Learning through art 2017
06.13.2017 - 09.17.2017
Visitors of this exhibition can savour the magic of the successful collaboration between over 100 primary schoolchildren (ages six to twelve) and six artists from the Museum. During the 2016−17 academic year, using art as a tool, pupils from six schools have studied topics, such as the fact that there are many types of different families, things that set us apart from others and those that make us the same, the diverse ways through which the human being has created art since prehistoric times… The artists participating in this year’s project are Naia del Castillo, Iñaki Gracenea, Maider López, Manu Muniategiandikoetxea, Jorge Rubio and Ixone Sábada. Photography, painting, sculpture, or performance have been used as instruments to discover, explore, and attempt to understand reality, highlighting the value of individual and collective expression and creative freedom in the process. Through this exhibition, we seek to include our visitors in this exciting adventure.
THE PROGRAM
This educational program was designed as a supplement to the Elementary School curriculum, using art as a tool and introducing transversal classroom projects from a multidisciplinary perspective. The program consists of workshops conducted in educational centers for 20 weeks by artists with outstanding careers and broad experience in teaching. Thus, schoolchildren can share their ideas and creative processes with real artists, approaching curricular topics in imaginative and more personal ways. Art becomes a tool to discover, explore and understand reality while laying emphasis on self-expression and creative freedom. Every workshop is bespoke and unique, designed with the interests and needs of each group of children and each teacher in mind. The program has been successfully carried out every year since 1998, with the collaboration of the Basque Department of Education, Universities and Research and the sponsorship of BBK—institutions that understand and appreciate the power of art as a tool in education.
20 YEARS
The first Learning Through Art exhibition was held in 1998. Convinced of the enormous value of this educational program, we wanted to display its final result in the Museum. The children who displayed their work back then are now adults and may even be parents of another generation. Now, twenty years later, we are reflecting on how this program has enriched us: different opinions to our questions, many unexpected routes and surprises, fun opening events in which the Museum was full of music and laughter. And we also remember the many committed teachers who wanted to launch this adventure to explore new paths, opening the doors of their classrooms wide open to our artists.
In 1970, the Learning Through Art educational program was introduced at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. This project could be developed thanks to patron Natalie K. Lieberman, who had witnessed the disappearance of arts teaching in public schools in her city. During almost 50 years, over 100,000 children from New York schools have participated in the American program.
Artists
Muniategiandikoetxea, Manu
Rubio, Jorge
López, Maider
Del Castillo, Naia
Gracenea, Iñaki
Sádaba, Ixone
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