This research was based at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and supported by the SNF and was a research cooperation between the Institute for Art Education (IAE) and the Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts (ICS). The aim was to analyze forms of representation of gallery education in contemporary art museums and galleries in Switzerland as well as Liechtenstein.
Representing Gallery Education
was based at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and supported by SNF. The research cooperation amongst the Institute for Art Education (IAE) and the Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts (ICS) analysed forms of representation of gallery education in contemporary art museums and galleries in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. This project was a desideratum both in the research context of cultural studies and (re-) readings of the institution museum as well as in research in art education.In this research, the position of Visual Cultural Studies served as a theoretical and conceptual reference point. The research team, led by Prof. Carmen Mörsch and Prof. Dr. Sigrid Schade, comprised colleagues contributing knowledge and experience in research, theory and practice of Studies in Visual Culture and Art Education. The corpus for analysis were materials of representation such as project documentations, information brochures and print or online publications of museums’ education departments. These materials were analysed with a focus on critique of representation and on power relations.
The main questions were: Which dominant patterns of representation appear in the material, and what are significant deviations from these patterns? What frames the specific modes and manners of showing art education, how are they legitimised and which processes of interpellation and subjectivication become manifest? For this research, representations of gallery education were understood as productive practices, which do not show reality in a direct and neutral way, but produce art education in a particular manner, as well as commenting on it. This giving-something-to-see is framed by complex preconditions, assumptions, consciously and unconsciously made decisions which predetermine the visualisation. The institutions‘ own designs, current discussions about the relation of «education», «culture» and «society», but also pictorial traditions of «artists in modernity» play a crucial role – as our preliminary work showed.
The results of the study will contribute to the foundation and further development of a reflexive and transformative discourse on the representation of gallery education in the academy and in cultural institutions – and beyond those spaces.
The project resulted in the publication of the journal issue Art Education Research #7 . A conference and a more extensive publication are forthcoming.