MoMA Art Lab

$4.99, iPad

Teaches: modern art, some creativity

CTR Rating: 78%

CTR Review

This well-intentioned creativity experience from The Museum of Modern Art (aka MoMA) in New York City has limited creativity power but some good activity ideas. The heart of the app is the blank canvas, called Ideas, where you can mix and match basic geometric shapes and scribbles in 48 colors. Missing are the "undo" or "redo" features, both key omissions for any type of creativity experience. For example, if you make an accidental line, there is no way to quickly remove it. You can erase the entire canvas or draw in the background color, but this is a clunky solution and you risk loosing work. While objects can be resized, this is a less-than-straightforward process, too, because the objects tend to hang. An idea section of the app introduces you to the work of six artists, and then gives you a chance to apply the ideas using a touch-based activity. Our favorite was "Create a line design" where you see the world of artist Jim Lamble, who creates art for a specific place using strips of colored tape. The app equivalent lets you fill in a grid with different colors. Another activity lets you create "sound compositions" by associating stock sounds (like breaking glass) with an item on the screen. Finished products can be easily saved and shared online, although we did not try this upload feature. For introducing the concept of modern art, this app can work. It's too bad the drawing and creativity options aren't better designed. Note that the sharing function in this app, which permits a child to share artwork with MoMA, and with others by e-mail or Twitter, is turned off by default so that parents can decide whether to permit their child to share their artwork. Instructions for enabling sharing can be found in the Information/For Parents section of the app. The App was designed and developed by RenderMonkey Design.