ABOUT LEARNING AT MoMA
See art from different perspectives and get inspired by artists, writers, curators, and designers.
- Join us for daily gallery talks and weekly lunch lectures
- Attend performances and poetry readings inspired by modern and contemporary art
- Talk with artists and curators about their work
- Explore our online multimedia player for past lectures and events
Be part of the conversation. Follow us on Twitter @MoMATalks and on Tumblr at momatalks.tumblr.com to get an inside look at our programs and process.
Browse Events
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Gallery Conversations & Lectures
Contemporary Galleries: 1980–Now
9 + 1 Ways of Being Political: 50 Years of Political Stances in Architecture and Urban Design
XL: 19 New Acquisitions in Photography
Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light
Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store
Claes Oldenburg: Mouse Museum/Ray Gun Wing
Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light
Displacement and Degenerate Art: European Culture during WWII
Wait, Later This Will Be Nothing: Editions by Dieter Roth
Trouble Spots: Confronting Difficult Works of Art in the Collection
Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store
Claes Oldenburg: Mouse Museum/Ray Gun Wing
Signs of Modernity: Industrial Design 1920s–60s
Contemporary Galleries: 1980–Now
Wait, Later This Will Be Nothing: Editions by Dieter Roth
The Mind's Eye: Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store
Claes Oldenburg: Mouse Museum/Ray Gun Wing
Layers of Art: Techniques of Postwar Artists in New York
Bathing Beauties: The Female Nude across the 20th Century
Panels & Symposia
Conversations: Among Friends, Featuring Artists Sam Gilliam and Rashid Johnson
Presented by The Friends of Education of The Museum of Modern Art, Conversations: Among Friends explores works of art as reflections of their political and social contexts. The evening features a conversation between artists Sam Gilliam and Rashid Johnson, moderated by Laura Hoptman, a curator in MoMA’s Department of Painting and Sculpture. The program will explore Gilliam and Johnson’s work—and how it is shaped by, responds to, and reflects the artistic, historical, political, and social context of its making. Following the program, guests are invited to continue the conversation and meet the participants at an intimate reception catered by Fantasy Fare in the Cullman Mezzanine.
Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1933, Sam Gilliam spent his youth in Louisville, Kentucky. After receiving his BA from the University of Louisville in 1955, he served in the Army, then returned to the University for his MA. In 1962 he moved to Washington, D.C. Following an early figurative period, Gilliam began painting in an abstract idiom. In 1968, he affirmed his place among the American avant-garde with the creation of his draped works. Between 1965 and 1973 Gilliam exhibited at the Jefferson Place Gallery, where Marjorie Phillips saw Red Petals in 1967 and decided to host a show of his work at The Phillips Collection, which was his first solo museum exhibition. Gilliam has shown at various Washington, D.C.-area galleries, and has taught art in the public school system and at the Corcoran School of Art, the Maryland Art Institute in Baltimore, the University of Maryland, and Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He has received a number of awards, including National Endowment for the Arts Activities Grants in 1967, 1973–1975, and 1989, and a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1971, which gave him the financial independence necessary to paint full-time. Gilliam's recent works include installations that employ a variety of materials such as polypropylene, computer-generated imaging, and handmade paper. His work is included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden collections, among others. Gilliam is represented by David Kordansky Gallery and Marsha Mateyka Gallery, and currently lives and works in Washington, D.C.
Rashid Johnson was born in 1977 in Chicago, IL, and studied at Columbia College Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2001, Johnson's work was included in Freestyle, an exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem curated by Thelma Golden. The show featured 28 up-and-coming artists whose work Golden considered to be “post-black,” a term defined by Golden as “characterized by artists who were adamant about not being labeled as 'black' artists, though their work was steeped, in fact deeply interested, in redefining complex notions of blackness.” Johnson, who was 24 years old at the time and the youngest artist in the exhibition, presented photographs from his Seeing in the Dark series of portraits of homeless African American men in Chicago. The work drew critical attention, and since then, his practice has become central to the “post-black” movement. Johnson's mixed-media work incorporates a wide range of everyday materials and objects, including wax, wood, steel, brass, shea butter, ceramic tile, books, records, VHS tapes, live plants, and CB radios. With shamanistic inspiration from both African American history and art history, many of Johnson's more recent works employ these materials in a way that suggests an indefinite form of mysticism and a role as devotional objects. Johnson's work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Walker Art Center, and in ILLUMInations, the 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, among others. In 2009, he had a solo show at SculptureCenter in New York. In 2012 Johnson enjoyed his first major solo museum exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, had first solo show in the U.K. at the South London Gallery, and won the David C. Driskell Prize. His current solo exhibitions include New Growth at the Ballroom Marfa, TX; and his upcoming shows include Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, and the Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO. Johnson currently lives and works in New York, NY.
Laura Hoptman is a curator of contemporary art in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, where she is currently organizing a career retrospective of the German sculptor Isa Genzken, and an exhibition on contemporary painting. Since joining the Museum she has organized Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language, a group exhibition of contemporary art dealing with language; Artist’s Choice: Trisha Donnelly; and, with Peter Eleey, a mid-career survey of the work of the Los Angeles painter Henry Taylor at MoMA/PS 1. Previously, Hoptman was senior curator at the New Museum where she organized Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century, The Generational: Younger Than Jesus, and monographic exhibitions on Tomma Abts, Elizabeth Peyton, Brion Gysin, and George Condo. In 2004/2005 she was the director of the 54th Carnegie International, and, as a drawings curator at MoMA from 1996 to 2002, she curated the first U.S. museum exhibitions of Rirkrit Tiravanija, Maurizio Cattelan, John Currin, and Luc Tuymans among others. In 1997, she was the co-curator of Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, a show that reintroduced Kusama to international audiences, and in 2002, organized Drawing Now: Eight Propositions, a landmark exhibition of contemporary figurative drawing.
Presented by The Friends of Education of The Museum of Modern Art, Conversations: Among Friends explores works of art as reflections of their political and social contexts.
Conversations: Among Friends
Thursday, June 27, 2013, 7:00 p.m.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Program begins at 7:00 p.m.
Followed by a reception at 8:15 p.m.
Tickets ($35) can be purchased online, through the Friends of Education office, and at the lobby information desk and the film desk.
Conversations: Among Friends is made possible by TD Bank.
Performances & Readings
Uncontested Spaces: Guerilla Readings in the MoMA Galleries
As part of Kenneth Goldsmith's "Poet Laureate" program, he invites renowned writers to choose works in MoMA's collection, develop a response, and then select a space in the Museum galleries where they will perform the resulting readings and texts on Wednesdays. On selected Fridays, Goldsmith himself will contribute readings in the galleries. Visitors can meet the writers directly in their selected gallery.
Stephen Burt reads in front of Meret Oppenheim's Red Head, Blue Body (gallery 12, floor 5). Burt reads new poems, including "Fundamental Attribution Error (Meret Oppenheim + Stephanie)," "1978 Stephanie," "Day and Night Stephanie," and poems from Belmont and Parallel Play.
Artists Experiment is a new initiative in the Department of Education that brings together contemporary artists in dialogue with MoMA educators to conceptualize ideas for developing innovative and experimental public interactions. Learn more
Artists Experiment
Wednesday, May 22, 2013, 12:30 p.m.
Uncontested Spaces: Guerilla Readings in the MoMA Galleries
As part of Kenneth Goldsmith's "Poet Laureate" program, he invites renowned writers to choose works in MoMA's collection, develop a response, and then select a space in the Museum galleries where they will perform the resulting readings and texts on Wednesdays. On selected Fridays, Goldsmith himself will contribute readings in the galleries. Visitors can meet the writers directly in their selected gallery.
Artists Experiment is a new initiative in the Department of Education that brings together contemporary artists in dialogue with MoMA educators to conceptualize ideas for developing innovative and experimental public interactions. Learn more
Artists Experiment
Wednesday, May 29, 2013, 12:30 p.m.
A Guerilla Reading by Rob Fitterman and Kim Rosenfeld
Uncontested Spaces: Guerilla Readings in the MoMA Galleries
As part of Kenneth Goldsmith's "Poet Laureate" program, he invites renowned writers to choose works in MoMA's collection, develop a response, and then select a space in the Museum galleries where they will perform the resulting readings and texts on Wednesdays. On selected Fridays, Goldsmith himself will contribute readings in the galleries. Visitors can meet the writers directly in their selected gallery.
Artists Experiment is a new initiative in the Department of Education that brings together contemporary artists in dialogue with MoMA educators to conceptualize ideas for developing innovative and experimental public interactions. Learn more
Artists Experiment
Wednesday, May 29, 2013, 1:30 p.m.
Uncontested Spaces: Guerilla Readings in the MoMA Galleries
As part of Kenneth Goldsmith's "Poet Laureate" program, he invites renowned writers to choose works in MoMA's collection, develop a response, and then select a space in the Museum galleries where they will perform the resulting readings and texts on Wednesdays. On selected Fridays, Goldsmith himself will contribute readings in the galleries. Visitors can meet the writers directly in their selected gallery.
Artists Experiment is a new initiative in the Department of Education that brings together contemporary artists in dialogue with MoMA educators to conceptualize ideas for developing innovative and experimental public interactions. Learn more
Artists Experiment
Wednesday, June 5, 2013, 12:30 p.m.
Uncontested Spaces: Guerilla Readings in the MoMA Galleries
As part of Kenneth Goldsmith's "Poet Laureate" program, he invites renowned writers to choose works in MoMA's collection, develop a response, and then select a space in the Museum galleries where they will perform the resulting readings and texts on Wednesdays. On selected Fridays, Goldsmith himself will contribute readings in the galleries. Visitors can meet the writers directly in their selected gallery.
Artists Experiment is a new initiative in the Department of Education that brings together contemporary artists in dialogue with MoMA educators to conceptualize ideas for developing innovative and experimental public interactions. Learn more
Artists Experiment
Wednesday, June 5, 2013, 1:30 p.m.
Uncontested Spaces: Guerilla Readings in the MoMA Galleries
As part of Kenneth Goldsmith's "Poet Laureate" program, he invites renowned writers to choose works in MoMA's collection, develop a response, and then select a space in the Museum galleries where they will perform the resulting readings and texts on Wednesdays. On selected Fridays, Goldsmith himself will contribute readings in the galleries. Visitors can meet the writers directly in their selected gallery.
Artists Experiment is a new initiative in the Department of Education that brings together contemporary artists in dialogue with MoMA educators to conceptualize ideas for developing innovative and experimental public interactions. Learn more
Artists Experiment
Wednesday, June 12, 2013, 12:30 p.m.
Uncontested Spaces: Guerilla Readings in the MoMA Galleries
As part of Kenneth Goldsmith's "Poet Laureate" program, he invites renowned writers to choose works in MoMA's collection, develop a response, and then select a space in the Museum galleries where they will perform the resulting readings and texts on Wednesdays. On selected Fridays, Goldsmith himself will contribute readings in the galleries. Visitors can meet the writers directly in their selected gallery.
Artists Experiment is a new initiative in the Department of Education that brings together contemporary artists in dialogue with MoMA educators to conceptualize ideas for developing innovative and experimental public interactions. Learn more
Artists Experiment
Wednesday, June 19, 2013, 1:30 p.m.
A Guerilla Reading by Vito Acconci and Maria Mirabal
Maria Mirabal reads recent poetry. Vito Acconci reads poems followed by design/architecture notes.
Uncontested Spaces: Guerilla Readings in the MoMA Galleries
As part of Kenneth Goldsmith's "Poet Laureate" program, he invites renowned writers to choose works in MoMA's collection, develop a response, and then select a space in the Museum galleries where they will perform the resulting readings and texts on Wednesdays. On selected Fridays, Goldsmith himself will contribute readings in the galleries. Visitors can meet the writers directly in their selected gallery.
Artists Experiment is a new initiative in the Department of Education that brings together contemporary artists in dialogue with MoMA educators to conceptualize ideas for developing innovative and experimental public interactions. Learn more