Daily distraction: Take an art course from MoMA

MoMA exterior, October 2013. Image by George Rose/Getty Images

By Talya Zax April 13, 2020

Welcome to your daily distraction, our recommendations for ways to stay engaged and entertained while we socially distance ourselves to combat the novel coronavirus outbreak. You can find our past recommendations here; many of the opportunities we’ve highlighted are ongoing.

It’s the start of a new week. Many of us have now been practicing social distancing for a full month, and while that routine is increasingly familiar, it’s also increasingly disorienting. It’s relatively easy to work at creating a sort of faux-normalcy at the start of a new way of life. But in the middle of that new reality, as it becomes more difficult to envision ever regaining real normalcy, those efforts can seem fairly futile.

That means it’s more important than ever to find things in the outside world to hold on to, even though we can’t go outside. Here’s one way to get more involved today.

Take a free art class through MoMA

After a long renovation, the Museum of Modern Art finally reopened in October 2019. But if you didn’t get to see the re-envisioned museum before this new, unexpected closing, don’t despair! In addition to hosting several online exhibits through Google Arts & Culture, MoMA has made its library of online art courses through Coursera free for the time being.

While all of them look interesting, right now I especially like the look of “Seeing Through Photographs,” an in-depth education on how to understand pictures that appear at first glance to be fairly straightforward. At this moment when the ordinary stuff of human life is largely inaccessible, coming to better understand the most common medium by which we chronicle that stuff is an appealing investment. But if you’re interested in something broader in scope, “Modern Art & Ideas,” an overview of the basic tenets and movements behind modern art, promises to be invigorating and eye-opening. Take it, and know that when you can finally go visit MoMA again, the experience will be especially meaningful.

Talya Zax is the Forward’s opinion editor. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @TalyaZax.

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