Closer to the Art 4

CLOSER TO THE ART 4
Education through art is an integral part of education in schools as well as in museums and galleries the mission of which is to present art values to the public. The advantage of the galleries is that they have originals of artworks available in their collections. In Slovakia, the tradition of gallery education, which focuses on the interpretation of artworks, is based on a basic mission of galleries as collection-building, research, cultural and educational organisations. The galleries carry out their general mission through their specific collections, exhibitions or publication activities. The exhibition activity of the Bratislava City Gallery (GMB), which administers the collections from Gothic up to the present, focuses mainly on the presentation of modern and contemporary art. The education activities at the Bratislava City Gallery are based on the presentation of art values of the past and their interconnection with the present. A special attention is paid to the current forms of contemporary art reflecting the surrounding world, which enable us to better understand the world around us.
Gallery education has its own specifics based on the history of art, pedagogy and psychology, which it uses in the presentation of artworks to different groups of viewers. The gallery education in Slovakia is also partially based on a related discipline: art education. The art education has been intensely developed mostly by the artists of the unofficial art scene who worked as progressive teachers at primary and secondary art schools in the period of so-called consolidation in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the methods they employed in their education activity and in their work was the interpretation and analysis of the work of art, which are also important for work with the original of artwork at the gallery. The education at the Bratislava City Gallery continues in the activities of the Gallery of a Child (1979–1993), which developed extensive exhibition and education activities, unique even in the context of then Czechoslovakia. In addition to methodological and publication activities and programmes focused on permanent expositions and temporary exhibitions, since 2006 the Education department of the Bratislava City Gallery has organised a biannual national education programme for schools entitled CLOSER TO THE ART within which it brings Slovak fine art of the 20th and 21st centuries to schools in Slovakia in the form of reproductions of works from its collections and related methodological materials. The aim of the programme is to interconnect the knowledge of modern and contemporary art with everyday world and support creative thinking and creativity of young people at the age of 10 to 15 years (at this age young people start losing a natural interest in practical art activities).
Over 300 primary schools, primary art schools and grammar schools from all over Slovakia became involved in the fourth year of the project CLOSER TO THE ART, which was implemented between January and June 2012. The teachers of participating schools were provided with a set of reproductions of works by seven Slovak artists (Milan Adamčiak, Juraj Bartusz, Daniel Fischer, Mikuláš Galanda, Otis Laubert, Ilona Németh, Veronika Rónaiová) as well as with basic information on artists and works, proposals for discussions and creative activities. The students created their own interpretations of works in different techniques (painting, drawing, sculpture, object, installation, action, photography, theatre, text, poetry) under the guidance of art teachers whose creative involvement represented an essential part of the project. We have received children´s works from nearly 100 schools from different regions of Slovakia. The commission comprising art teachers and gallery educators (Daniela Čarná, Bratislava City Gallery; Vladimír Malast, Slovak National Gallery; Antónia Mišeková, ZUŠ) selected 33 works, which have been displayed at Pálffy Palace and at the interactive website of the project www.umeniezblizka.gmb.sk. The works document different approaches and possibilities of using the artwork in the process of teaching. The can serve as an inspiration for teachers, parents, children and everyone who accepts the invitation to look at the work of art from different points of view.
Daniela Čarná