MoMA Books iPad App—Better E-Archive than E-Reader

Officially released on Monday, MoMA Books is an iPad app which currently offers free samples of five MoMA publications (with more to come) which can then be purchased for between $19.99 and $49.99 and viewed in full, in high resolution, within the app. These "e-books" duplicate the pages and layouts of the original print editions exactly. It's beautiful viewing, but when it comes to actually reading the books, of questionable utility.

Reading the books requires zooming into a page and manually swiping around the various columns of text. This makes for an awkward reading experience at best. Additionally, the app lacks text search, highlighting, or note-taking of any kind. The one e-book-like feature that is offered in MoMA Books is bookmarking. As many pages as you want, as often as you want. So, if that's what you're looking for in an e-reading experience, maybe this is for you.

  
Full page from Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art viewed in MoMA Books app, and maximum zoom of that same page, showing page navigation and bookmark controls

It's also not at all clear if you can download purchased books onto your computer or other device, or if you can then print the pages. At those prices you'd hope so, but then again, at those prices, who'd want to risk trying?

The app's overall approach will be of value for those looking to access these titles instantly and as they originally appeared (and a couple are indeed otherwise out of print and for this I applaud MoMA) or who merely want to enjoy them like they might one sitting on their coffee table, but there's little incentive for those wanting to read or study the texts in any detail. In that case, you'd be better off finding a print copy at your local library or bookstore.

While their effort is commendable and lovely to look at, the app ultimately seems little more than a glorified PDF reader. Were MoMA trying only to create a library of PDFs, LACMA's free online Reading Room seems a better approach. Were they trying to create a true e-book experience, I would have liked to see them think about stripped-down simplified versions of the books that could be optimized for e-book devices like the Kindle or Nook (exchanging layout for legibility), or in the other direction, something more like MoMA's own very successful, extremely smart and impressive iPad app/exhibition catalogue, MoMA AB EX NY. Or some combination of all these things. As it stands now though, MoMA Books might be better named MoMA Archive, more properly implying a historical collection of the museum's publishing past, rather than a technological leap into its future.

MoMA Books Titles Available:

• Atget, by John Szarkowski (2000) $24.99 books app / out of print
• Beyond the Visible: The Art of Odilon Redon, by Jodi Hauptman (2005) $39.99 books app / out of print
• Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art, by Cornelia H. Butler and Alexandra Schwartz (2010) $49.99 or three chunks at $19.99 each in the books app / $65.00 hardcover
• Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, by Wu Hung with Peggy Wang, (2010) $19.99 books app / $40.00 paperback
• Objects of Design from The Museum of Modern Art, by Paola Antonelli (2003) $19.99 books app / $39.95 hardcover