Practice-led Research in the Art Museum

Line Engen

doi:10.7577/information.3769

Abstract

As art museum education practices get more ambitious in form and content, and to a higher degree inform the overall audience strategies, the need for a research framing is required. The art museum is facing new and high expectation from society and policy makers in terms of being a relevant social and democratic platform inclusive for everyone. To manifest the changes, the institution must draw on all the different museal knowledges, not least the one about the audience. There has been a history of professional hierarchy and knowledge hegemony inside the art museum, where the object-based knowledge has trumped the practice-based. An important reason for this imbalance has been the lack of adequate practice related research methods and a theoretical framing within art museum education. Research in art museum has to a large extent operated within the classical art historical field, but more and more museums are looking to and are drawing on other models outside the museum disciplines to develop new adequate research standards. One of the museums that have undergone a profound change much due to a change in how they think about practice and research, is Tate with research leader Emily Pringle in the lead. Inspired by models within the arts and school system, they have developed a practice-led research method. In this article I will reflect on how and why it is important for art museum educators to do research on their own practice, drawing on both the Tate model and my own experience from working at the National Museum for over ten years.

Highlights

By interrogating how research is defined and enacted we can surface, amongst other issues, how the art museum negotiates power and authority, which in turn helps understand how the institution frames its relationship with its publics. (Pringle, 2019b, p. 9)This article, which is an adaptation of my contribution to the Art in Education seminar in August 2019 in Oslo, Norway, is related to my work in the Research and Development Team for Education at the National Museum in Oslo. 2 In 2018 I initiated and started a process of investigating and developing a practice-related research alternative to enable education curators to conduct research on their own practice and thereby help reduce the backlog on education research drawing on the Tate model
The Research and Development Team has a vision for the National Museum to become a leader in developing innovative education methods and research on education, including developing and implementing practice-related research methods
Statistics show that fewer people in Norway are visiting art exhibitions than before the turn of the millennium, a trend seen in other countries such as the United States

Summary

Introduction

By interrogating how research is defined and enacted we can surface, amongst other issues, how the art museum negotiates power and authority, which in turn helps understand how the institution frames its relationship with its publics. (Pringle, 2019b, p. 9). In my opinion, such a framework should include three key features: first, a method for interdisciplinary creative processes geared toward exhibitions and audience concepts; second, adequate practice-related research methods that permit museum practitioners to investigate and develop practice; and third, formalized structures for both implementing the new knowledge inside the museum and sharing it with the field outside This understanding of such a framework is inspired by Tate’s research model and by the experience from working as an education curator for over a decade at the National Museum and conducting practice-related research. I will summarize by presenting a proposal for a framework for research in the art museum

Background

Discussion