This research on gallery education in Switzerland was conducted in a collaboration between four art schools and six museums of design and contemporary art. Core to the project's approach was connecting experimental practice with a team-based reflexive processes.
The notion of what gallery education („Kunstvermittlung“) can be has been transforming rapidly and will continue to do so. This is, in Switzerland, due to changes in the field of cultural politics, higher education curricula, and of educational practice itself in museums and galleries. In theoretical reflection, the transformative potential of learning from the arts is widely acknowledged; newly evolving discussions consider that educational practice can both change institutions and individuals.
Gallery Education in Transformation aimed to lay the foundation for the research on gallery education in Switzerland in a collaboration between four art academies and six museums of design and contemporary art, by connecting experimental practice with a team-based reflexive process and an accompanying research.
The main objectives of the project were: firstly to develop criteria for transformative strategies in close collaboration with practicioners, putting into account the institutions as well as their urban surroundings. By embedding the research in a team process, the experiments effect a qualititative enhancement of the practicioners’ actions as well as their reflexive tasks and understanding, and thus secure enduring changes in the galleries’ programmes.
Secondly, the team worked on appropriate research tools for gallery education that apply and combine approaches from the fine arts (artistic research), from social science (qualitative/performative methods), art history, and pedagogy (constructivist learning models, critical pedagogy).
Differing from approaches or strategies in the discourse on „Kunstvermittlung“ that are oriented towards creativity and thus individual development, or, as marketing strategies, aim towards a mere quantitative audience development, this locates the objectives and potentials of artistic-educational processes in a broader and at the same time more precise way. Gallery education represents and constructs the institution, but may also change it, depending on the ways in which it refers to it: Affirmative, reproductive, deconstructive and also – transformative. Regarding the social responsability of museums, education with and through the arts can produce learning and experimental environments that engage the public.
Publication Gallery Education in Transformation:
Kunstvermittlung in Transformation. Ergebnisse und Perspektiven eines Forschungsprojektes
ISBN: 978-3-85881-340-4 Scheidegger & Spiess
Published February 2012