MoMA and Louise Lawler launch #DrawingWithMoMA to stoke creativity in quarantine

As social distancing and “safer-at-home” orders are further enforced around the world, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Brooklyn-based artist Louise Lawler have partnered together to provide a stress-relieving creativity exercise in the form of 12 black-and-white colouring sheets based on the artist’s photographs featuring scenes from museums and other art venues that are currently shuttered. The colouring sheets, made in collaboration with the children’s book illustrator Jon Buller, can be downloaded and printed for free on MoMA’s website, and make references to work by artists ranging from Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami to On Kawara. Some of the photographs-turned-tracings were included in Lawler’s 2017 MoMA exhibition Why Pictures Now curated by Kelly Sidley and Roxana Marcoci. The initiative “comes from the artist’s interest in the way art can reach viewers beyond the museum and gallery system, and can playfully contribute to personal creative transformation,” Marcoci says. The museum is encouraging users to show-off their coloured drawings on social media with the hashtag #DrawingwithMoMA.