While I’m most excited about the fact that it’s officially the start of fall, here are this week’s other highlights:

• On Tuesday, join a Gallery Sessions program that asks the question, Why Does Contemporary Art Look This Way?, and explores the ways in which artists use visual simplicity to convey complex ideas.

Out on the Street. 2015. Egypt. Directed by Philip Rizk, Jasmina Metwaly

• Contemporary films from the Middle East and North Africa are on view in Films from Here: Recent Views from the Arab World, beginning Thursday with Philip Rizk and Jasmina Metwaly’s Out on the Street, and Mohammad Shawky Hassan’s And on a Different Note. Both screenings are followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.

• On Friday and Saturday join artists, curators, and others for Afterlives: The Persistence of Performance—a series of conversations on vital issues in contemporary performance. At MoMA, the series includes talks by theorist and poet Fred Moten, artists Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish, and anthropologist Kathleen C. Stewart. All talks will be live-streamed.

• Sunday is the last chance to see the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Early Years—which includes the large-scale eight-part charcoal on paper sculpture The Tuileries—before it closes. Watch the video above and hear from the artists about how and why they invented Postal Sculptures as young art-school graduates.

• Head to MoMA PS1 for the season opener of Sunday Sessions, featuring live performances and DJ sets. Calentura is a celebration of heavy beats and traditional rhythms from across Latin America and around the world.

How well do you know your MoMA? If you think you can identify the artist and title of these works from MoMA’s collection—all currently on view in the Museum—please submit your answers by leaving a comment on this post. We’ll provide the answers next month (on Friday, October 16).

Really big things are happening at MoMA this season—here’s what’s going on this week:

The courtyard at MoMA PS1 is empty, the museum has just closed, and the last visitors have trickled out. Curiously, there’s a lone stool in the middle of the Warm Up dance floor. On it, there’s an iPhone balanced precariously against a pen, acting like an impromptu tripod. This MacGyver-esque contraption has been set up to capture the unveiling of painter Naomi Clark’s latest work unfurling down the façade of the building, her largest painting to date and one of the last stage designs of this summer’s Warm Up music series.

This week is full of after-hours programs and in-gallery experiences that you won’t want to miss.

Last Saturday’s Warm Up was fueled by explosive live acts and fun DJ sets from a mix of artists that perfectly captured end-of-summer vibes. False Witness and Murlo both played DJ sets that got the crowd riled up with a bit of club, dancehall, and R&B. DJ Windows 98 played the first live set of the day, complete with a high-energy crew of Haitian drummers, followed by a live performance from D∆WN, who delivered everything from pop to R&B in an elaborate all-white costume, with the support of two talented backup dancers. Fade to Mind’s Kingdom was up next with a flashy club set, and Matias Aguayo headlined the night with a live set filled with Latin flair, that was just as rich musically as it was packed with his impressive dance moves.

We’re both sad and ecstatic about the last Warm Up of the season coming up this Saturday! We can’t wait to see you in the MoMA PS1 courtyard for performances from Dan Bodan featuring Draveng, EGYPTRIXX, Clark, Vince Staples, Derrick May, and additional artists to be announced!

The first day of class is always the worst. This summer’s In the Making program was no different. At nearly 10:00 a.m. on a sunny Tuesday morning in July, our new group of teens shuffled into the Museum silently, diverting all eye contact and slouching in their seats as if it made them invisible. But I knew them more than they realized. I’d carefully read each of their applications and typed their first and last names onto the official MoMA Teens ID cards they would receive as a first day rite of passage. Beneath their apprehensive facades, I knew they had shown up longing for a creative experience unlike any they had participated in thus far.

Before beginning my role assisting with all of the different aspects of MoMA’s teen programming two years ago, I taught traditional oil painting and figure drawing workshops at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. There, I witnessed the ways learning technical skills can empower students through providing the tools and confidence to visually represent the world around them. In MoMA’s In the Making programs, I’m seeing how a menu of experimental and nontraditional courses empowers students in exciting and different ways. In the spirit of the modernist artists in MoMA’s collection, our teen programs challenge and deconstruct the academic and traditional values that many NYC youth (and people of all ages) still firmly cling to when analyzing artistic quality and intent. We shake up their world, and the shy adolescents from the first day emerge totally unrecognizable after six short, intense weeks in the Museum.

This summer’s course offerings included You Think This Is a Game?!, which tackled sculpture through the lens of physicality, competition, and the antihero; Jaimie Warren’s House of Horror, which made comically gory GIFs re-creating horror clips and an elaborate cardboard kitchen installation exploring DIY techniques and the boundaries of good taste; The Surreal World, in which students delved into the subconscious through automatic drawing, assemblage, dream journaling, and the absurd; and [email protected]: Sight + Sound Lab, which involved creating audio and video mash-ups and album covers, many influenced by the visual culture of 1990s hip-hop and political events of our time.

Some might question the value of “scribbling” all over the walls or making crude sculptures with cardboard and tape. “How does that sharpen their artistic skills?” they might ask, or, “How does that experience prepare them for the real world? Why should they spend their summer in a studio when they could be prepping for the SATs?”

Personally, I also became seriously involved in art as a teenager. Growing up in suburban Atlanta, I always did well in class but often felt like I was just going through the motions. Art class was the one place where things weren’t simply wrong or right. This created an exciting challenge that led me to new and less narrow modes of thinking. In art class, I was fortunate to find a community that introduced me to the beauty of subjectivity, expression, and interpretation. It was an eye-opening, liberating moment in my development, and facilitating similar experiences for our young participants is a constant aim of mine.

Many of the teens I encounter are so accustomed to measuring themselves against their peers in one way or another, and it can be difficult to move beyond the binaries of good/bad or skilled/unskilled that are already rooted in their minds. I can relate, as it can be easy for me to slip back into this prosaic mode of thinking if I don’t actively keep it in check. Something I frequently find myself telling students (and myself) is, “Don’t compare yourself to others.” As basic and obvious as this statement sounds, I’m discovering it’s one of the most effective and empowering.

In the Making aims to nurture very different kinds of skills than AP Art History or some academic figure drawing course might provide. Not because one type of skill is better than the other, but because they are equally valid. Our students don’t receive a certificate or school credit for their time with us, but they continue to come to the studio day after day to make cool stuff. Our classes may appear messy, chaotic, and strange, but this is exactly what creates an open-ended and playful space, nurturing new and overlooked skills such as radical thinking, idea execution, collaboration, and more. I feel our efforts to distance the program from the realms of grades, status, and measurability is the key to creating the transformative experiences and tight-knit communities I’ve seen emerge season after season. This open-endedness is one of the true gifts of the program, especially considering NYC is a city where students begin standardized testing in early elementary school. Freedom to experiment is not simply a perk of In the Making, but its lifeblood.

And just as the first day of class is the worst, the last week of classes is almost always the best, as the profound shift that took place over the past 18 sessions of studio time becomes intensely palpable. On the final day of class this summer, teen artists confidently occupied MoMA’s studio spaces, grabbing supplies and claiming whatever corner of the room they needed to frantically hammer the last nails into their sculptures or make the final edits on their video mash-ups. Playlists boomed out of the speakers, surrounding the buzzing chitchat of a focused and lively group. Some were having an intense critique in the mezzanine, while others decided to trash a piece they’d worked on for hours because they just weren’t feeling it anymore. When class time was up, no one wanted to leave.

At our Teen Art Show opening two days later, one of our exceptionally thoughtful In the Making and Cross-Museum Collective alumni, Priya, gave us a handwritten thank-you note. Part of it read: 

Before I left for school, I just wanted to let you guys know how thankful I am for the MoMA Teens education program. I truly do mean it when I say that being a MoMA Teen has changed my life. I don’t know if I’d even be studying art in college if it wasn’t for the confidence that MoMA Teen programming has given me…. Since my In the Making class last summer, I found my passion for art, discovered the teen art community in NYC & all the events available to me, learned more that I could ever imagine about the MoMA (aka my favorite museum in the universe), made friends who share the same passion as me & gained the confidence to pursue a career in the art field.

Beyond being rewarding and heartwarming to read, Priya’s note sums up the experience we hope to create for all of our participants. It is not our goal to have every student we work with go on to study art in college. But instilling confidence, rethinking possibilities, nurturing skills to execute ideas, and building communities will enrich any young person’s life, regardless of the path they pursue.

Extra special thanks to Calder Zwicky, Ali Santana, Zephyr Doles, Jaimie Warren, Sofia Dixon, Keith Mendak, Ray Ferreira, Leah Wolff, Esteban Jefferson, Guy Ben-Ari, Matt Roche, Adam Tetzloff, Chris Annibell, and OP Miller.

We kick off the new film series Modern Matinees with the 1922 Harold Lloyd (American, 1893–1971) silent feature Grandma’s Boy. As an unexpected confluence of film programming and film history, Grandma’s Boy was first released on September 3, 1922—93 years ago this week—so it seems like an opportunity to take a deeper look into the film and its bespectacled star, Harold Lloyd.

We’re covering an extra day this week to take things through Labor Day. Happy looooong weekend!

Last Saturday was all about chill, breezy house vibes in the MoMA PS1 courtyard—the idyllic Warm Up atmosphere. Laraaji began by introducing the crowd to his laughter meditation and sound immersion with delicate, breezy music from soothing instruments like wind chimes and a converted zither played like a drum. The Mood Hut collective then took over with a b2b set from Hashman Deejay and Pender Street Steppers, complete with the label’s definitive woozy, summery house music.