This course is designed to help build critical skills that support theme-based teaching practices and build confidence in incorporating modern and contemporary art into interdisciplinary lesson plans. By addressing themes and questions that arise in relation to modern and contemporary art, the course will help you to think creatively about links to your curriculum and the ways that you can tap into students’ knowledge and life experience.
Offered By
Art & Ideas: Teaching with Themes
The Museum of Modern ArtAbout this Course
Learner Career Outcomes
20%
16%
12%
Instructors
Learner Career Outcomes
20%
16%
12%
Offered by

The Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is a place that fuels creativity, ignites minds, and provides inspiration. Join us in exploring the art, ideas, and issues of our time through the Modern and Contemporary Art and Design Specialization or through individual courses: Modern Art & Ideas, Seeing Through Photographs, What Is Contemporary Art?, Fashion as Design, and In the Studio: Postwar Abstract Painting. Learn about teaching with art in our three courses designed for K-12 educators: Art & Inquiry, Art & Activity, and Art & Ideas.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Module 1: Introduction to Art & Ideas: Teaching with Themes
Be introduced to some of the overall benefits of studying modern and contemporary art through accessible and relevant themes. Understand that themes allow us to make connections with artworks, classroom content, and students’ lives. Become acquainted with the ways that a thematic approach supports student-centered, interdisciplinary teaching.
Module 2: Places & Spaces
Discover some of the many ways that artists represent place and take inspiration from their environment. Learn how to engage students with sights and structures that will be familiar to many of them.
Module 3: Art & Identity
Discover some of the ways artists create works of art to express, explore, and question identity. Gain strategies for using works of art to approach the topic of identity with students.
Module 4: Transforming Everyday Objects
Discover how artists use everyday objects to challenge assumptions about what constitutes art and how it should be made. Explore a variety of artistic and design choices, and the creative acts of inventing and transforming everyday objects. Gain skills for making interdisciplinary connections and fostering students’ critical thinking abilities.
Reviews
TOP REVIEWS FROM ART & IDEAS: TEACHING WITH THEMES
Thank You So Much MoMa and Cousera !! I'm super in love with this courses, it really help me a lot and teach me a lot ..And I will continue to choose any others course in MoMa,in Cousera ! Thank You
This course was a wonderful and thorough introduction to Modern Art. So insightful and informative! I'd recommend it to anyone! It has definitely enhanced my lesson planning and teaching style.
This was a great course, that didn't overwhelm you but taught great themes with resources to take back to your students. (I teach elementary so some themes need to wait until they are older.)
I really enjoyed learning so much about art in this class. I am an art teacher, but I have not received my art endorsement yet. This was really an enjoyable learning experience.
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