Intorno all’Eduzione all’Arte
dall’eutropia all’eutopia (Around Art Education, from eutropia to eutopia)
A book result of 25 years of experience in museums when the author explored her two Art Education projects – the first one Fun with the Arts in museum, aimed at families with kids and pre-primary and primary schools and the second one, Beyond borders: seeing, for families with teenagers and I-II Grade schools – on how to experience artworks in museums. And in the meantime the author analyzes the changes museums as public institutions are being submitted. Not only. She studies and re-elaborates her long-standing and ever-evolving work.
Therefore, immersed in her silent but speaking memory, this time she lets her pen narrate, review, summarize, ask some further questions for further research and possible solutions.
Of course, the author tries “to participate in today’s lively discussion around the museum and art education. She proposes experiencial alternatives, trying to avoid the ancient temple of the muses lose its sacredness and be send down into the underworld of disposable commodity-culture in order to get it over the stigma of conservation”.
In the maze of Art Education, the author gets lost and finds herself, drawing on Socrates and his maieutics, fairy tales, metaphors, games, the Theatre of the Oppressed, diversity and also experience, trying to remain open. Because Education is not Didactics, however both of them need each other. The difference between the two disciplines is that Didactic concentrates in the study of teaching practice (methods and techniques), whereas Education has to do with anyone’soul. Education indeed aims at bringing out what is the most vital and beautiful anyone has already inside, his potentials and talents, his positive emotions and feelings, his creative thoughts, pushing all this in an upward spiral trend so that it can be raised endlessly, if not restrained…
To this end, the author analyzes the figure of the museum guide or didactic operator. She suggests that both tour guides and didactic operator should get rid of their certainties, their absolutisms to evolve into maieutic educators capable of dragging the visitor into a lively opening path. In this way the visitors too can fully experience their transformation into spect-Actors. And together with the educator may they have a more real, creative and human approach.
But the text still goes further. It continues with some alternative proposals such as active, participatory and interdisciplinary Educational tours for example. But what is still more important is the new concept of museum the author suggests, taking as an example a few already exhisting contemporary Art museums. As a matter of fact, in Italy, there are museums which were born with a mission of coscientization and therefore as a eutropic place in favor of the common Good. The idea is that museums become part of that eutopia of a better world. Certainly, a still possible and marvellous eutopia.
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