Inspired by the authors' experiences of looking at and making art with kids and families at the Museum of Modern Art, and designed to get both children and adults to start thinking like artists, this volume presents an array of projects that use easy-to-find materials and encourage hours of imaging, designing, experimenting, constructing, creating, tinkering, and play.

Today the Museum of Modern Art is widely recognized for establishing the canon of modern art; yet in its early years, the museum considered modern art part of a still unfolding experiment in contemporary visual production. By bracketing MoMA's early history from its later reputation, this book explores the ways the Museum acted as a laboratory to set an ambitious agenda for the exhibition of a multidisciplinary idea of modern art. Between its founding in 1929 and its 20th anniversary in 1949, MoMA created the first museum departments of architecture and design, film, and photography in the country, marshaled modern art as a political tool, and brought consumer culture into a versatile yet institutional context. Encompassing 14 essays that investigate the diversity of modern art, this volume demonstrates how MoMA's programming shaped a version of modern art that was not elitist but fundamentally intertwined with all levels of cultural production.

"A powerful document of the inner lives and creative visions of men and women rendered invisible by America’s prison system. More than two million people are currently behind bars in the United States. Incarceration not only separates the imprisoned from their families and communities; it also exposes them to shocking levels of deprivation and abuse and subjects them to the arbitrary cruelties of the criminal justice system. Yet, as Nicole Fleetwood reveals, America’s prisons are filled with art. Despite the isolation and degradation they experience, the incarcerated are driven to assert their humanity in the face of a system that dehumanizes them. Based on interviews with currently and formerly incarcerated artists, prison visits, and the author’s own family experiences with the penal system, Marking Time shows how the imprisoned turn ordinary objects into elaborate works of art. Working with meager supplies and in the harshest conditions—including solitary confinement—these artists find ways to resist the brutality and depravity that prisons engender. The impact of their art, Fleetwood observes, can be felt far beyond prison walls. Their bold works, many of which are being published for the first time in this volume, have opened new possibilities in American art. As the movement to transform the country’s criminal justice system grows, art provides the imprisoned with a political voice. Their works testify to the economic and racial injustices that underpin American punishment and offer a new vision of freedom for the twenty-first century."

Foreword by Glenn D. Lowry. Text by Roxana Marcoci.

This text examines the collection of feminist art in the Museum of Modern Art. It features essays presenting a range of generational and cultural perspectives.

"Picasso: The Making of Cubism 1912-1914 delves into a watershed moment in the history of twentieth-century art and in Pablo Picasso's career through in-depth studies of fifteen objects made by the artist between 1912 and 1914. Catalyzed by MoMA's 2011 exhibition Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914, this interactive digital publication reveals for the first time the many insights gained by curators, scholars, and conservators through first-hand examination of the works in the Museum's galleries and in the conservation lab."--