This Autumn Quarter 2024 Course Highlight is the third of three exploring Kim Aziz and Mirka Jablonski’s new course: Facilitation in the Museum: Creating a place for curiosity and wonder. This course explores how museum practitioners can actively and intentionally cultivate an experience that evokes awe and wonder within the museum space using visual thinking and other strategies. This highlight is written by second-year Museology student Marcela Velandia.
Inspiration and passion have been a central part of my life since I am part of the museum field. For seven years, I have worked in different roles in museums with different missions but the same purpose: create spaces of dialogue while people are learning about an artwork or object that is being displayed in the gallery space. Museums are open spaces where people can visit, talk, learn and interact with the object, but most people feel that the content displayed is not always available or accessible.
So, how can museums be better to bring people together and spark inspiration in people while they are visiting just for a brief period? This is one of the most repetitive questions I have while I am doing my master’s in museum studies. It is not enough to learn multiple theories on how informal learning spaces impact on visitors without experiencing firsthand how to establish connections between the objects and the public. Personally, I always crave for more knowledge and feel constantly unsatisfied with receiving a small piece of information, I love not only to learn about a new topic, but also, I want to explore, investigate, and analyze all points of views. No matter which role you want to work in museums it is important to feel inspired and motivated by the public, who are the main reasons museums are still open.
Having this curiosity in my mind, last year, I briefly learned in a museum workshop about visual thinking strategies, I was struck by how the facilitators, engaged all the attendants to talk in detail and describe an artwork made by Frida Kahlo at the Frye Art Museum. I was fascinated that no matter the level of knowledge or expertise, everyone was able to participate and contribute in diverse ways about the artwork. A year later, the Museology program offered a facilitation class during Fall Quarter where I learned more in depth about this methodology.
Luckily, I learned behind the scenes how facilitators utilized different skills to open a conversation where literally everyone is welcome in space and can contribute to the discussion. I experienced my aha! moment when I started to connect the dots between the visitor’s learning process and how they connect with the object displayed in the gallery space. Indeed, VTS asks the same three questions: What is going on in this image? What do you think that makes you say that? What else can you see? And paraphrasing to iterate the information. But the magic behind these questions is not about the methodology; it is the intention of asking everyone to participate in order to spark wonder and curiosity. This is one of the methods I have found to offer better environments where people can have access to the content in museums.
In one of the classes we went to the Seattle Art Museum and after a few trainings, my classmates and I had the opportunity to be facilitators and apply different skills. The outcome was unexpected and marvelous. Everyone in the room actively participated, and contributed to the room, either as a facilitator or as a participant, the dialogue was nourished by active listening and engagement. After that experience I can see how these types of methodologies challenge the traditional learning and allow everyone to explore their own ways of thinking and passions. Besides improving and gaining new skills, I realized how facilitation is a great tool to connect people with others, through passion and inspiration. This is the main reason I am doing a master’s in museums, places that hold the history of beauty and sensibility of human beings.
