Feb 8, 1:30-2:30pm
Sarah Meister, Sara Bodinson, Kelly Cannon (Museum of Modern Art, NY)
MoMA’s Seeing Through Photographs and Creating Access through Online Platforms

Join us for a lecture and conversation with Sarah Meister, Sara Bodinson, and Kelly Cannon, creators of MoMA’s first MOOC, Seeing Through Photographs. Taught by MoMA photography curator Sarah Meister and produced by Sara Bodinson’s research and digital learning team in the Education Department, this was MoMA’s first offering of its kind, opening up their incredible collection to a global community of learners and art lovers. Almost 200,000 people from 185 countries have enrolled in it since it launched Feb 2016, and its success has led to other exciting MoMA projects that we will also discuss.

Sarah Meister became a Curator at The Museum of Modern Art in 2009, having joined the Department of Photography in 1997. Her recent exhibitions include From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires: Grete Stern and Horacio Coppola (2015; co-curator), Modern Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection, 1909–1949 (2014-15; co-curator), Nicholas Nixon: Forty Years of The Brown Sisters (2014); Walker Evans American Photographs, 75th anniversary (2013-14), and Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light (2013). Meister contributes to and edits a variety of Museum and external publications including most recently Photography at MoMA: 1960 to Now (2015). Articles pertaining to her C-MAP research appear in Aperture magazine on Regina Silveira (#215, Summer 2014) and Horacio Coppola (#213, Winter 2013). Meister has been responsible for a number of acquisitions by Latin American artists including Iñaki Bonillas, Oscar Bony, Horacio Coppola, Alfredo Cortina, Geraldo de Barros, Sara Facio, Paulo Gasparini, Alair Gomes, Carlos Herrera, Eduardo Hirose, Liliana Porter, and Regina Silveira. Many of these were exhibited in American Photography: Recent Acquisitions from The Museum of Modern Art (2014; co-curated, in conjunction with Paris Photo 2014 at the Grand Palais). She holds an AB in Art History from Princeton University, with honors, and is a recipient of the Lee Tenenbaum Award for outstanding research and scholarship.

Sara Bodinson is Director, Interpretation, Research & Digital Learning at The Museum of Modern Art. She joined MoMA in 2000, coordinating internships for college and graduate students as well as well as programs and web initiatives for teens (Red Studio). In 2009, she was named Director, Interpretation & Research, overseeing the Museum’s interpretive planning process and the development of resources including interpretive texts, audio tours, apps, games, MoMA Learning, as well as qualitative visitor research and evaluation. In 2015, her responsibilities expanded to oversee MoMA’s digital learning initiatives, including massive open online courses (Modern Art & Ideas, Seeing Through Photographs, In the Studio, Fashion as Design), podcasts (A Piece of Work), Wikipedia edit-a-thons (including Art + Feminism, WikiArte) and more. Bodinson holds a BA in art history and film studies from Smith College and an MA in art history from Hunter College, where she wrote her thesis about the Arab Image Foundation. She is also a member of the executive committee of the Professional Organization of Women in the Arts, the Editorial Team of Post: Notes on Modern and Contemporary Art Around the Globe, and the Museum Visiting Committee at the Smith College Museum of Art.