Discussion week 2

For Monday, February 10th, we prepared various texts concerning different ideas about the role of new media in the museum. Since the three of us read different texts, we found a prominent theme in all the texts that we read. We decided to take the theme “education” and apply it to Francis Alÿs’ exhibition, Children’s Games at the Eye Museum. 

Chala

In the first chapter, Culture and Meaning in the Museum, of the book, Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture, Eilean Hooper Greenhill shares her ideas about the ‘post-museum’. Greenhill feels that the idea of the ‘classical’ museum is based on ideas from the 1900s and needs to be reworked. In other words, it is in need of analysis and development in order to shape the new character and organization of the new museum. 

Greenhill briefly mentions the concept of ‘life-long learning’ and that seems to be the departure of her arguments. Within the concept of life-long learning, it is assumed that the individual perceives new information by taking their cultural background into account. Every interpretation of information is based on the knowledge and experience of the individual receiving that information. I would like to apply Greenhill’s vision to the Children’s Games exhibition at the Eye Museum and discuss how it tackled these ideas about education

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The set up of the video screens in the Alÿs exhibition gave a playful atmosphere- showing videos of children from different cultures playing outdoor games. It felt as if you were walking through a children’s playground. Children’s Games is an accessible and approachable subject to which every individual can relate to by reflecting their own childhood experience. So, it seems that the Alÿs exhibition took the experience of the individual more into account.

Britt

Penz investigates in his article ‘Museum as Laboratories of Change: the Case for the Moving Image’ what ways a museum relates to moving images. He questions whether the moving image captures both the experience of moving in space as well as the emotion of being confronted with the work of art. He mentions three modes of museum experience – educating, exploring and entertaining. The educating mode resembles continuity editing because the visitor follows the path as proposed by the museum. Within the exploring mode, the visitor follows his own path as if he is researching the museum space. For the case of the entertaining mode, a visitor resembles the flâneur who is strolling around the museum depending on his/her own preference. 

Visitors from the Alÿs exhibition are educated in the sense that they will understand and recognize the differences and similarities between the presented countries. Adults will most likely look at the various games by analyzing the differences between each country, but also the differences in time and will compare it to their own experiences of when they were still a child. Every visitor of the museum could follow the path as proposed by the museum, or they can also decide to set out their own route as there is not really a narrative based on a chronology of time, nor country. Children, on the other hand, will look at it differently and will probably not follow the route as proposed by the museum. Rather, they will stroll around in a playful way and will see it more like a reflection of themselves and will not dissect it in terms of time and space. It is more likely for children to be invited to play along in the exhibition space, which in this case, is the entertainment mode. 

Sofia

Tony Bennet brings up in his article, Civic Seeing: Museums and the Organization of Vision, that since the establishment, museums and art-historical education was created for the elite and highly educated. For example, between the 1920s and 1950s, Harvard ran a course on museum studies which taught that the museum was a place focused on the ‘standards of elite’ and promoted the interests of a “narrow cult of collectors, critics and fellow museum collectors.” In return, this promoted a lack of civic engagement in museums from the lower classes. How will the modern museum make the museum a place of broader education? By pluralizing the optical and vantage points that visitors can create and bring with them to the museum? Or perhaps interactive displays to create more interactive viewers?
In relation to Francis Alÿs,’ Children’s Games, Bennet’s views on education and the visual arrangement of a museum are quite relevant. Alÿs’ Children’s Games exhibition was a quite accessible topic that visitors were able to easily relate to. The organization of the museum and the background information for each work was short and to the point, which made it easy to go through. The arrangement of the media throughout the exhibition hall freed the visitor from a defined path, creating a more open mind. This exhibition would be an easy addition to any day of travel to an Amsterdam museum.