Visual Arts teacher Phaedra Mastrocola works with second- and fourth-graders at Berkeley Carroll Lower School, Brooklyn
One driving metaphor behind MoMA Learning—the museum’s digital hub for educational resources on modern and contemporary art—was that of a “tool box” or “kit”—an assemblage of parts that could be used, shared, and modified for a variety of learning environments and styles.
A view of the MoMA.org home page
Screenshot of a webinar taught by Lisa Mazzola and Beth Harris
I’ve never considered myself particularly “tech-savvy,” but recently I began to rethink that notion. Over the past year or so, I have been experimenting with technology. At first the whole process seemed counterintuitive to what we try to do as museum educators. For me, the appeal of teaching has always been the engagement with people and facilitating meaningful interactions with works of art and with one another. I was not sure if that could actually be accomplished online, but I was willing to explore the possibilities.
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Home of Transmediale Festival. Photo by Julia Kaganskiy.
Berlin has been calling to me for quite a while—for years I’ve been hearing breathless accounts of the thriving arts scene there—and I’ve been searching for an opportunity to go. So when a friend of mine from San Francisco told me about Transmediale, a festival and conference dedicated to new media, digital art, and futurity, taking place in Berlin the first week of February, my mind was made up. I had to go. Even if it did mean Berlin in February.
As Director of Digital Learning, I might just have the best job in the world. Take today as an example. At 10:00 a.m., I reviewed video for an online studio course about the materials and techniques of Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Barnett Newman (among others) that my coworker Amy Horschak and I hope to run this summer (it is being developed by Corey d’Augustine). At 2:00, I brainstormed with colleagues about new content for the blog. At 5:00, I attended an exhibition opening for the Education department’s CreateAbility class, a monthly program for individuals with learning and developmental disabilities and their families. I brought in the camera just in time to hear parents talk about how meaningful the class was for their children. (We’ll be adding the video to the Learn section of the site, which is being updated later this spring.) By 7:00 I was watching a program organized by my colleagues Laura Beiles and Pablo Helguera: the artist William Kentridge on stage in Theater 1, performing I am not me, the horse is not mine.
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