Julia Rocha Pinto

Discourses about the field
An immersion in the Learning Department of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Fundação de Serralves
Julia Rocha Pinto – FBAUP. Fellow CAPES. E-mail: [email protected]
Keywords
art museum, learning department, museum education, evaluation, reflection
General description on research questions, objectives and theoretical framework
This study aims to identify practices and philosophies that guide the work of departments responsible for
education in art museums, particularly with regard to reflection and evaluation of activities conducted with the
visitors. This text is part of the PhD research that is being developed at the Faculdade de Belas Artes, in
Universidade do Porto.
Understanding in this study as a practice built procedural, dialogical and collectively among the subjects, the
educational visits in the museums are in your own design a reflective exercise. Thus, it is understood that the
evaluation should form an integral part of all stages of education, triggering a restructuring of the educational
process at the very moment and that will follow. The evaluation is not intended as something unrelated to the
exercise of dialogue, not understood as something pure and harmless, but as a stream of thought that leads to
reflection on the part of all those involved in a critical and political.
In seeking to understand the educational work in museums and their tensions, will be taken as the basis HooperGreenhill (1994; 1995; 2004; 2007), Pontin (2006), Hein (1998; 1999), Acaso (2011), Falk and Dierking (2000)
and Kelly (2013).
Besides searching of references written on the potential that the reflection of the educational process can
develop, research will also focus on participant observation in a museum context. The proposed outline of the
research presented in this paper aims to start work on approach to observation space, trying to recognize how to
develop educational practice at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Fundação de Serralves, where will happen
to field research.
By entering the field of research, the intention is understand that speeches are developed and are present in
different work teams who work in the institution. The intention is that layers are present in the discourse of the
museum. It is intended to identify the concepts of museology that are adopted in Serralves, curatorial concepts
that are presented in the exhibitions and educational concepts are worked in receipt of public policies.
To access these layers of discourse, will be used as reference materials, catalogs and books published by the
Fundação de Serralves in which are presented the precepts of the institution, as well as academic productions
about the Museum, such as Andrade (2009), Fundação de Serralves (1999; 2009) and Noronha (2013).
Speeches outlined by learning department of the Museum, it also intends to use as a base publications such as
Guimarães and Leite (2002), Leite, Malpique and Santos (1989; 1990) and Leite and Victorino (2006; 2008).
Following in parallel readings of these published materials, intended to interview the team members of the
learning department institution. The interest of this research in this moment is: what establishes Serralves in
different documents? What says the coordinator of educational services on evaluation? What educators say
about assessment? What educators do while evaluation?
Methods/Methodology
The field will be developed around the Project with schools, as mentioned above, but more explicitly with follow
the work of a teacher who participates in the annual project with a class of students. The center of field research
will allow a wider range of questions to be launched since the purpose is to work in partnership with museum
institution, school, museum mediators and teacher.
The delimitation of the field may allow a shift happening in the museum space, interpellating subjects also in the
school, in the search for possible reverberations that actions may have caused in the museum in the classroom,
within the school. The work process will be recorded in a diary, in order to create access points to what is being
developed during the investigation. Will also be conducted semi-structured interviews with individuals involved in
the visits, where talking points are provoked, but not with closed questions.
Expected outcomes/results
This current time of the survey may be important for providing practical material to discuss whether or not the
relevance of qualitative evaluation processes for the visits to schools to museums. The timing of the investigation
is to immerse in the field to bring the text to build new relationships that go beyond the conceptual field.
The follow and participation in the work of a teacher participant Project with schools, working in partnership with
students, educators, school and museum, will create ways to discuss the topic of research to articulate practices
that enable a reflexive cultural mediation.
The present moment is to define that space in which this is going to work, what are the contexts involved, how
many and which subjects it will deal, as is the relationship between school and museum, as the museum
evaluates practices that already performs, as the practice of visiting reverberates inside the museum, as the
teacher works with the project schools, how students relate to the museum institution. These are some starting
questions for field research, possibly the first of a process to be built.
References
ACASO, María (org.). Perspectivas – Situación actual de la educación em los museos de artes visuales.
Madri: Ariel – Fundação Telefónica, 2011.
ANDRADE, Sérgio. Serralves: 20 Anos e outras histórias. Porto: Fundação de Serralves, 2009.
FALK, John; DIERKING, Lynn. Learning from Museums: Visitor experiences and the making of meaning.
Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2000.
FUNDAÇÃO SERRALVES. Circa 1968. Porto: Fundação de Serralves, 1999. Catálogo de exposição.
FUNDAÇÃO SERRALVES. Serralves 2009: a Colecção. Porto: Fundação de Serralves, 2009. Catálogo de
exposição.
GUIMARÃES, Samuel; LEITE, Elvira. Habitares Serralves: 2001 e 2002. Porto: Fundação de Serralves, 2002.
HEIN, George. Learning in the Museum. London: Routledge, 1998.
____________. Evaluation of museum programmes and exhibits. In: HOOPER-GREENHILL, Eilean (org.). The
educacional role of the museum. Leicester: Routledge, 1999.
HOOPER-GREENHILL, Eilean (org.). Museums and education: purpose, pedagogy, performance. Leicester:
Routledge, 2007.
____________________________. Museums and their visitors. Leicester: Routledge, 1994.
____________________________. Museum, media, message. Leicester: Routledge, 1995.
____________________________. The educacional role of the museum. Leicester: Routledge, 1999.
KELLY, Lynda. Evaluation, research and communities of practice: Program evaluation in museums.
Disponível em: < http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10502-005-6990-x#page-1>. Acesso em: 23 mai.
2013.
____________. Policy, practice and partnerships: Museums, indigenous communities and evaluation.
Disponível em: < http://www.ou.edu/cls/online/lstd5790house/pdf/unit1_kelly.pdf>. Acesso em: 28 abr. 2013.
LEITE, Elira; MALPIQUE, Manuela; SANTOS, Milice Ribeiro dos. Trabalho de projecto - 2. Aprender por
projetos centrados em problemas. Porto: Edições Afrontamento – Coleção Ser Professor, 1989.
LEITE, Elira; MALPIQUE, Manuela; SANTOS, Milice Ribeiro dos. Trabalho de
comentadas. Porto: Edições Afrontamento - Colecção Ser Professor, 1990.
projecto – 2. Leituras
LEITE, Elvira; VICTORINO, Sofia. Arte e paisagem – Colecção Cadernos de Arte Contemporânea #1. Porto:
Fundação de Serralves, 2006.
LEITE, Elvira; VICTORINO, Sofia. Serralves Projetos com escolas. Porto: Fundação de Serralves, 2008.
NORONHA, Elisa. Discursos e reflexividade: um estudo sobre a musealização da arte contemporânea, 2013.
Tese (Doutoramento em Museologia). Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Letras, Porto, 2013.
PONTIN, Kate. Understanding museum evaluation. In: LANG, Caroline; REEVE, John; WOOLLARD, Vicky. The
responsive museum: Working with audiences in the twenty-first century. Surrey: Ashgate, 2006.