Education, museums, art, school
Museum education in Hungary and abroad
MúzeumCafé 10.
“Museums are for you. They can give you something that in bygone eras only kings and queens had – an opportunity to engage with and admire the greatest masterpieces of all times. If you know how to get the most out of your visit to a museum, you will be able to take home something of your favourite works, which will become an integral part of your life.” – David Finn Museum education is an activity in the course of which museum values can be understood and appreciated by non-professional visitors. These values can be absorbed and, with the help of a museum educator, the public can also gain an idea about the character and form of a museum. Museum education involves organisation and professional management in relation to museum-goers, the marketing of exhibitions and collections, as well as maintaining contact with schools and other institutions of learning. Museum education can be classified as a special field of pedagogy because it is closely connected to museums as well as being bound up with other forms of education (be it school, training, distance learning or further education). At the same time, its academic side is rather linked to the collection of a given museum. These features place museum education somewhat at the periphery of pedagogy, although due to the peculiar nature of the field it can attract both practising teachers and academic professionals. Conscious activity directed towards children and young people in museums, and the development of different forms, types and methods of these activities began in Hungary at the start of the 1970s. During that decade postgraduate courses for museum educators were established at the University of Applied Arts and Eötvös Lóránd University, both in Budapest. Since then museums have been employing museum educators. Thus higher education induced an ongoing institutional innovative process whereby museums and collections in concert with education began or relaunched museum education workshops. Museum education is a bridge between the world of museums and the educational process. This bridge has both formal and contextual components. As a form it involves the two institutional types coming together and establishing links. “Following a workshop connected to a museum visit, processing the experiences gained in situ continues during a lesson in school. A museum educator usually takes part in these preparatory and post hoc sessions – as does, for instance, Litza Juhász from the Museum of Fine Arts,” writes a Budapest primary school arts teacher. The methodology of sessions and the nature of guided tours changes according to which museum pupils intend to visit. In art museums following the interpretation of works the pupils respond by creating their own – as with, for example, Ágnes Szabics’s museum communication practice in relation to the exhibitions of the Kunsthalle. In the Museum of Transport investigating a theme can involve test sheets or trying out various vehicles (sitting on an old bicycle or boarding a compartment of the Orient Express). Yet another method is required for ‘research’ in the Discovery Room of the Hungarian Natural History Museum. A museum educator has a dual character. He or she is familiar with schools and other institutions of education as well as museums. Consequently the roles of both teacher and museologist are combined. His or her conduct in relation to any particular audience is defined by which element becomes important during the course of the interaction. When a few years ago during the Night of Museums the outstanding personality of Hungarian contemporary museum education, Dr Tamás Vásárhelyi dressed as a bug (!) explained and demonstrated to visitors the life functions of this little favoured animal he immediately gained more enthusiasts for the Natural History Museum and this field of science than all the cabinets and display cases at the exhibition. Since the end of the 1990s about fifteen museum educators have been graduating from Eötvös Lóránd University every year, so we could say that there ought to be a sufficient number of museum educators in Hungarian museums. In addition to large museums such as the Museum of Fine Arts, the Hungarian Natural History Museum, the National Museum, the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art and the Kunsthalle, high-standard museum education is also underway at, among others, the Hermann Ottó Museum in Miskolc, the Szentendre Open-Air Museum of Ethnography, the Xantus János Museum in Győr, the Szeged Móra Ferenc Museum and the Paks Gallery. A general change in approach was pioneered by the Hungarian Natural History Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts. The museum educator, the curator and the researcher clearly assist one another in creating a concept for a large exhibition. But a museum educator can be expected not only to have educational but also academic skills in the given field. In this way, he or she can demonstrate authenticity both to the public and to professional colleagues. In addition, the job also requires expertise in creating publications, museum guides, task sheets and compiling visual materials. Thus museum education is a comprehensive activity – creative, serving, educating and entertaining. All over the world museums have realised it is supremely important to move beyond the attitude allegedly articulated some time ago by a museum director: “A museum is a splendid place to work and research in perfect peace. I only wish there were no visitors!”