Sixteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

From reflective practice to training workshops, professional learning among educators in art museums and galleries is a career-long endeavour. Self-initiated or directed, individual or collective, formal or informal, it supports the range of competencies required to facilitate learning with artworks – competencies that evolve with ever changing circumstances and priorities. In 2020, the abrupt switch to digital engagement, precarious working conditions, and renewed calls for racial justice were all shaping the what, how, and why of art museum and gallery education. In this context, questions regarding gallery educators’ professional learning – what it looks like, what motivates it, and how it informs or responds to change – began to carry new and more complex weight. This presentation will offer a portrait of professional learning through the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. It draws on my recent doctoral research with gallery educators in Scotland, which sought to better understand what a critically informed practice meant to them, with particular attention to how their professional learning fit into that understanding. Highlighting what informed their professional learning and the different contexts in which it happened, it considers the challenges and possibilities of the current moment. Discussion will focus on how significant and destabilizing shifts in both day-to-day practice and the field of art museum education itself have shaped both the possibilities and priorities of professional learning in its myriad forms and, by extension, educators’ relationships to curatorial authority, institutional change, visitor experience, and each other.