Art Gallery research

exhibition of history of photography of sculpture

interesting photography/sculpture themes

Remember the talk we had from our US visitor regarding a theory of 'stages' of understanding? It's neatly summarised here, in an interesting article about writing for adult audiences. This whole website - Museum-Ed - is excellent. It collates museum education documents from various institutions (mostly US) and is a mine of information about conferences, training info, education guidelines, etc. And very easy to navigate :)

A US organisation that promotes access to art for the visually impaired - includes some good training materials/guidelines.

Blog in response to a pretty damning article about the Brooklyn Museums community engagement or 'popularism' http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/arts/design/15museum.html?scp=1&sq=brooklyn%20museu

Funny title, interesting article. A good round up of (relatively) recent shifts in educational practice that have strong implications for learning in the museum. It's by Anna Cutler from the Tate, who gave one of the interviews in the 'Tate Encounters', posted by Sheona below.

I think what's good about this is the way she has taken on board the recent scholarship into teaching and learning and conceptualizes public and education programs in galleries through this without thinking that it is the same thing - she looks at what is unique and where the strengths lie.

I just posted this and now realise it's old news for you all, still the article is probably worth another highlight.

Open Studio is a set of lesson ideas authored by contemporary artists for K-12 teachers. Conceived by artist Mark Bradford, it is the inaugural project of the Getty Artists Program.

New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) director Glenn D Lowry delivers a keynote speech, Museums Of The 21st Century, at Melbourne's Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) on Thursday, June 24, 2010.

MoMA | Do You Know Your MoMA? 06/25/2010

INSIDE/OUT is the blog of MoMA and P.S.1

Museum Motion and Emotion in the City article is interesting in that it challenges our assumptions of museum as place and suggests musem as presence as a preferable aim.

I think this is only the first page of the article but if you want to see the whole thing I have a copy I can show you.

This recording is part of: Education Practice at Tate 1970-present Programme A Monday 23 February - Friday 27 February 2009 In considering how museums have significantly reconfigured their relationships with audiences over the last decade and given how Learning as a department carries a notable responsibility in developing audiences, this series of interviews with present and past members of Tate staff aims to create an understanding and account of how Education practice within Tate has historically evolved from information and explanation to interpretation, engagement to participation, informal knowledge to professional research. Questions to be considered in this programme in relation to Education practice are: * Since its inception what are the historical legacies of the original Education Department within the operation of Tate and more recently Tate Britain? * Where has Education been historically positioned and now? * What kind of agency does Education hold within the production and reproduction of knowledge within Tate? * What is its relationship to a research practice? * How does it configure its publics?

(It's a long interview, so I'm listening to it in the background whilst doing other things, which might mean I'm missing things...) But two things that stand out so far: she champions the position that quality and accessibility are not mutually exclusive; and she speaks of 'publics' (much as we speak of 'audiences', plural). Now, these might seem like self-evident and perhaps somewhat lofty aims, but what does it really mean? How do we embed these values/ideals in our programs? I think these are amongst our biggest challenges...

the interview is way too long but there are some good bits. She doesn't really offer any instruction about quality and accessibility not being mutually exclusive but just champions the cause. In fact there's a lot of cause championing and she says she has a fabulous team who help her out and do everything. She seems to be embedding scholarship in their discipline which seems like a good thing to me.

Been travelling in the States. First to Washington to present the George Brown Goode Memorial Lecture at the Smithsonian (talk titled How Web 2.0 is Changing the Nature of Museum Work), then to the American Association of Museums Conference in Los Angeles (presentation titled The Museum's new website: transforming educational audiences). Here's my notes/impressions of the state of our sector.

lots of good ideas being circulated in these conferences

Rhizome is dedicated to the creation, presentation, preservation, and critique of emerging artistic practices that engage technology.

TED Talks In this poignant, funny follow-up to his fabled 2006 talk, Sir Ken Robinson makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning -- creating conditions where kids' natural talents can flourish.