Museu MACBA: Bloc Educació

In order to understand how the Educational Department of museums work, we had to go on a visit and workshop to get the their essence and do an interview to the heads of the department, which we did by email. We chose MACBA because of its range of different educational activities it offered. 

Our group followed Primary School students along the visit and we stayed at the end to see which kind of workshops they did. 

The exhibition we saw was called the Short Century and had many works englobed; however we just focused on a few of them, chosen by the guide. We found it a really good choice because it showed different features and topics and we did not repeat any of them. Apart from that, we got a good impression from the guide, who instead of explaining the meaning of each work, asked the students questions and, from those, she linked the main ideas connected to the theme of the creation and constructed with them the significance, so then they could discuss about it. Some of the topics that appear were: war, feminism, racial discrimination, among others. What is more, the good aspect of this visit was noticing that each relevant comment from the children that appeared in the different sections were used to create, in workshop time, a big poster in groups to convince people about the importance of those topics in our society. 

By carrying out this project, I realized how many resources we could use when becoming teachers, since bringing children to museum is an amusing and different way of working or complementing the content done in class. 

Click here to go and read our research and here to have a look at our presentation. 

Portrait + Portrait with shadows

In this lesson, we had to do two drawings: the first one had to be a complete portrait of one classmate (Laura, in this case). Then, we needed to copy it in another piece of paper, but adding shadows to it so it would have volume, like if we could see it in 3D. To accomplish this, we used a new technique that consisted in drawing a type of grid, so straight lines that cross each other. Before drawing the shadows, we had to consider which parts of the body were going to have more and less light. The ones with more light are represented in the picture more separately, whilst the ones with less light are represented more closely. In this way, we can highlight the parts with more shadow that do actually give more volume to the picture. And this are the results (the first two belong to the first drawing we did and the other one is the one that has shadows):

 

Before using this technique in class, I did not know its existence. When it come to drawing, I used to paint with a darker pencil or colour to simulate the shadows. This technique allows us to give different intensity range of shadows, since we can draw the straight lines closer or farther from each other, it gives us more flexibility. From now on, I'll tend to put into practice this method, because it can help me focus where the different point of shadow are placed and with what intensity. I'm sure that if I had the chance to introduce it to children, they would be more capable to notice the difference between parts of less or more light and also that there is no concept of such as just dark or light, everything has a wide spectrum of colours.

Toulouse Lautrec + Diego Velázquez exhibitions

On 17th of December we went to the CosmoCaixa to see the exhibition of Toulouse Lautrec, an artist included in the poster movement. He was known to be one of the brave artist to fight against the ideals imposed by the Academy of Fine Arts and start the movement of breakdown and originality. 

In this exhibition, we could see different works. Some aspects that actually got my attention were, first of all, that the firsts cabarets were places in which many artists used to meet to discuss and share their ideas. Those cabarets were not the places we might relate to nowadays, these areas where divided into two: the one exclusively for artists and the other one opened to the public. Then, the guide introduced the Chats noirs, two of them opened, but because of the loss of innocence they had to close down. Afterwards, the guide presented us the name of Moulin Rouge (as can be seen in the picture), which was opened around the 60s by a Catalan and it was at this time when the concept of cabaret as we know today arose.
The exhibition mainly consisted in posters which were created as a street art that wasn't taken into consideration by the Academy.
From this exhibition I can highlight the ideas mentioned above. Although the guide was quite a good communicator, the rushing prevent me from acquiring more ideas and understanding a bit deeper what she was explaining us. 

Apart from that, we had the chance to go and see the Velázquez exclusive exhibition, as it would be there for a limited period of time. We didn't have a guide to show and explain us the portraits and different works, so it was quite difficult to deep in the meaning and the intention of the artist had when painting and creating those works. What I noticed was that many mythological creatures and characters appeared in different portraits; nevertherless, only of was from him: Marte. Not all the creations were done by Velázquez, but they related to him, to the Spanish Royal Collections and to the "Segle d'Or". In addition to this, we discussed one portrait "El Príncipe Baltasar Carlos a caballo" which at the first look, one could notice that the horse was pretty fat, that was why we had to look at it from below in order to appreciate properly the effect it had on it. 

All in all, I have to admit that doing the tour with a tourist helped me a lot to understand the intentions and the background of the works; although we did it quickly it was better than going by ourselves. Of course in the Velazquez one we could go in our rhythm, but I missed some kind of explanation and aid to comprehend it.