As part of Soapbox's special Art House edition, we met up with Emily Holtrop, Cincinnati Art Museum's Curator of Learning and Interpretation. Here she explains what that lofty title means to her exactly and her philosophy on why "education" needs to come out of museum education divisions.
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Posted By: Emily Holtrop
10/14/2008
When I moved to Cincinnati six years ago to be the Assistant Curator of Education for School & Teacher Programs (yes, that is a really long title) at the Cincinnati Art Museum, I never dreamt that I would be writing a blog about my vision for the Art Museum’s education division. Frankly, I didn’t know if I ever wanted to be the Curator of Education. Six years later here I am writing about my “vision” for the future of educational programming at the Art Museum and really couldn’t be happier. I should first mention that is this is not only my vision; I am just one of many individuals passionate about the Art Museum’s vision - but I am the one that gets to write about it.
But first, what is the Education Division and who are we in the greater scope of the museum?
We are the people at the Art Museum whom you may never see. We are behind the scenes who create the programming you enjoy during your visit. We are the ones who care about how you want to learn at the Art Museum. We are the Division of Learning & Interpretation, formerly known as the Education Division.
The first order of business when I took on my new role as Curator of Education last December was to remove the term education from everything we do…shocking, I know. But stay with me. In order to more clearly state the changing function our division, we changed our name from the “Education Division” to the “Division of Learning & Interpretation.” So what is the difference? Well, the term education conjures up images of school, textbooks, and more than anything a whole set of ideas that most people find to be too heavy. However, the term learning puts an interesting spin on things as it puts control into the hands of the visitor. In this new understanding, the visitor chooses what they want from their experience.
Personally, I feel very strongly that our role is not to just to educate. It is to present the Art Museum’s collection in a way that allows each individual to learn in their own way, be it through a tour, a provocative lecture, a wine tasting, sketching in the gallery or through a gallery interactive. The term education is too stodgy, and it is not our role. We are here to guide learning, not to merely “Educate.” Honestly, I can “educate” you on a lot of things…you may not want to learn them, but I can definitely educate you, just ask my family, but to help open someone up to learning something through interaction and discovery, I think there is real power there.
So, what is this Interpretation part all about? As a division we take responsibility, along with the curators, of interpreting the collection. In essence we tell the stories the way you, the visitor may want to hear them, thus creating Interpretation. We look at the term interpretation as both a noun and a verb - a theory I happily swiped from a colleague in Maine. As a noun, interpretation is the material of an exhibition - the gallery guides, interactives, labels, cell phone tours, etc. It is how we choose to interpret the collection through tangible objects.
Looking at interpretation as a verb, we focus on how individual visitors “interpret” what they see and experience at the Art Museum, what they understand, how they interact, how they feel about a particular object, theme or idea and accept that this interpretation will be ever changing and diverse. It is our responsibility to harness these varied interpretations into an understanding of how people learn and interact with our collection.
So that was a lot to digest. You may be wondering so what? With this new focus, or at least slightly altered focus, we are putting learning back into your hands. A trip to the CAM is now about how you want to learn, interact, experience, contemplate, engage, or just chill among this amazing collection. It is about establishing an awareness through the collection of where you are and where you come from and where you are going. It is our hope that through our work you may see your face and your story in the objects on view and are able to share those views and exchange knowledge in an open and supportive setting.