DoubleX: Kid Made Modern Reviewed

My review (with DIY slideshow!) of Todd Oldham’s Kid Made Modern is up on DoubleX today. Needless to say, it is much less happy happy, joy joy than most of the other coverage. A sampling:

But to want your children to make something modern is to art-direct their elementary school experience. And isn’t that the opposite of creative? Aggressively aiming your children to follow in the footsteps of a pathbreaker like Anni Albers, when all they want to do is make a potholder, seems odd. I was also made uneasy by the underlying suggestion that my kid could do this. Imitating the masters is a very old-fashioned way to teach art appreciation. In Kid Made Modern, the project “Form + Fun” offers a downloadable template to help you cut the biomorphic forms of Isamu Noguchi’s 1940s sculpture out of poster board. Those forms came from European Surrealism and took Noguchi to stone-carving. The exercise seems pointless as play and derogatory to the artist.

Observed

View all

Jobs

View all

Share on Social

By Alexandra Lange

Alexandra Lange is an architecture critic and author, and the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner for Criticism, awarded for her work as a contributing writer for Bloomberg CityLab. She is currently the architecture critic for Curbed and has written extensively for Design Observer, Architect, New York Magazine, and The New York Times. Lange holds a PhD in 20th-century architecture history from New York University. Her writing often explores the intersection of architecture, urban planning, and design, with a focus on how the built environment shapes everyday life. She is also a recipient of the Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary from AIGA, an honor she shares with Design Observer’s Editor-in-Chief, Ellen McGirt.