Educational programmes have acquired considerable importance within the activities of art museums. There is an enormous demand from the general public and from educational centres for materials, guides, pre-designed tours, interpretative tools and other types of supports that will help towards a better understanding of the works of art on display in line with specific educational goals. The demands for quality and conciseness have meant that the educational materials and ideas created by museums are extremely carefully devised and created. The present Conference will offer an outstanding opportunity to discuss the current state of this field, including reviews, debates and new perspectives on various key issues within educational activity in museums. Most importantly, it will focus on the challenges and goals associated with the training of museum educators.

Entitled Museums in Education. Training Museum Educators, the Conference proposes to look at current studies and analyses of methodological innovations that have a growing importance in the educational programmes developed within the specific framework of museum activities. All the issues raised and discussed at the Conference are intended to reflect on areas of knowledge, issues of method and other questions associated with the correct training of museum educators, which still lacks a fully established model. In this sense one of the priorities for the Conference will be to reflect on various new or growing investigative routes within this field of knowledge. In order to do so, the papers to be delivered have been divided into four blocks that are thematically inter-related. They will count on the participation of distinguished experts. A shared theme in the different sections is that of the relationship between museums and educational centres in the present day.

In addition, a communications panel will take place on the first and second days. The closing day will be devoted to encounters and debates within the context of different workshops. The papers, short papers and auxiliary documentation used will subsequently be published.

With regard to its content, the Conference has basically focused on two goals. Firstly, it looks at studies on the updating and rethinking of art education given that the teaching of drawing and other similar materials can facilitate an understanding of how modern art can contribute to innovation in education. Art museums are often involved in comparable situations and must therefore know how to use their resources. These will be the principal themes of the first day. In contrast, the second day is less specifically about art teaching but rather about the different ways in which museums can be integrated into general educational activity tried out over the past few years. These additional
educational demands 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.