It might be a while before New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) reopens its doors to the public, but the recently renovated contemporary museum still wants to inspire art lovers during quarantine. In addition to a virtual museum tour that gives access to collection highlights—ranging from 19th-century paintings by Vincent van Gogh to Jenny Holzer’s modern LED art—MoMA is offering a series of free online art courses for at-home audiences amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The nine courses, which are available through the online learning platform Coursera, allow students to hear directly from MoMA curators, artists, and designers, whose work is featured in the museum’s renowned collection and exhibitions.
The topics are, of course, art focused. However, the subjects are still “tailored to a broad audience,” the museum says, exploring everything from photography and fashion to postwar abstract painting, as well as more general examinations of contemporary art.
Anyone can currently enroll in MoMA’s free online art classes. New sessions begin every four weeks, but you can access previous course content upon enrolling, and the courses can be completed at your own pace. (If you want more time, you can change your deadlines without losing any of your work, according to the FAQ section.)
Here are a few of MoMA’s free online art classes to look for:
What Is Contemporary Art?
Using more than 70 artworks from MoMA’s collection as distinct examples, this new course explores the question, “What is contemporary art?,” focusing on art made between 1980 and the present, specifically during the past decade.
Fashion as Design
MoMA’s Fashion as Design course focuses on the profound global impact—social, cultural, economic, and environmental—of particular garments and accessories, from kente cloth to 3D-printed dresses, featuring interviews and studio visits with a range of designers, makers, and historians.
In the Studio: Postwar Abstract Painting
This class offers an in-depth look at the materials, techniques, and approaches of seven New York School artists, including Willem de Kooning, Yayoi Kusama, Agnes Martin, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, and Mark Rothko.
See the full list of MoMA’s free online art courses, and visit coursera.org/moma to enroll.
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