Madrid. Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza. 9, 10 and 11 of april of 2008.

AIMS AND CONTENT OF THE CONFERENCE

Entitled Museums in Education. Training museum educators, the conference will take into consideration current studies and analyses of methodological innovations which have acquired a growing importance for educational programmes development within the context of the type of activities offered by museums. All the subjects covered by the conference are intended to reflect on areas of knowledge, questions of method and other issues related to a correct training of museum educators, which has not yet been consolidated into a well-defined model. In this sense, one of the conference’s priorities will be to reflect on some of the new or forthcoming investigative directions in this line of knowledge. In order to do so, the conference has been divided into four blocks of thematically interrelated papers, to be delivered by leading experts. The relationship between museums and educational centres in the present day is the linking theme between the four blocks.

In addition, there will be a communications panel held on both the first and second day of the conference. The closing day will be reserved for encounters and debates structured into two different workshops. The lectures, short papers and auxiliary documentation will subsequently be published.

The conference has established two goals with regard to defining its content. On the one hand it will look at studies on the modernisation of art teaching: the teaching of drawing and other similar subjects may facilitate an understanding of the relationship that modern art has acquired in relation to educational innovation. Art museums are often involved in analogous proposals and must know how to articulate their resources as a result. These will be the main themes of the first day. The second day, in contrast, will not look at art teaching in such a specific manner, but rather at the different ways of integrating museums into general educational activity that have been tried out over the past few years. These additional educational demands now need to be analysed.

The third day primarily focuses on debating sessions as well as the closing lecture, to be given by Elliot W. Eisner.