Browsing by Subject "gallery education"

The starting point of this thesis is the question of a probable tension between educational and economic objectives in art museums. I have chosen to approach this question by focusing on gallery education. My primary aim has been to analyse what kind of concepts, goals and values gallery education is founded on. I have also deliberated upon the change in gallery education during the last decades. The data for this thesis was produced by interviewing gallery educators in nine (9) separate interviews. The interviews were partly structured and proceeded according to chosen themes. I have analysed the interviews by using the discursive approach. The main themes and negotiations that arose in the interviews were set between institutional and individual point of views, but also between economic objectives and intrinsic values. As a result of the analysis of these negotiations I have constructed a discursive field of gallery education. On this discursive field gallery education is approached from four points of view – as an experience, as service, as learning, and as an opener of new horizons. On the basis of the discursive field, I conclude that gallery education and its development at the present time has two strong emphases: individual experience and economic interests. These emphases are partly opposite and partly supportive to each other. There is a tendency to underscore the economic objectives and design activity according to these objectives. Sometimes this tendency is opposed and answered by using the concept of experience. By using experience it becomes possible to keep the economic objectives at a distance. On the other hand, the stress on experience shifts activity to more individualistic ways of thinking and sometimes further away from cultural and educational goals. On the basis of this thesis it seems that emphasizing individualism in general is producing a need to strengthen the connection between society and individuals, and anchor the activity back to the society. It also seems that this is done by bringing the focus back to the intrinsic values of the activity by applying the goal of societal effects to gallery education as a separate object.