The engage resource is currently housed at the Stuart Hall Library and is a specialist collection of gallery education materials including reports, case studies, teachers packs, exhibition catalogues, audio-visual materials, and cultural theory. On November 19th The Stuart Hall Library will be hosting A Collection of Practice – a free evening event exploring the notion of the bibliography in gallery and visual arts education.
In preparation for the event, we are asking engage members, gallery educators, lecturers, students, librarians and all interested parties to contribute their thoughts and to take part in the construction of an interactive online bibliography.We want your suggestions for key resources within the field of gallery education, please let us know in the comments below.
We will be using the Stuart Hall Library blog to debate the issues surrounding the canon of reading lists and bibliographies in gallery education. The event will be posing three questions to the guest speakers:
- Are there key books and resources that have informed or developed the practice of gallery education and visual arts learning?
- How are books chosen for reading lists for academic courses?
- How relevant are the texts to practice in gallery learning?
We are interested in reading your thoughts on these topics and enthusiastically welcome any personal recommendations of ‘key texts’ within this field. Are there resources that you feel are neglected in traditional bibliographies? Are there ‘forgotten’ materials or resources that you would like to suggest to be added to this bibliography? Have you ever contributed or constructed a reading list bibliography and if so what has this process been like?
As we get ready to explore these issues please use the library blog comments to suggest materials and voice your opinions. In the run up to the event we can begin to compile this shared interactive bibliography and debate the canon of gallery education reading lists.
engage is the National Association for Gallery Education: a professional organisation for those in the field of the visual arts and learning. Members include policymakers, curators, gallery staff, teachers and artists. engage supports Gallery Education through projects and programmes, Continuing Professional Development, publications and resources. For information about membership go to www.engage.org/join