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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Modern Art & Ideas by The Museum of Modern Art

4.8
stars
6,288 ratings

About the Course

Modern Art & Ideas is designed for anyone interested in learning more about modern and contemporary art. You will look at art through a variety of themes, including Places and Spaces, Art and Identity, Transforming Everyday Objects, and Art and Society. Each week kicks off with a video that connects key works of art to the theme. You’ll also have access to interviews with artists, designers, and others who speak about their materials, processes, and sources of inspiration. Through the discussion forum prompts you will also have the opportunity to connect with other learners and explore how these themes resonate with you....

Top reviews

TT

Jun 7, 2020

Really enjoyed this course! Well organized/developed, and even for a museum buff, like me, offered great ideas, and perspectives in ‘looking’ and ‘understanding’ art, and particular artist’s process.

AM

Jan 14, 2018

It has been a very wonderful course. I love the museum as a cultural space and now I love it more for its commitment to online education and giving us the opportunity to learn in different countries.

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Apr 30, 2020

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By Keith H

Dec 13, 2019

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By Niki B

May 3, 2020

I took this course for my own personal enrichment as an artist. I felt is was really thourogh on the artists it presented. I liked that there was a diverse pool of artists and art works presented, particularly if you look over the extra articles. Those were nicely mixed in with more well known artists to the average student. There are, however, far, far more artists and works in this time period that someone who completes a course in Modern Art History really should know. I'm not sure, however, that this course is intended to provide a more in depth study. Rather I believe it's supposed to be more of an overall introduction with some nice deep fives here and there, which certainly was accomplished. I am only giving it 4 instead of 5 stars because I was never able to post images, and therefore could not do assignments that required them. I was using my phone for the course, perhaps that's why. I plan to take another art history course and will use my laptop ( mostly so I can see images better) and see if that solves that problem. Overall, a really fantastic course and a good and resourceful way to spend time during the "stay at home" order...and...it's free!

By Natalie O

Aug 27, 2023

Coursera is a great learning tool with flexibility. I was able to complete it in 3 days, so it's completely doable and not overwhelming. I would give it a 5, but 2 assessments are peer graded, and I received 100% on one and 66% on the other. This was because one of my peers critiqued I did not meet the rubric requirements. I do not mean to sound mean, but I did meet the requirements. This was seen as it did not dock off full points, but rather half points labeled "tie" because my other peer noticed I did have the requirements. I even had a friend who has zero knowledge of art history to see if I met all the requirements, and he said I had everything. But thankfully, the other assessment saved my grade, so I recommend doing both assessments just in case this happens to you.

By Priscilla C

Apr 19, 2018

This course deserves 5 stars except for the final examination submission. There were two descriptions of what the 2 essays should contain, one in the page before the submission and one in the submission page. They were different. Then when one submits the photo of the work of art in the 2nd essay, the title and "caption" are described as optional. I saw that many people did not submit a "caption" (which is where you are supposed to put the essay)... however when you are asked to rate their submissions... there is nothing for you to rate since there is only a photograph of a work of art. You don't know what category it belongs to nor what they think about it. It is really too bad that they will not be graded properly... especially if they paid for the course.

By Sibongile M

Apr 28, 2018

I really enjoyed this course and am grateful for having taken it. Thank you MoMA so much. There are two things that I feel could be improved: the first is that the course is very short and covers a great deal of ideas, themes, artists and movements. It would have been nice to go more in depth into these themes, which would mean either making the course longer or making the focal points more specific as to allow for more in-depth discussion and understanding. The second is that it would have been great to learn more about artists of colour and of different parts of the world outside of the west, or "global north". Otherwise, this course reiterated that there is still a lot that I don't know but I am enjoying expanding my knowledge. Thank you for this!

By Chloe F

Feb 3, 2019

The course provided a lot of great information and was flexible around my working hours/travel. Very nice format and useful links to further information beyond the required readings. It would be nicer to have more in depth and interactive discussion, as part of the course (beyond discussion posts). For example, software/functions that allow multiple people in the same week stage posting/brainstorming comments on the same artworks would be a great way to help people think about art and engage skills and knowledge learned from this course, as opposed to just being able to regurgitate MoMAs information and commentary. The final assignment was a good solo version of this, but there should be a task like this where people can bounce ideas off each other.

By Mary K

May 23, 2016

This was a well structured course even though it wasn't exactly clear that it was about educators in the first place. The introductory videos on every week were very clever and on point. Loved the instructors and the whole team behind this course. However, the final assignment's grading is unacceptable. I cannot stress out how important it is to justify each score given, especially the lower ones. The final assignment did not have this, and as a consequence, when the final grade was in, low or high, you cannot know why, and fix your mistakes in the future. Some people were kind enough to leave comments on the comment section below, explaining everything, however, this should be the case for everyone's review. After all, it is a paid course.

By Debra B

Jun 30, 2020

I definitely learned a great deal, however, I never figured out how to see if anyone commented on my submissions nor how to engage in discussion with my peers. I feel I could learn a great deal more if I was able to have discussions and feedback. I tried navigating back through the website to my previous postings, but couldn't find them? Perhaps I just don't know how to navigate this webpage correctly. Any help would be appreciated. I would love to see what I've submitted previously to review it for myself in the future, plus I would love to see if anyone ever commented on anything I did.

In addition, does a professor or teacher actually ever look at the entries, or is it only peer reviews? Just curious.

By Alexandra R

Jan 2, 2018

I really loved this course. I got a much better understanding of what Modern Art is. The only thing I would like to see is more performative arts, street or public art. Even though I really liked the link between older arts with the idea of Modern Art (because I usually thought Modern Art to be something more like 1970´s to the date), I would have really loved to see artworks from this decade because most of the work I had already seen or read about them. And with the importance that figures like Marina Abramovic and Bansky have been to this decade, I feel that it should be interesting to study it. But I really appreciate the hard work you put into this course. Thank you so much.

By João T S

Jun 4, 2020

I found really interesting the concept of looking to artworks not chronological but by themes. The themes of weeks 2, 3 and 5 were particularly interesting. The one from week 4 (Transforming everyday objects) less, in my opinion. I find the peer assignment evaluation not optimal.... (i had several situations where the evaluation was clearly not according to the coursera rules, and i could not find where to complain about it). Apart from that, the course was very interesting for me, i learned a lot, and most importantly, i am very motivated to transpose the idea of organizing Artworks by themes to music and use it in the music lessons i teach.

By Deleted A

Jul 12, 2020

A great course for overview of those main themes presented. I found the last two weeks somewhat repetitive in that the works were presented in the overview, and then again Individually (with much the same information, only slightly elaborated on). I also found the format of the last peer review assignment (Curate images to illustrate one or more of those themes presented) quite confusing: the boxes weren’t clearly labeled or the assignment unclear on how/where to explain why those images were chosen. Otherwise, it was a fun course and introduced me to some artists I hadn’t know of previously.

By Nicole F

May 31, 2020

I found this course very engaging and interesting, and was eager to come back each week for another module! I also enjoyed interacting with others in the forum, and doing the assignments and final submissions. All of the activities challenged me to think and get involved creatively, which I really appreciated! However, I do feel that they could have explored the concepts more, as the focus seemed to be on the specific artworks. Aside from that, I would recommend this course to those interested in art as it's really accessible even if you don't have a background in it!

By margherita p

Oct 10, 2015

succinct but well targeted review and comments of several iconic works of art--paintings, photos, installations. The main value of the class is the classification viewpoint--not by art movement or school, but by theme. Not enough attention is given to art and identity and art and society (two of the themes), in the US. "Originality" or breaking into new concepts seems to rule, even when many of those works are rather vapid--such as, Duchamp's . Compare with the works by Lawrence, Picasso, Mondrian, D. Lang and others-SUBSTANCE.---Just my opinion, of course.

By Brian G

Apr 29, 2020

I am 70 years old and an appreciation of Modern Art is coming to me a bit late in life ..but better late than never. So thanks you for providing me with this wonderful insight. Not too arduous and full of easy (ish) to understand principles. My world will look different from now on. I missed the electronic age really so I struggled a bit with finding my way around...especially when trying to load images at the end of the course for peer assessment (which I never achieved beyond just the one image)

Once again many thanks,

CB GILL

By Barbara H

May 2, 2020

I very much enjoyed this course and I was excited that MoMA was doing this course. I enjoyed the organization of the themes each week and doing the quizzes........I learned a lot from doing the quizzes. My favorite was learning via the videos. I found them to be exciting and knowledgeable. The only negative was that I had to redo some of my work....it showed not completed and I had to redo. I will look forward to going to MoMA when I travel again to New York. I loved the learning....thank you.

By Cecília B d S

Jun 16, 2020

If you have some time and you always wanted to find out why a brick can be considered art this is a good course for you. Just keep in mind that this is a course where you will have to write some short texts, which can be quite challenging if your English is not that good (of course you can always use Google translator), but It's also a great way to learn new adjectives and expressions. I procrastinated to do the last assignments but I got excited seeing what other people had said about my work.

By David D

Mar 6, 2017

I have to admit, there is a whole vocabulary to describe and 'embellish' some rather ordinary and otherwise non-significant objects considered as Art.

Please don't read this as a negative. I found the experience personally enriching. I also believe I will look at modern art with more openness and search for hidden messages. Still to be honest one sometimes has to feel taken advantaged of by some so called works. As they say not all that glitters is gold. But bravo for this MOOC offering!