Digital Offerings from The Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art’s digital content expands the essential mission of the Museum—to bring art and artists closer to audiences, offer entry points to MoMA and its collection wherever people’s knowledge of art lies, and foster curiosity and exploration. For decades, MoMA has embraced digital strategy as an incredible opportunity to open up its unparalleled collection of modern and contemporary art to the world. Between the Museum’s website, YouTube, and social media channels, MoMA has the largest digital audience of any museum, reaching 30+ million people worldwide.
The Museum’s evolving collection contains almost 200,000 works of modern and contemporary art with more than 84,000 works currently available online. Similarly, MoMA’s Exhibition History includes individual pages that contain digitized exhibition catalogues, installation photographs, press releases, and master checklists for more than 5000 exhibitions at MoMA and MoMA PS1.

MoMA’s Education programs are inspired by the belief that art and ideas are the starting point for sparking curiosity that ignites new ideas, conversations, and creative explorations with people of all ages and abilities, at the museum and in locations across the world. MoMA has offered free massive open online courses on Coursera since 2012, and audiences can visit the MoMA Learning website or follow the Museum’s Education department @MoMALearning for more resources, activities, and information.
During this unprecedented time of staying home to stay safe, MoMA is sending out The Museum from Home, a new weekly newsletter that focuses on how people can enjoy art wherever they are, with special resources for families and teachers, and special projects like the recent Artist Project with Louise Lawler. In April, the Museum kicked off a series of online exhibitions called Virtual Views, offering a new at-home experience of MoMA taking audiences inside the Museum through video stories, curator Q&As, audio playlists, and feature articles.

Photo: Beatriz Meseguer/onwhitewall.com. © 2020 The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Full List of Digital Content:
Magazine
MoMA’s online editorial platform, Magazine, launched in June 2019 on MoMA.org. It offers original content and commissioned projects from artists and other cultural influencers via audio, video, cartoons, photo essays, poetry, and long-form writing.
Virtual Views, a new at-home experience of MoMA’s exhibition program that takes readers inside an exhibition or a favorite from the collection through video stories, curator Q&As, audio playlists, and feature articles, will launch on April 9 with a virtual film exhibition:
• April 9: Home Movies | Virtual film exhibition
• April 16: Félix Fénéon: The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde—From Signac to Matisse and Beyond | Virtual exhibition opening
• April 23: Judd | Virtual exhibition exploration
• April 30: Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures | Virtual exhibition exploration
On March 25, the Museum launched an Artist Project with Louise Lawler, who provided 12 printable, line tracings that are black-and-white line versions of her photographs of places where art is shown and experienced. These images are available for children and adults of all ages to print and use as coloring sheets. This gesture comes from the artist’s interest in the way art can reach viewers beyond the museum and gallery system, and can playfully contribute to personal creative transformation.
A second and third set of Artist Projects, this time featuring original work by Dan Perjovischi and Allan McCollum, were released on April 1 and April 7.
Future Artist Projects will include a collaboration Amy Sillman.
Online Learning
MoMA has offered free massive open online courses on Coursera since 2012, including three courses for K–12 teachers, courses for general audiences on photography, contemporary art, modern art, abstract painting, and fashion, and courses in Mandarin. Each course was created by MoMA’s Department of Education, in collaboration with curatorial staff. Courses are free or learners can pay $49 for a certificate of completion; learners have the same experience if they choose to take the course for free.
MoMA currently offers nine courses: six courses for general audiences and lifelong learners on photography, modern art, contemporary art, painting, fashion as design, and three courses for K-12 teachers on strategies for teaching with art in their curriculum using inquiry, activities and themes.
Visitors can visit the MoMA Learning website or follow MoMA Learning on Twitter for more information from the Education department.
MoMA YouTube
MoMA-produced video content includes various playlists focusing on our collection, exhibitions, conservation, and film. These videos include behind the scenes content, interviews with curators and artists, Special series developed by MoMA’s Creative Team include: At the Museum, How to See, In the Studio, Artist Stories, Fashion as Design, and Modern Art and Ideas.
Audio Offerings
Hear fresh perspectives on old and new favorites in MoMA’s collection through a range of audio guides, playlists, podcasts and music commissions.
Beyond the Uniform
Artist Chemi Rosado-Seijo invites you to look beyond the uniform and get to know the artists and experts who work in MoMA’s Department of Security. This audio playlist features personally meaningful stories about works of art from the officers who protect them every day.
A Portable Embrace
Conor Bourgal has created a soundtrack to keep you company in front of a painting, or when you’re alone in a city. While making the original musical piece “A Portable Embrace,” Bourgal imagined “expanding the boundaries of a place like a museum,” and standing in front of Jackson Pollock’s One Number 31, 1950 (1950) at MoMA, a painting that stretches over 17 feet.
Audio Guides
Listen to artists, curators, and others speak about the Museum’s collection and special exhibitions featuring new thematic tours: Radical Acts, Made in New York, and Materials and Process. This also includes a Visual Description audio guide, featuring detailed descriptions of work by Monet, Picasso, and Seurat, and an audio designed for kids.
The Way I See It Podcast
The Way I See It is a 30-episode radio series from MoMA and BBC. Thirty extraordinary creative thinkers, including actor and comedian Steve Martin, acclaimed critic and writer Roxane Gay, Minimalist composer Steve Reich, stand-up comedian and actor Margaret Cho, and civil rights leader Bryan Stevenson, choose a work that they love and share their way of seeing art and our world.
Magazine Podcast
New episodes from MoMA staff and special guests, including Rosanne Cash, Masha Gessen, Saidiya Hartman, and others, covering art and politics, music, art, books, and culture.
A Piece of Work Podcast
Co-Produced with WNYC Studios, A Piece of Work is a podcast covering everything you wanted to know about modern and contemporary art but were afraid to ask. Hosted by Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson, the 10-episode podcast in which Abbi looks for answers in lively conversations with curators, artists, and some friends, including Hannibal Buress, Tavi Gevinson, RuPaul, and Questlove.
Research and Archival Resources
The Museum’s Archives collects, preserves, and makes accessible nearly 90 years’ worth of the Museum’s historical records, 40 years’ worth of MoMA PS1 records, and other primary source documents concerning art and cultural history in the 20th and 21st centuries, including private archives and papers of artists, galleries, dealers, art historians, critics, and others.
MoMA Archives Image Database (MAID)
Contains approximately 50,000 digitized images from our collections, including letters, art documentation and ephemera, images of artists and art-world personalities, installation photographs of MoMA and MoMA PS1 exhibitions, historical views of the Museum building and Sculpture Garden, and administrative records.
MoMA’s Primary Documents
A resource for researchers and students of global art history, each volume is devoted to a particular critic, country, or region outside North America or Western Europe during a specific historical period. These anthologies offer archival sources such as manifestos, artists’ writings, correspondence, and criticism–in English translation.