Perspectives on the Relationship Between Schools and Museums of Contemporary Art: Contributions of a European Project

Author(s):

Marta Ornelas(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

29. Research on Arts Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

29 SES 09, Dialogues between the Art Museum and the School

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-04

11:00-12:30

Room:

B120 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Tiago Assis

Contribution

The purpose of this communication is to make an approach to the relationship between schools and museums of contemporary art, identifying problems and raising questions. School visits to museums have been a common practice used by art teachers. The relationship between these two institutions should be empathetic and effective, but some questions can be posted. How do schools relate with museums of contemporary art? Are the discourses of museums adapted to schools? Do schools have a compliant attitude with what museums expect? Why many students find moments of boredom in museums? (Moutinho and Ferreira, 2007; Oliveira, 2009). Contributions for possible answers can be found in a study conducted within the European project ITEMS (Innovative Teaching for European Museum Strategies). The ITEMS project took place in 2010-1012 and involved 6 countries and 7 partners, from: Italy, Associazione Nazionale di Storia dell'Arte Insegnanti (ANISA) and Associazione Idee per la Cultura (Eccom); Luxembourg, Université du Luxembourg; Hungary, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest; Portugal, Associação de Professores de Expressão e Comunicação Visual (APECV); France, Institut National d' Histoire de l'Art; Latvia, Tris Krasas. The results of this study provided indications that not always the discourses of museums meet the needs of schools, and not always the attitudes of schools are compatible with a productive work by museums (Eça and Ornelas, 2011). In general, museums typify their public and construct ideas about the behaviors of teachers and students, which ideally should believe in what the museum displays, positioning themselves with the same values, knowledge and expectations of those who organized the exhibition (Padró, 2009). Teachers often consider, in a closed vision, that the museum is an extension of the classroom where students should acquire certain knowledge. So, teachers end up using the museum to support the school curriculum (Gómez, 2009).

A balanced relationship between schools and museums assumes that both are on equal positions, but, in general, schools go to museums, but museums don't go to schools. Thus, the micro-narratives of teachers and students get lost, instead of being one of the starting points for the museum, which considering the personal and subjective experiences, could cross formats that pretend to be erudits (Padró, apud Juanola, 2010).

The museum has the power to provide a glimpse into the world around the students, but most of the time it's directed only to explain art history or the artists' creative process. The texts displayed often contain references to art history in a sophisticated vocabulary. In the exhibition discourse, students, and often teachers, don't see themselves reflected, because they only see fragments of a story that they don't know, in a modernist conception of art education (Padró, 2009), through a very schoolar practice: the museum educator talks while the students and teachers hear, preferably silent, responding only when they are asked to, propagating the "legitimacy of passivity" (Giroux, apud Olorunda, 2012). Although learning is a social activity "some art museums have a quiet air like a church, discouraging active debate and verbal interaction" (Hein, 1991).

Thus, the relationship between schools ans musems is uneven, although it's possible to find projects in which schools and museums run more egalitarian positions, assuming that museums go to schools, eg. in Spain (Garaigorta, 2011; Hernández, 2013) or in Portugal: the annual school projects of Serralves Foundation and of Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, and the pilot project 10x10 of the Gulbenkian Foundation. In these cases, museum educators or artists go to schools. The project 10x10 assigned the importance of the sudents' micro-narratives as a form of active participation and involvement, essential conditions for learning with critical thinking (Acaso, 2009).

Method

The methodology is based on my active participation in ITEMS project (Innovative Teaching for European Museum Strategies) a European project that was awarded by the Italian training agency as one of the 20 best projects of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union, on 2012. This project involved the holding of a seminar on the subject in each of the six partner countries (Italy, Luxembourg, Hungary, Portugal, France and Latvia), lasting two or three days each, and national and international speakers. So, it constituted a generous source of knowledge about what are the museums' practices and how is handled their relationship with schools, in different countries. The ITEMS group produced some written documents about the relationship between schools and museums, arising from the data collected in each partner country, including questionnaires (of open and closed response) to students, teachers and museum educators. In the Portuguese case, the questionnaire was administered at the Berardo Collection Museum, to their museum educators, as well as to teachers and students who visited the museum, comming from different cities in Portugal. Although the methods of data collection in the ITEMS project were based on questionnaires, it would be beneficial a qualitative approach to the problem, because the quantitative research fails in many details, being necessary to design methods open enough to contemplate all the individual variables (Flick, 2007). Thus, the collected data serve me now to build my own narrative, also based on my experience of visiting museums, either as a teacher with my classes, either as individual visitor, or even as an observer of school visits. The tools that I have used in finding answers to the research problem are, beyond the ITEMS data, interviews and observations at schools and museums of contemporary art that have received them, by a passive participation and also by a moderate participation (Recio & Rasco, 2003). The schools where I conducted observations and interviews are located in Lisbon and on the outskirts of the capital. The Portuguese contemporary art museums where I conducted observations and interviews were the Berardo Collection Museum and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, both in Lisbon, and the House of Stories Paula Rego in Cascais.

Expected Outcomes

The study prepared for ITEMS suggests that the relationship between schools and museums is often staggered. Museums believe that most teachers don't prepare classes and that prevents a proper awareness about the content of the visit (Eça and Ornelas, 2011): "Most students are part of a very little trained public, some of them with references of art history that almost never go to contemporaneity", says a museum educator. About 20% of the surveyed teachers reported that museums don't understand the functioning of schools and 14% have difficulties in contacting museums (Ornelas, 2012). Schools believe that museums educate and often make an appropriation of what museums can offer through an excessive attachment to school curricula. Schools believe that museums could be freer places, but as museums catalog people as particular visitors profiles, it limits this freedom, because cataloging means waiting for people to have certain behaviors adjusted to the typified profile (Eça, Saldanha and Vidal, 2012). There are disagreements on the discourse of museums and the schools' needs and this relationship is unequal, because in most cases museums take hegemonic positions subjecting schools to their rules and discourses. These speeches are directed (Ellsworth, 2005), "teaching" students to reproduce a universal truth, according to modernist practices that don't allow the micro-narrative, and don't contribute to critical thinking. In order to change this reality of a staggered and unequal relationship between schools and museums, some of the teachers suggested that each school and museum could have a person responsible for making the link between these two institutions, because that would facilitate the process (Ornelas, 2012). However, it's important that both schools and museums have critical thinking as a pedagogical goal. This requires that all actions carried out may have repercussions in the real life of the participants of the educational activity (Acaso, 2009).

References

Acaso, María. (2009). "Lo Rizómico como Alternativa a lo Vertical: el método mupai y su direccionabilidad en desbandada". III Congrés d'Educació de les Arts Visuals: per un diàleg entre les arts. Barcelona (paper). Eça. Teresa & Ornelas, Marta. (2011). Innovative Teaching For European Museum Strategies: Report From APECV – Portugal. [Consult. 16-06-2011] Available at: http://www.anisa.it/items_documents.htm Ellsworth, Elizabeth. (2005). Posiciones en la Enseñanza. Diferencia, Pedagogía y el Poder de la Direccionalidad. Madrid: Ediciones Akal. Flick, U. (2007). Introducción a la Investigación Cualitativa. Madrid: Ediciones Morata. Garaigorta, Charo. (2011). "Yo Pienso o me piensan?". In Perspectvas: Situación Actual de la Educación en los Museos de Artes Visuales. Madrid/Barcelona: Editorial Ariel. Pp.64-69. Gómez, Silvia. (2009). "Un Museo sin Etiquetas". In III Congrés d'Educació de les Arts Visuals: per un diàleg entre les arts. Barcelona (paper). Hein, G. (1991). "Constructivist Learning Theory". In The Museum and the Needs of People. CECA (International Committee of Museum Educators) Conference. Jerusalem Israel, 15-22 October (paper). Hernández, Fernando. (2013). "Modos de Relacionamento entre Crianças e Jovens e Arte Contemporânea na Escola (e o Museu)". Conferência A arte contemporanea como ferramenta para a sala de aula. Lisboa, Culturgest, 23 February (paper). Moutinho, Ana e Ferreira, Isabel (2007). "Internet, Museu e Educação: alguns exemplos de e para Portugal e Brasil". In Teresa Toldy et al. Actas do Congresso Internacional de Cidadania(s): discursos e práticas. Porto: Universidade Fernando Pessoa. Oliveira, Genoveva. (2009). “A importância da comunidade no processo artístico: Quando a Escola vai ao Museu.” In Revista Noesis Online. DGIDC. [Consult. 09-06-2011]. Available at: http://sitio.dgidc.min-edu.pt/revista_noesis/Paginas/DaEscolaparaaEscola.aspx Olorunda, T. (2012). "On Teachers: Beyond 'Good' and 'Bad'". Dissident Voice magazine. September 20th. [Consult. 09-12-2013] Available at http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/09/on-teachers-beyond-good-and-bad/ Ornelas, Marta. (2012). "Visitar um Museu: cruzamento de perspectivas de professores, alunos e monitores". Actas do Seminário Internacional Atravessar pontes entre escolas e museus. Porto, Fundação de Serralves, 12 a 14 Outubro. Padró, Carla. (2009). "Compartiendo Momentos de Tránsito: la Investigación Educativa en Museos como un Espacio de Posibilidad Intermedia". In Actas do I Seminário de Investigação m Museologia dos Países de Língua Portuguesa e Espanhola. Vol. 2. Porto: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto. Pp.34-46. [Consult. 09-11-2011] Available at: http://ler.letras.up.pt/site/default.aspx?qry=id03id1319&sum=sim Recio, R. V. & Rasco, F. A. (2003). Introducción a los Estudios de Casos: Los primeros contactos con la Investigación Etnográfica. Granada: Ediciones Aljibe.

Author Information

Marta Ornelas (presenting / submitting)

University of Barcelona and CEMRI (Centro Centro de Estudos da Migrações e Relações Interculturais)

Cacém

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