ABSTRACT
Drawing on insights drawn from multidisciplinary studies of the arts plus translation studies, this article aims to conceptualize the work of translation within art gallery education. It unpacks plus characterizes a mode of translation that is unique plus necessary for an engaging art gallery education, taking multiple plus subtle forms, operating on different facets of the conception plus delivery of art gallery education activities. This includes a resourceful way of translating different values that could pull art gallery education in different directions, i.e. making different values translatable into one another, including the aesthetic value of the artwork, the value of learning plus education for diverse plus multiple users plus participants, as well as the values that participants bring into an art gallery education. An indispensable component of art gallery education still consists of bringing into play an element of propositional data about art, not as an end in itself based on the traditional parameters of the cultivation of taste plus appreciation, but to develop experimental plus creative dialogical forms of engagement plus relational aesthetics. The ultimate aim is to use the arts as a platform for a pedagogic translation driven by the principles of dialogism plus a collaborative ethos.
Introduction
This article aims to conceptualize the work of translation on the threshold between the artwork plus the educational work that mediates the art to extract learning affordances through dialogical engagement. This conceptualization of translation rests on the premise that artworks, in what Basil Bernstein (Citation2000) would call their “native location of production”, were not produced with a view to their educational usability, plus therefore remain in need of some pedagogic agency to make them amenable to education plus learning. The pedagogy specific to a worthwhile plus engaging art gallery education, however, cannot be equated with the mainstream understanding of pedagogy (as theorized by Bernstein plus subsequent theoretical developments); it needs to be conceptualized as a creative plus unique mode of translation. The work of translation in art gallery education is conditioned by what is being translated in tandem with many other factors that art gallery educators must consider plus negotiate.
A growing body of research has been developing around art gallery education, its manifestations plus the underpinning pedagogies that mediate artworks to develop plus facilitate informal learning plus educational affordances (Cutler Citation2010; Garcia Citation2012; Matthews Citation2018; Pringle Citation2019; Pringle plus DeWitt Citation2014; Villeneuve plus Love Citation2017; Xanthoudaki, Tickle, plus Sekules Citation2003). This recent scholarly plus professional attention to art gallery learning plus education has yielded some valuable insights into the dynamics of learning within art-focused museums, both in the physical space plus through digital mediations which were massively expanded as a result of the circumstances imposed by Covid-19 (de las Heras-Pedrosa et al. Citation2022; Kletchka Citation2020; Kristinsdóttir Citation2017; McNaughton Citation2020).