25th November 2011

Seminar on Social Networks and Museums at the Museo Picasso in Malaga: 40 tweets I should have written

On behalf of the Museu Picasso I was invited to present our 2.0 experience at the seminar Social Networks and Museums: Reputation and credibility on the net, organized by the Museo Picasso Malaga and the UNIA, on 17 and 18 November. Bringing together experts on communication, museums, journalists and marketing people, the workshops were not about whether or not museums should have a 2.0 presence, but how. In keeping the issues being discussed, the sessions were streamed live and produced a lot of follow-up activity on Twitter.

I’m not really an active Twitter user — I’ve mostly followed the tweets after the fact — but when I got back to Barcelona and saw the amount of information and exchanges that have been generated around the seminar, I felt that I was missing something: a conversation and an exchange of views had been going on and I hadn’t taken part on it. And that’s just what can happen to us, both professionally and personally, if we don’t make the effort to incorporate the social media into our everyday lives.

So, now I’m going to attempt a little Twitter essay and write — after the event — the tweets I should have written in Malaga. Here they are, the 40 tweets I should/could have written. Read more »

17th November 2011

Unsolved Mysteries at the Museu Picasso

This weekend we launched the second season of ‘The Mysterious Case of the missing Picasso’, a family treasure hunt through the galleries with plenty of intrigue.

Mateu begins his investigations (Joan Forns, from Cia. La Paparra). Photo: Jordi Mota Read more »

10th November 2011

How to set up a Big Draw (Museu Picasso-style)

On Sunday 23 October we celebrated the second annual Big Draw Festival of Drawing, an initiative originally launched in London that explores drawing not only as a creative medium but also as a great form of communication, learning and recreation for people of all ages.

Read more »

27th July 2011

On the teacher training course at the Museu Picasso, the Education Department and the teachers learn together

During the week of 11th to 15th July, for the second year running, the Museu Picasso’s Education Department presented a training course for teachers on how to work with art as the basis for a transverse exploration of a whole range of subjects in the primary and secondary curricula.

The purpose of these courses is very practical and they reflect the dual need to get closer to teachers on their home terrain, the field they act and work in, while offering them tools and materials with which to incorporate the study of art in the broadest sense and, with particular reference to Picasso, to get rid of certain common misconceptions that do nothing enhance our understanding of the work.

Teachers during one of the practical sessions

This year, together with Maria Alcover, head of the Museum’s Education Service (which is part of the Public Programmes Department) and the rest of the team, we chose to focus more on the methodological and conceptual aspects of the creation of transverse projects based on the arts, whether these take Picasso as their starting point or not. We were delighted to find that our proposal aroused the active interest of the teaching profession, and we received twice as many applications as we were able to accept.

In the preparation of the programme we had the invaluable assistance of Lluís Vallvé of the Consorci d’Educació de Barcelona. We outlined the objectives of the course to Lluís and together we defined the need to provide a theoretical framework and a thorough exposition of the methodologies that he has developed on the basis of his extensive experience.

Lluís led the sessions on the first two days, and started off by looking at how a transverse project can be developed on the basis of art and what resources and what impact this might have in the school context. He also put forward a broader theoretical framework for the different creative languages, illustrated with real examples of how groups of students have responded to particular approaches to these forms of expression.

Practical exercice with light led by Mercè Gaja

On the second day Lluís’s presentation revolved around the processes and methodologies that he used with students, with special emphasis on the key aspects of generating debate among the students and listening to their suggestions, questions and interests and including points raised by the students bring in the process, of looking for referents not only in the art world but also in other subject areas that explore the same issues, of agreeing with the group on a line of joint action and of initiating a process not so much of production as of visual and conceptual exploration.

The next three days were devoted to examining case studies. One of the first of these was the presentation of a project at El Puig school in Esparraguera by the teachers Anna Sala and Núria Matas, who outlined for us the philosophy and the practical functioning of a school that organizes its curriculum goals entirely on the basis of transverse projects. As a counterpoint to this very inclusive project, in the next session we heard from Mercè Gaja about her experiences with new students in the Dr. Puigvert high school using the artwork Freqüències by Eugènia Balcells as the basis for a project in which the children work with colour by means of language and poetry, physics, computer science and creation.

On Thursday we were joined byJordi Junyent, a retired teacher and artist, who spoke to us about artistic creation in terms of the conceptual processes that generate it and its formalization, with examples from the work of Catalan artists such as Picasso, Tàpies, Miró, Brossa, Perejaume and others. Next up was Noemí Rocabert, head of the Mestre Morera primary school. This year her school took part in a pilot project run by several cultural institutions in Barcelona (the Museu Picasso among them), in which schools are tutored to work transversely on a common theme, gender, and use as reference the assets of all of the institutions. In Noemí’s case, her school was tutored by the MNAC, and she took advantage of this opportunity to work with a class in which there was strong conflict between girls and boys.

View of one of the sessions

On the last day we had a slightly different but related proposal: Oriol Vilapuig and Xavier Garriga from the Illa art school in Sabadell presented some of the activities and methodologies they make use of in their extracurricular art classes. In this more flexible setting their proposals often take a more playful, fun approach, but with a methodology and processes very similar to those described by other participants. In what was a great way to round off the process we had begun five days earlier, they proposed a practical exercise with which to work on these methodologies, on the basis of Picasso’s The Embrace: generating a debate within the group, looking for referents on the Internet and getting us to do a practical exercise in drawing.

Five days, then, of sharing a lot of ideas and learning a lot, with a wonderful group of people and first-rate professionals. We are very grateful to everyone who took part, both the session leaders for their good work and their generosity in sharing it, and the participating teachers, with whom we really had a great time learning together.

We would like to share with you some of the comments of teachers who took part in the course: many thanks for your feedback! We are very pleased that the experience was so positive for everyone, and we will be sure to let you know about forthcoming proposals for educational training.

‘The course went far beyond the expectations I had of it. During the five days I had one phrase constantly in my head: “Open your mind”. Open your mind to different possibilities and try to help the students open their minds to life. Thank you very much.’

‘A window has been opened!!!!!!. A few words can say a lot. Thanks.’

‘Very positive and satisfactory evaluation for various reasons, the theory and the practice were well balanced. I learned a lot of the theoretical framework, it has made me rethink and reflect on my work. We also learned new aspects. The practical experiences were very enriching.’

‘I found the course very interesting for the diversity of speakers you brought along. It was good that they didn’t give specific recipes and that the things weren’t tailored to a particular year. It was also good to do a few practical exercises to energize the sessions. Perhaps it would be nice to see some proposals for working with junior secondary, where the programmes are often much more closed.’

‘It was a pleasure to spend a week with you […] to listen to the different speakers, their expositions and their practices, all with so much enthusiasm. It was even quite exciting at times. I haven’t done art for a long time, and I think I’ll be doing it next year, and for me this training week went far beyond what is general thought of as art education in schools. I really want to say a special thanks to Noemí Rocabert, for me personally she gave me a lesson in how to do things and she also confirmed for me that difficult and critical situations such as she described with a great deal of ingenuity, creativity and effort can be overcome. So, as you can see, your training course has been A GIFT.’

Anna Guarro

Public Programmes

Do you think art is a good tool for learning? Would you like to develop a transverse project on the basis of Picasso’s work? The Education Department is at your disposal!

20th July 2011

“Feasting on Paris. Picasso 1900-1907″. An exhibition readily accessible to all

Here at the Museu Picasso we have at last got round to tackling a very important pending aspect of accessibility: accessibility of communication. We have long been aware of the need to make accessible to everyone not just the physical space of the museum but also our content, and had marked it out as a priority, as we noted in a previous post.

Preparation of the exhibition “Feasting on Paris. Picasso 1900-1907” gave us the perfect opportunity to incorporate communication accessibility measures and implement these in the exhibition process. In this task we have benefitted from the invaluable input of Barcelona’s Institut de Cultura (ICUB), guiding us through the process and providing support at each step. For some time now the ICUB has been providing the city’s museums with the tools they need to improve in this facet of communication in general, and especially in the production of temporary exhibitions. Read more »

14th February 2011

The museums talk about their adolescent public

On the 21st January the Picasso hosted the second meeting of the Educational Research Group, a recently created group made up of the Educational departments of various museums of the country that work in diverse fields of contemporary creation: the Panera Art Centre of Lleida (promoter of the group); CDAN (Centre of Art and Nature) of Huesca; Es Baluard, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Palma; and Artium, the Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art of Vitoria-Gasteiz.

Creating lines of research, both theoretical and practical for sharing and incorporating new references that help to improve their educational practices, are the main aims of the group. Read more »

10th November 2010

A post post – Big Draw

After a project that people have put a lot of hours, energies and hopes into it always takes a little time to put your emotions in place again and look back on the whole thing and evaluate it, and go on from there to plan future on the strength of all that has been learned.

In the case of Big Draw, all of us in the team have been going through this process. And at this very moment of immersion in the assessment, both positive and negative, and the planning of where to go in order to make the project grow — which we are now — we have just received a wonderful letter from Eileen Adams, Director of The Campaign for Drawing, the creators and organizers of this venture in London.
Read more »

21st October 2010

Drawing as a protagonist

This Sunday, 24 October, the Museu Picasso will host the first Barcelona celebration of the “BIG DRAW Festival of Drawing”, an initiative that originated in London (and has since spread to a number of cities in the world) that sets out to get us all drawing and enjoying the process as a form of artistic expression and a tool of communication and learning.

I have to confess that I really don’t know how to draw, but very often I can’t explain what I mean other than by doodling with a pencil on paper. And my kids and I play at drawing: it’s a fun way to pass the time and — depending on age — to practice new vocabulary. Or to spark the imagination or capture and retain information, just as lots of adults do in meetings: almost automatic drawings that are also ways of concentrating. Read more »

5th October 2010

Horta de Sant Joan: a visit to Picasso’s landscapes

Making the most of the past weekend, I made a personal trip to Horta de Sant Joan, where Picasso stayed on two occasions. Both of them had a great impact on his work: the first was in 1898, when he was still a teenager, and the other in 1909, by which time he was a fully fledged painter immersed in the cultural life of Paris.

Picasso in Horta Read more »

16th July 2010

An Unforgettable Evening: Satie’s music fills the Museum’s rooms and courtyards

A few days ago we presented a thoroughly out-of-the-ordinary activity at the Museu Picasso: as a complement to the current “Picasso vs. Rusiñol” exhibition, which among other things touches on the friendship of both artists with the French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925), we put on a special performance of the complete repertoire of Satie’s compositions for piano.

That last fact alone is enough to make it clear that this was no ordinary concert: having assembled all of the works for piano, some of which were very difficult to get hold of, the recital lasted almost six hours! Read more »