| Abstrakt: |
The article proposes a more central and critical function for gallery education. It argues that challenging gallery education’s marginalization, low status and reactive role within the art institution could lead to a transformation in the field of art more generally. Rejecting a one-direction model for bringing contemporary art to school students and teachers, the article considers the ways in which the encounter between art and compulsory-level education can have positive effects not only on school education but on art itself, particularly as it opens art to the possibilities of a less hierarchical and more socially critical purpose. From a radical perspective, an avant-gardist conception of art is shown to make common cause with critical pedagogy in a project of collective emancipation. Gallery education is proposed as a potentially avant-gardist practice, conceived in terms of 1) art’s becoming social; 2) bringing about the new; and 3) transforming the field of art. These three conditions are tested through an exploration of current debates and practices in art, art teaching and gallery education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
