "globalism," the new art economy, relational aesthetics, recent political work, and the idea of the art movement. The course provides an introduction to the wide variety of art-historical movements that have developed in contemporary art and that find visual prominence in exhibitions and global markets.

Haley Mellin (PhD candidate, visual culture, New York University) is an artist and an adjunct instructor of contemporary art and critical theory in NYU's Department of Art. Her recent curatorial projects include Compulsive at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and Art Basel.

The Materials and Techniques of Postwar Abstract Painting
Ten Wednesdays, 6:30–9:00 p.m., 9/24, 10/1, 10/15, 10/22, 10/29, 11/5, 11/12, 11/19, 12/3, 12/10, (no class 10/8 and 11/26)
Class size is limited to ten students. Extra studio fee of $50 includes all materials.
Instructor: Corey D'Augustine

This class teaches students about postwar abstract painting from the perspective of the artist by teaching the materials and techniques used in paintings of this period. After two introductory classes that cover the basics of stretching and preparing a canvas, as well as mixing and applying paint, subsequent classes each focus 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, their materials and techniques are explained, and each student prepares a small mock-up painting. At the conclusion of the class, the students visit the galleries and/or conservation lab to share their insights into the role of material and technique in abstract painting.

Corey D'Augustine is an artist and painting conservator at The Museum of Modern Art and has previously worked at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and the Matthew Barney studio. He exhibits in New York and internationally.

High and Low: Modern Art and Mass Culture
Ten Wednesdays, 8:10–10:00 p.m., 9/24, 10/1, 10/15, 10/22, 10/29, 11/5, 11/12, 11/19, 12/3, 12/10, (no class 10/8 and 11/26)
Instructor: Ágnes Berecz

The history of modern and contemporary art is also the history of constantly shifting interactions between art and popular culture. The course explores the ways in which modes of industrial production and mass consumption, objects and rituals of everyday life, film and television, and music and advertising have altered and expanded modern and contemporary art and visual culture. How have the crossings between high and low changed the notion of public sphere, the practice of museum exhibitions, as well as our understanding of authorship and originality? The course addresses these issues through discussions of works by artists represented in MoMA's collection, ranging from Georges Seurat and Constantin Brancusi to Cindy Sherman and Douglas Gordon.

Ágnes Berecz (PhD, Université Paris/Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris) teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology and is a lecturer at MoMA.

Sound Sights: Art and Music in the Twentieth Century
Ten Thursdays: 7:15–9:05 p.m., 9/25, 10/2, 10/23, 10/30, 11/6, 11/13, 11/20, 12/4, 12/11, 12/18, (no class 10/9, 10/16, and 11/27)
Instructor: Rebecca Y. Kim

This course explores several renowned affiliations between artists and composers of the past century that helped to forge new aesthetic, formal, economic, and cultural territories. By focusing on specific associations between figures such as Wassily Kandinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, Jackson Pollock and Ornette Coleman, Paul Gauguin and Kaija Saariaho, and Chuck Close and Philip Glass, we observe how artists and composers responded in general to the broader historical movements that occupied their respective practices, including Expressionism, Dada, Abstract Expressionism, and Minimalism. Lectures draw on selections from the Museum's painting, sculpture, and film collections, as well as musical scores and recordings. We also examine a number of works featured in the current MoMA exhibition Looking at Music: Media Art of the 1960s.

Rebecca Y. Kim (Ph.D., Department of Music, Columbia University) specializes in the music of John Cage and postwar American experimentalism. She is an adjunct instructor in the Department of Art History and Music at Fordham University, and has taught at Williams College and Columbia University.

A Survey of Contemporary Photography since 1960
Ten Thursdays, 7:15–9:05 p.m., 9/25, 10/2, 10/16, 10/30, 11/6, 11/13, 11/20, 12/4, 12/11, 12/18 (no class 10/9, 10/23, and 11/27)
Instructor: Béatrice Gross

This course considers 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 (Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore, Nan Goldin), Conceptual photography (Bernd and Hilla Becher, Ed Ruscha, Dan Graham), and performance-based photography (Vito Acconci, Viennese Actionists, Gilbert and George) to the most recent developments of staged or constructed photography (Jeff Wall, Philip Lorca-DiCorcia, Thomas Demand) and digital photography (Barry Frydlender).

Béatrice Gross is an independent curator and art critic based in New York. Formerly a curatorial assistant in MoMA's Department of Photography, she is currently a PhD candidate at La Sorbonne, Paris.

FIVE-WEEK COURSES

The Domus-Dwelling-Private-Public-Single-Multi-Family-Habitat: History of the Modern House
Five Mondays, 6:00–7:50 p.m., 9/22, 10/6, 10/20, 10/27, 11/3 (no class 9/29 and 10/13)
Instructor: Jennifer Gray

The modern house was defined as a "machine for living" by Le Corbusier, elevated to a spiritual dwelling space by Mies van der Rohe, manufactured according to assembly line principles at Levittown, and made to conform to the flat topography of the Midwestern prairie by Frank Lloyd Wright. More than a matter of architectural style or efficiency in construction, the modern house also reflected and challenged prevailing social attitudes, economic inequalities, and gender roles. This seminar investigates the architectural and social development of the modern house through class discussion and lectures, through site visits to modern houses in New York City, and through visits to MoMA's Architecture and Design Galleries and temporary exhibitions. Examples to be explored include: the Prairie School houses by Wright; iconic modern houses such as the Farnsworth House by Mies, the Glass House by Philip Johnson, and the Villa Savoy by Le Corbusier; multi-family housing, such as apartment buildings and public housing projects; prefabrication in house construction; and more.

Jennifer Gray (PhD candidate, Columbia University) is a specialist in American and German art, architectural history, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century theory. She is a lecturer at MoMA.

Memories of the Future: The Role of Cultural Trauma within Contemporary Art
Five Mondays, 7:00–8:50 p.m., 9/22, 10/6, 10/20, 10/27, 11/3 (no class 9/29 and 10/13)
Instructor: Erica Cooke

Philosopher Theodore Adorno's famous injunction that there can be no poetry after the Holocaust presents a struggle that continues to haunt contemporary culture: How do we bear witness to past crimes when such barbarity resists meaning? Whereas most interpretations of Adorno claim art to be an invalid form in post-traumatic culture, this course examines the lively debate over materializing memory and designating responsibility for these unimaginable tragedies. The course locates this discussion within five major cities recognized as sites of horrific travesties: the falling of the World Trade Centers in New York City, the ongoing civil wars in Beirut, the complex heritage of the Vietnam War in both Ho Chi Minh City and Washington D.C., WWII and the post-Communist bisection of Berlin, and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Through responses that stretch from public memorials to personal testimonies—and in media ranging from outdoor sculpture to documentary film—contemporary artists, architects, and filmmakers explore how visual culture can grapple with the intricacies of politics, remembrance, and the city as a life form in and of itself.

Erica Cooke (MA, contemporary art, University of Manchester/Sotheby's Institute) recently completed her curatorial fellowship in the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is a visiting lecturer at Sotheby's Institute (NYC) and works at the Old American Can Factory in Brooklyn.

Representations of African Art in The Museum of Modern Art
Five Wednesdays, 6:00–7:50 p.m., 9/24, 10/1, 10/15, 10/22, 10/29, (no class 10/8)
Instructor: Kunbi Oni

This course seeks to examine African art within the modern-art discourse, with a focus on work found within The Museum of Modern Art's collection. Since African art entered the Western art history canon, it has continued to inspire and influence a variety of artists, most notably beyond Africa. We begin by discussing those objects and cultures that influenced Picasso, Matisse, Derain, et al., and then examine how and in what way modern and contemporary African artists use traditional African art in their work. In addition we examine objects within today's broader definition of "African," and the relationship between representation and meaning in this lexicon. In particular we focus on Yinka Shonibare, El Anatsui, and William Kentridge.

Kunbi Oni is an adjunct faculty member at City College (CUNY), where she teaches Introductory Principles of Art History and History of African Art. Her interests are in the dual themes of ancient and modern in African art practice. These themes inform her research subject area, historical architecture and preservation in the Bight of Benin.

The 1960s: From Pop to Minimalism
Five Wednesdays, 7:00–8:50 p.m., 9/24, 10/1, 10/15, 10/22, 10/29, (no class 10/8)
Instructor: Kelly Sidley

The 1960s proved to be a heady decade for art. Major American movements such as Pop, Conceptualism, and Minimalism developed within a very short time span. The geometric underpinnings and abstract austerity of Minimalist paintings and sculptures by artists such as Frank Stella, Agnes Martin, Tony Smith, and Donald Judd initially seem to have little in common with the object-oriented work of Pop artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and James Rosenquist. This course discusses the individual developments of these two schools, but also highlights their similarities, such as their mutual rejection of Abstract Expressionism, their reliance on repetition, and their shared love of clean, graphic, hard-edged contours. The class utilizes the recently re-installed Painting and Sculpture Galleries devoted to these movements, while also discussing parallel European developments, particularly Nouveau Réalisme, Sigmar Polke's and Gerhard Richter's early works, and the art antics of Yves Klein.

Kelly Sidley (Ph.D., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) specializes in postwar and contemporary art. She is a curatorial assistant for MoMA's upcoming exhibition Aernout Mik, as well as a lecturer at the Museum. She has worked as an independent curator and has taught at NYU and Pace University.

Art and Politics
Five Thursdays, 6:30–8:20 p.m., 9/25, 10/2, 10/16, 10/23, 10/30 (no class 10/9)
Instructor: Claire Gilman

On the eve of the general election, this course investigates the embattled relationship between art and politics in the last half-century. In approaching this highly charged subject, we consider three distinct moments: abstract art in Europe and America in the immediate postwar period, art and activism circa 1968, and the position of the contemporary artist in a world at war. Discussion of specific artists and artist groups center on the fundamental question of what it means for art to be political. Is effective artistic intervention desirable or even possible? How should art respond to highly politicized times and to wider social phenomena such as media culture and globalization? Can form itself be political or does resistance require an articulated agenda and practical effects? In short, what form should political art take?

Claire Gilman (PhD, Columbia University) is an independent curator and art historian. Her current projects include The Storyteller, an exhibition circulated by ICI (Independent Curators International). Her writing has appeared in October, Documents, CAA Reviews, and Frieze.

From "Anti-Form" to Take Your Time: Art since 1970
Five Mondays, 6:00–7:50 p.m., 11/10, 11/17, 11/24, 12/1, 12/8
Instructor: Matthew Israel

This course seeks to provide an introduction to the major movements in contemporary art since 1970 as well as a deeper understanding of the work of some of the major artists working today (in photography, sculpture, painting, and media). An emphasis is placed on contemporary artists who have recently been or will be featured in MoMA exhibitions.

Matthew Israel (PhD candidate, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) is an adjunct instructor at NYU's undergraduate department of art history. His writing has appeared in Artnews, Artforum, and Art in America.

Intersecting Architectures
Five Wednesdays, 6:00–7:50 p.m., 11/5, 11/12, 11/19, 12/3, 12/10, (no class 11/26)
Instructor: Jennifer Gray

Manhattan is a veritable grid of coexisting architectural and spatial traditions, a place where modern and postmodern design dialogue with the historical and the popular. This course explores the ambiguous, paradoxical, and sometimes contentious intersections of modern and historical architecture through site visits to key buildings in New York City. The metaphor of the intersection is more than symbolic—these various architectures are often located at literal street intersections, their proximity making such trans-historical dialogues between the past and present architecturally legible. For example, the contemporary 40 Bond Street building by Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron references the tradition of cast-iron construction in Soho, popular graffiti art, and Louis Sullivan's ornamental masterpiece, the Bayard-Condict Building.

This course is not a comprehensive survey of modern architecture, but rather a series of discrete surgical incisions into the built fabric of New York City. Emphasis is placed on major themes in modern and postmodern architecture; however, students also learn about the historical precedents that inform each site. Additional attention is paid to site planning, the design of public space, and the public art installed at the intersections under question.

Jennifer Gray (PhD candidate, Columbia University) is a specialist in American and German art, architectural history, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century theory. She is a lecturer at MoMA.

Cruel and Unusual Comedy: Social Commentary in the American Slapstick Film
Five Wednesdays, 6:30–8:30 p.m., 11/5, 11/12, 11/19, 12/3,12/10, (no class 11/26)
Instructors: Ron Magliozzi, Steve Massa, Ben Model and Special Guests
Musical accompaniment for silent films by Ben Model

This course considers how silent era slapstick comedy treats social, cultural, and political subjects that have continued to be central concerns in America to this day. Industrialization, race, ethnicity, gender, public order, violence, and substance abuse have traditionally been among the most vital sources for the "rude" forms of comedy that have entertained mass audiences. Drawing on a body of work that is a particular strength of the Museum's film collection, classes consist of screenings, with historical lectures and classroom discussion.

Ron Magliozzi (Assistant Curator, Department of Film) has organized a number of special gallery and film exhibitions, including Sensation and Sentiment: Cinema 1912–1914 and Pixar: 20 Years of Animation, and served with the International Federation of Film Archives from 1978 through 1997.

Steve Massa (historian and research consultant with the New York Public Library) is co-founder of Silent Cinema Presentations and has organized programs for the Smithsonian Institution, the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, and the Nederlands Filmmuseum and Pacific Film Archives, and has written on slapstick for Griffithiana and The Chaplin Review.

Ben Model (accompanist and composer) has presented silent films at universities, museums, and festival in the United States and Scandinavia, including MoMA, for nearly a quarter century. He has created scores for the Boise Philharmonic, the New York Ragtime Orchestra, and numerous DVD releases.

Van Gogh at Night
Five Thursdays: 6:30–8:20 p.m.
11/6, 11/13, 11/20, 12/4, 12/11, (no class 11/27)
(no class 10/9)
Instructor: Jennifer Field

"I often feel that the night is much more beautiful than the day," Vincent van Gogh wrote in 1888. For Van Gogh, the night and twilight hours contained a spiritual quality linked to the cycle of life and death. In an effort to capture this sentiment on canvas, and to continue the Impressionists' practice of painting out of doors, he took on the challenge of painting after sundown, learning to fuse the visible with the imaginary in such works as The Starry Night. This course charts Van Gogh's interest in the nocturnal environment while examining common motifs in his art, such as landscapes, peasant life, sowers and wheatfields, and the effects of gaslight and modernity on rural life. MoMA's exhibition Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night acts as a reference for exploring this previously under-researched aspect of Van Gogh's art.

Jennifer Field (MA, Hunter College; PhD student, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) is a curatorial assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture. Her projects have included the exhibitions Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne and Pissarro, 1865–1885, Manet and the Execution of Maximilian, Martin Puryear, and Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night.

DAYTIME COURSES

Modern Utopias, 1917–34: Constructivism, de Stijl, Bauhaus
Ten Tuesdays, 11:00 a.m.–12:50 p.m., 9/23, 10/7, 10/14, 10/21, 10/28, 11/4, 11/11, 11/18, 11/25, 12/2, (no class 9/30)
Instructor: Diana Bush

This course surveys the diverse projects of three important and mutually influential avant-garde movements: Constructivism in the newly-formed Soviet Union, de Stijl and "neo-plasticism" in Holland, and the German Bauhaus from its founding to its demise in 1933.

Diana Bush (MPhil, Columbia University) is completing her dissertation on Weimar photomontage and is a lecturer on modern art, aesthetics, and criticism at Stevens Institute of Technology. She is also a lecturer at MoMA.

Contemporary Photography
Five Wednesdays, 11:00 a.m.–12:50 p.m., 9/24, 10/1, 10/15, 10/22, 10/29, (no class 10/8)
Instructor: Benjamin Lima

This course surveys the development of photography ever since the high modernist vision (exemplified by Alfred Stieglitz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, or Walker Evans) gave way to multiple different traditions having as much to do with mass media, cinema, or painting as with the essential features of the medium. We begin around 1978 with the landmark Pictures exhibition, and explore how photographers have framed their work using other media, such as books and magazines. We consider how artists have used photography to construct and represent urban and non-urban landscapes and to define how an individual self fits into a larger culture or subculture. Finally, we contend with photographers using the medium to articulate imaginary and invented worlds. Artists discussed include Cindy Sherman, Fischli and Weiss, Richard Prince, Nan Goldin, Jeff Wall, Robert Mapplethorpe, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Rineke Dijkstra, Vik Muniz, and Sam Taylor-Wood.

Benjamin Lima has an MA in visual studies from the University of California, Irvine, and is a PhD candidate in art history at Yale University, where he has taught courses on modern art, architecture, and photography. At MoMA, he worked on the MoMA2000 exhibition cycle. His criticism has appeared in Art in America and Art Journal.

WEEKEND COURSE

Pressure and Ink
Saturday and Sunday, 9:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m. and Monday evening 6:30–8:30 p.m., 10/25, 10/26, 10/27
Instructor: Lynne Harlow
Class size is limited to twelve students
$295; $265 for members (includes cost for materials)

This weekend print workshop provides students with an understanding of various print techniques and the considerations that are essential to artists making prints. The class, designed for students without previous printmaking experience, combines discussion of print techniques, viewings of prints in the MoMA galleries, and hands-on printmaking projects. In addition, students visit a print workshop in the city for a tour and demonstration. This combination of experiences provides students with a better understanding of the differences between the varied methods of making prints and the characteristics of each.

Lynne Harlow (MFA, Hunter College) is an artist who works in various mediums, including printmaking and installation. She exhibits internationally and is represented by Minus Space.