Book Section
Alethea Rockwell
‘We Are Gathering Experience’
Restaging the History of Art Education
In recent years, critics and art historians have pointed to an ‘educational turn’, a rise in participatory pedagogical art projects and artist-led experimental schools. This essay considers artist-led projects and museum programmes that restage or reenact educational experiments from the past, analysing their limits and possibilities in the study and presentation of modern art history. Much like performance art, pedagogy is ephemeral and contingent, and yet it differs in that it does not establish a fixed spectatorial role. To be understood it must be participated in, for, as Josef Albers described his teaching, ‘we are gathering experience’.
Keywords: Pedagogy; Teaching; Museum Education
| Title |
‘We Are Gathering Experience’
|
| Subtitle |
Restaging the History of Art Education
|
| Author(s) |
Alethea Rockwell
|
| Identifier | |
| Description |
In recent years, critics and art historians have pointed to an ‘educational turn’, a rise in participatory pedagogical art projects and artist-led experimental schools. This essay considers artist-led projects and museum programmes that restage or reenact educational experiments from the past, analysing their limits and possibilities in the study and presentation of modern art history. Much like performance art, pedagogy is ephemeral and contingent, and yet it differs in that it does not establish a fixed spectatorial role. To be understood it must be participated in, for, as Josef Albers described his teaching, ‘we are gathering experience’.
|
| Is Part Of | |
| Place |
Berlin
|
| Publisher |
ICI Berlin Press
|
| Date |
4 January 2022
|
| Subject |
Pedagogy
Teaching
Museum Education
|
| Rights |
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
|
| Language |
en-GB
|
| page start |
255
|
| page end |
260
|
| Source |
Over and Over and Over Again: Reenactment Strategies in Contemporary Arts and Theory, ed. by Cristina Baldacci, Clio Nicastro, and Arianna Sforzini, Cultural Inquiry, 21 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 255–60
|
References
- Albers, Josef, ‘The Meaning of Art’, paper presented at Berea College, Berea, Kentucky, and Black Mountain College, 12 March 1940
- Albers, Josef, ‘On Education and Art Education’, online publication, website of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation <https://albersfoundation.org/teaching/josef-albers/lectures/#tab1> [accessed 14 November 2017]
- Albers, Josef, ‘Creative Education’ (1928), in Hans Maria Wingler, The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago, ed. by Joseph Stein, trans. by Wolfgang Jabs and Basil Gilbert (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969), pp. 142–43
- Bishop, Claire, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London: Verso, 2012)
- Horowitz, Frederick A., and Brenda Danilowitz, Josef Albers: To Open Eyes (London: Phaidon, 2006)
- Rogoff, Irit, ‘Turning’, e-flux journal, 00 (November 2008) <http://www.e-flux.com/journal/00/68470/turning/> [accessed 14 November 2017]
Cite as:
Alethea Rockwell, ‘“We Are Gathering Experience”: Restaging the History of Art Education’, in Over and Over and Over Again: Reenactment Strategies in Contemporary Arts and Theory, ed. by Cristina Baldacci, Clio Nicastro, and Arianna Sforzini, Cultural Inquiry, 21 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 255-60 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-21_25>