REDEFINING INCLUSION: Bringing Dialogic Practice into Programs for Gallery and Museum Education

By Teresa M. Tipton Charles University June 2007 SUMMARY: How do school-age visitors find relevancy for experiencing todays contemporary art in galleries and museums? Educational programs for museums and galleries, in general, have tended towards the delivery of predominately didactic information, relying on factual and interpretive information given in written and oral texts to accompany visual encounters.. Progressively, however, programs are situating learning in the context of the viewer constructing their own knowledge and meaning. This approach may include correlative experiential workshops, gallery to classroom materials, and/or corresponding school visits by artists, curators, docents, and/or educators/researchers. Relevancy for today's contemporary art viewer, however, depends upon building interrelationships between the context (codes) of the viewer and museums/galleries. Dialogic communication strategies, facilitate giving voice to a diversity of viewpoints from which new ways of perceiving and hence interacting with, the contents and spaces of museums and galleries, can be found. This paper presents an overview of some existing museum education programs and the background case for co-constructing knowledge through dialogic strategies. OVERVIEW OF ART MUSEUM AND GALLERY EDUCATION PROGRAMS: Over the last thirty years in the United States, more than half of all American art museums were founded (American Association of Museums [AAM], 1994 as quoted by Ebitz, 2005, p. 150). Their entry into the public sphere has come with increased public pressure to demonstrate a new role to a growing number of stakeholders. "Visitors are looking for an entertaining way to learn and expect to receive value for their admissions and sales dollars. Museums are expected to hold themselves publicly accountable for maintaining specific standards of performance, and increasingly, to undergo a regular, formal review by the Accreditation Program of the American Association of Museums." (Ebitz, 2005, p. 151) Unpredictable market forces increasingly move museum and gallery exhibitions into the realm of marketable, popular commerce, competing with other leisure-time activities. Outside the U.S.A., the content of museum exhibitions and education programs may not come under the same level of public scrutiny or censorship, (i.e. censorship of nudity, religion, violence, sexual preference), yet museums and galleries elsewhere in the world face similar challenges adapting educational programs to audience values.

Methods that place viewers as consumers of exhibitions within a context of commodities which must be purchased, then, are found in the manner in which contemporary museum and gallery programs are presented. Materials for consumption dominate the school to museum and gallery market. Given the built-in economic limitations for viewing museum and gallery collections, and persisting social and cultural patterns marginalizing the making, selecting, displaying, and viewing of art, visitors to art museums and galleries are still a marginal market. Yet, current trends bridging theory with practice through experiential modes of learning and co-constructive practices, provide potent models for inclusion across both sides of the Atlantic. TRENDS AND FINDINGS According to Wetterlund & Sayre's 2003 Art Museum Education Program Survey of U.S.A. museums, group tours, along with family days and lectures, are the in-house programs most offered by education departments (MIA, p. 3). Museum and gallery education programs generally offer some combination of the following: theme-based experiences with audio, self-guided and school tours; informal gallery educational opportunities with hands-on activities for children, video or computer learning stations; community outreach programs; docent-led programs; after-school programs; lectures and seminars; classroom resources; artist-in-residencies or other exhibition-related activities; and on-line activities via the Internet. Supported by interactive, digital and Internet technologies, wealthier museums and galleries may additionally offer virtual or multimedia options on the Web or in situ. 31% of surveyed museums offered on-line education programs and nearly all had museum Web sites. (MIA, p. 9) In addition, many museums offer libraries or reading rooms for access to information for art specialists and researchers, students and museum or gallery members. Lectures are the most commonly offered type of public program at art museums, followed by professional development classes for teachers (MIA, p. 6). 49% of the reporting art museums offer specialized tours for blind, hearing impairments and developmental disabilities (MIA, p. 3). All of the museums surveyed partnered with primary and secondary schools. 65% partnered with Universities (MIA, p. 7). These trends are found worldwide. Sydney, Australia's Museum of Contemporary Art, for example, offers on-line activities for children. In its exhibition, 'Interesting Times': Focus on Contemporary Australian Art,' children are invited to look at Aboriginal artwork and relate to it through a series of questions and drawing activities (http://www.mca.com.au). Material can be downloaded for family visits as well. The Seattle Art Museum in Washington, U.S.A. offers online games, lessons, multimedia and in-depth information about works of art (http://www.seatleartmuseum.org). Collaborative cultural education projects for schools are designed with state, country and city supported public grants for in-school education programs, offering the possibility of pre-set and/or follow-up art experiences based on museum/gallery space and exhibition experiences. Learner-centered practice based on discovery and imagination, focused on young viewers at the primary level, and engaging critical thinking about the works of art themselves at

the secondary level, underlie such programs. An example of this approach can be found with the Guggenheim Museum's Curriculum On-line (http://www.guggenheim.org/artscurriculum/lessons//movpics_calle.php) BEYOND DIVERSITY TO INCLUSION As school field trips to art museums may not be more than once a year, school-age children in general, have limited interaction with museum and gallery collections. As a result, museums and galleries find themselves in a position where the diversification of programs is not only through content or style of presentation, but through diversifying their use of community resources, as well. The AAM defines diversity as "inclusion, valuing, respecting, and appreciating the differences in ethnicity, gender, national origin, disabilities, age, religion, and/or sexual orientation." (AAM Information Center Fact Sheet, 2004). And yet, art museum visitors in general tend to be relatively well-educated, affluent and caucasian (2001 MIA Visitor Survey). Given the numbers of schools and students who do not experience art museums within their school curriculum, the role of museums and galleries in art education for primary and secondary students is relatively unexplored in mainstream public school practice. As British pupils in secondary schools perceive a lack of relevance in some arts provision (National Foundation for Educational [NFER] Study, 2000 p. 10), collaborations for learner-centered experiences is a step toward in remedying this. Embedded in the USA programs, are outcomes and standards reflecting discipline-based art education (DBAE) philosophy and National Visual Art Standards (NVAS). From the NVAS standards, the AAM identified in its education programs these aims: developing informed acquaintance with works of art; relating art knowledge within and across the arts disciplines; communicating proficiently in the visual arts; and presenting basic analyses of works of art (NAEA, 1994, p. 14). In contrast, however, cultural education policy in Europe (into which art education is embedded), focuses on the following competencies: recognizing and understanding one's own cultural values and assumptions; embracing and understanding cultural diversity; encouraging a historical perspective by relating contemporary values to the processes and events that have shaped them; and enabling young people to understand the evolutionary nature of culture and process (Mason, 2002 citing the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education, 1999). As a result, the museum and gallery education programs in Europe tend to evolve within the creative potential of their directors and curators who are more sympathetic to exploring uncensored content. On the other hand, as was expressed in "A Must or A-Muse," in Utrect, Netherlands, there is also the persistent eighteenth century ideal embedded in European cultural policy of "...'cultural sensibility' ...the awakening of a curiosity regarding the arts and our cultural inheritance, the development of taste and a sense of quality." (van de Ploeg, R. A Must or a Muse, 2002 , p. 26) Practice may not easily alter because of new theory, as Mayer points out (March 2005, p. 17), but enculturation as a goal of cultural education policy and programs, is slowly being replaced by empowerment. "With the

deconstruction of all talk about the object, the authenticity and primacy of the object are replaced by the authenticity and primacy of the individual's response, conditioned by the context of his or her own social or cultural group." (Ebitz, p. 152). In a meeting through the Institute for Learning Innovation in the U.S.A. to examine the future of museums through learning research in the last decade, the concept of museums as learning laboratories emerged (Dierking, Falk, and Ellenbogen, 2005, p. 246). Such a role would fulfill the need for more research of the museum/gallery visitor as learner and expand the context for a wider range of experiences to emerge inside museum and gallery spaces. The University of Melbourne's, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, where research, education programs, publications, and social and cultural events contribute to the cultural and intellectual life of the community, (http://www.art-museum.unimelb.edu.au/), offers a potential model for the collaborative potential between community and museum resources Carol Henry's survey of higher education in the U.S.A. cited that the most common use of museums in art education pre-service classes were field trips, gallery assignments, and the use of museum-generated materials. This model can be found with the Irish Museum of Modern Art's partnerships with schools and colleges (http://www.modernart.ie.en/nav_10.htm). Yet, one third of her respondents indicated they spent one class period or less on the topic (Henry, 2004, p. 38). Without experiences with art museums and galleries in pre-service education programs, art educators are less likely to integrate their use into subsequent educational practice. As Ebitz identifies, "We have yet to see the full potential, both pedagogical and political, of alliances ...between art museum educators and art educators." (2005, p. 157) Today, a major theme of museum and gallery education programs is the idea of the 'constructivst museum,' using the concept of learner-situated strategies for creating programs with visitors (Mayer, March 2005). Its socio-cultural origins in the work of Russian pyschologist, Lev Vygotsky (Vygotsky, 1978), have been explored by Horton and Freire (1991), Dewey (1934/1938), Piaget (1968), Halliday (1993), Harding (1995), Shor (1987), and many others, who laid the foundation for constructivism to take hold as pedagogical practice. LEARNER-CENTERED DISCOURSE The shift to "...a learner-centered model in which the learner is engaged in a personal and social process of discovery and meaning making, (Ebitz, p. 152) forms the basis of the current transitional state in museum/gallery education. But alone, it is not sufficient to help museum and gallery visitors make the necessary perceptual and conceptual shifts to work with postmodern materials. Postmodern art requires that museum/gallery educators reposition exhibitions of objects, images, and performances into a new context for coconstructing learning. Discourse, as an exchange of meanings in interpersonal contexts of

one kind or another, (Halliday, 1978, p. 2) opens the space of museum and gallery education programs for new content, meaning, and knowledge. Vygotsky's 'zone of promixal development,' which proposes that learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to operate only when interacting with people in the environment and in cooperation with one's peers (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 90), provides the theoretical underpinnings for dialogic practice. Bakhtin's dialogic looking (1981) as well as his idea of 'intertexuality,' replace both passive lecture-mode and didactic interaction of the viewer with language-based theories of learning. Thus, the individual viewer becomes a part of a dialogic process that transcends the didactic nature of modernist pedagogies. MAKING THE CASE FOR DIALOGIC METHODS: THE TRANSCOGNITIVE POWER OF DISCOURSE Knowledge is a way of conceptualizing representations of artifacts. However, representations are best understood, not as stable entities in the mind, but as a process of mediating meaning. Well's distinction of representation into three levels is useful for this discussion (Wells, 1999, p. 67). Primary artifacts transform part of the environment into objects and processes. Secondary artifacts refer to the realm involving the skills used in the production of primary artifacts, such as instructions for making or using something. Tertiary artifacts deal with imaginary activity based on the formal properties of representations without concern for their direct applicability. Tertiary processes may be the embodiment of imaginary artifacts and the creative interplay of ideas. What makes something a representational artifact is the intention for how it is used, not the artifact itself. Discourse assumes a process by which meaning is constructed and identified with from primary, secondary and tertiary artifacts through talk, text, artmaking, and inquiry, allowing for various discourses to be synthesized reflectively and critically. Dialogue about written (and visual), spoken, experiential, artistic, and conceptual representations from their physical to their abstract levels, allows a process to liberate the connotation of realism from fixed ideas of 'representational' art into a wider field of multidimensional structures. Representation as a multi-modal form of knowing, tends to be obscured by the current semantic emphasis on 'textual' interpretations. 'Intertextuality' tends to be misused conceptually when assumptions are made that literal texts are mediators of equivalency to non-text events. For instance, reading the lyrics of a song is not the same as listening to it. And yet, both may be considered 'text'. Representations can be textual or non-textual, non-verbal or verbal, intellectual, kinesthetic, or perceptual. All of these 'texts' or ways of knowing, serve as discourses that can be simultaneously constructed and deconstructed according to the individual needs of the viewers, giving significance to the character and process of viewing in equality to that of the artifacts. Using Wells' idea that artifacts are not necessarily physical objects and are not necessarily their representations, but how they are used, opens the space for multiple

levels of meaning to emerge in the discourse of artifacts of any kind, whether they exist inside gallery and museum spaces or outside of them. What is found in school-age audiences, is the need to connect the museum/gallery experience to personal codes of reference. Instead of bringing the museum contents to the viewer, dialogic communication brings the viewer to the contents of the museum. Most museums as well as art professionals, choose to (con)textualize their interpretations from a traditional, formalistic focus, unlike school-age children, whose use of iconographic elements from their experiential subcultures, are projected into the content of their visual encounters. Their codes of reference, in large part, do not contain those used by museum, gallery and art professionals. Successful collaborations between education and museums and galleries, therefore, must be built upon bringing these neo-narratives into discourse. "What we see, hear, and emotionally experience, become us. Therefore, to better understand identity, we must better understand the icons, the exemplars, the literary signifiers, and shaping stories that together become the symbolic systems through which we construct and reconfigure the alternating convergences of our self-knowledge and our knowledge of our inhabited worlds. Identities then may be viewed as semiotic creations, expanded by each ensuing reinterpretion. Identities are signs." (Rollings, Jr. in Smith-Shank, p. 73) Paulo Freire calls this a 'gnosiological cycle' where knowing follows in two separate phases: one when knowledge is produced and one when it is known (Shor and Freire, 1987, p. 7-8) As Freire explains, What happens generally is that we dichotomize these moments; we make them separate. Knowledge is produced in a place far from the students, who are asked only to memorize what the teacher says. Consequently, we reduce the act of knowing the existing knowledge into a mere transference of the existing knowledge. (Shor and Freire, p.8). Positioning the viewer from the 'text of their lives' into the text of an exhibition, (Mayer, 2005) is enriched by an expanded sense of one's own meaning-making. In the same manner, dialogic communication provides a vehicle for revealing one's own values, thought patterns and constructs, while providing a tool for engaging with the values, thoughts, and opinions of others with respect. Dialogic listening, reflecting, querying, and searching are non-textual modes of knowing that are brought to bear on the inter-textual debate of cognition and understanding. CONCLUSIONS As a comprehensive model of inclusion has yet to fully emerge in educational practice, the implications are that institutional education in the cultural realm must become a discursive space in which the voices of all those who share in creating pictures and their meanings are heard (Fulkova, 2004). Contemporary discourse does not belong just to professional critics and institutions, but by including communication of the empirical

spectators whose voice is nowhere recorded and taken into consideration when the history of art is written (Fulkova, 2001). Moving curriculum into a plurality of perspectives and positions, it is important to enable young people to understand the signifying systems of which they may not be familiar, but which operate and perhaps dominate in their lives. Teachers need, therefore, to complement pupil's 'clue-seeking' with appropriate guided, contextual information within dialogic practices. Educators need to develop methods that allow for multiple perspectives and for the use of personal experience while also enabling people to validate the views they hold without correcting them from another perceived position of authority. Building on the opinions and perceptions of students to explore, refine, question, and investigate is a complex process which needs experience and time. Dialogic and semiotic practice cannot be used to oversimplify this complexity with set interpretations that students are guided to reveal. From engaging within the rich web of dialogic practice in museum and gallery education, a new space for creatively thinking, learning, reflecting, and knowing ourselves and others in new ways, can emerge.

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