• Time for Cultural Mediation
  • Foreword by Carmen Mörsch
  • Foreword by Andrew Holland
• 1 What is Cultural Mediation?
  Quick Reads:
  • 1.0 Intro
  • 1.1 “Kulturvermittlung” as collective term in German-speaking regions
  • 1.2 Médiation culturelle
  • 1.3 English terminology
  • 1.4 Italian terminology
  • 1.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 1.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 2 Cultural Mediation for Whom?
  Quick Reads:
  • 2.0 Intro
  • 2.1 Target-group categories
  • 2.2 Critique of target-group thinking
  • 2.3 Other approaches to defining audiences
  • 2.4 Cultural mediation for institutional development and renewal
  • 2.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 2.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 3 What is Transmitted?
  Quick Reads:
  • 3.0 Intro
  • 3.1 Works and productions as subject-matter
  • 3.2 Artistic techniques as subject-matter
  • 3.3 Institutions as subject-matter
  • 3.4 Art as a system as subject matter
  • 3.5 Artistic processes in business
  • 3.6 Artistic processes in social, pedagogic and activist contexts
  • 3.7 Learning methods as subject-matter
  • 3.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 3.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 4 How is Cultural Mediation Carried Out?
  Quick Reads:
  • 4.0 Intro
  • 4.1 Participation level: receptive
  • 4.2 Participation level: interactive
  • 4.3 Participation level: participative
  • 4.4 Participation level: collaborative
  • 4.5 Participation level: demand-based
  • 4.6 Teaching and learning concepts: instructionist
  • 4.7 Teaching and learning concepts: action-oriented
  • 4.8 Teaching and learning concepts: constructivist and social-constructivist
  • 4.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 4.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 5 What Does Cultural Mediation Do?
  Quick Reads:
  • 5.0 Intro
  • 5.1 Affirmative function of cultural mediation
  • 5.2 Reproductive function of cultural mediation
  • 5.3 Deconstructive function of cultural mediation
  • 5.4 Reformative function of cultural mediation
  • 5.5 Transformative function of cultural mediation
  • 5.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 5.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 6 Cultural Mediation: Why (Not)?
  Quick Reads:
  • 6.0 Intro
  • 6.1 Rationale: cultural mediation has an influence on the economy
  • 6.2 Rationale: cultural mediation promotes cognitive performance
  • 6.3 Rationale: Expanding cultural mediation as a matter of fiscal responsibility
  • 6.4 Rationale: Cultural mediation as an instrument for inclusion
  • 6.5 Rationale: The arts as universal educational good
  • 6.6 Rationale: Cultural mediation as means to actively contribute to shaping the arts
  • 6.7 Rationale: Cultural mediation to compensate for social injustice
  • 6.8 Objections to cultural mediation and its promotion
  • 6.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 6.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 7 Who “does” Cultural Mediation?
  Quick Reads:
  • 7.0 Intro
  • 7.1 Occupation: cultural mediator
  • 7.2 Conditions of employment in cultural mediation
  • 7.3 (Swiss) Training options and professional associations of cultural mediators
  • 7.4 Volunteer work in cultural mediation
  • 7.5 Cultural mediation as a research field
  • 7.6 Funding of cultural mediation in Switzerland
  • 7.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 7.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 8 Good Cultural Mediation?
  Quick Reads:
  • 8.0 Intro
  • 8.1 Quality in cultural mediation: current activities
  • 8.2 Critiques of quality management in cultural mediation
  • 8.3 Attempt to define a framework of criteria for evaluating cultural mediation
  • 8.4 Criteria for a primarily affirmative cultural mediation
  • 8.5 Criteria for a primarily reproductive cultural mediation
  • 8.6 Criteria for a primarily deconstructive cultural mediation
  • 8.7 Criteria for a primarily transformative cultural mediation
  • 8.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 8.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 9 Transmitting Cultural Mediation?
  Quick Reads:
  • 9.0 Intro
  • 9.1 Guiding questions for use in the documentation of cultural mediation
  • 9.2 Challenges in transmitting cultural mediation
  • 9.3 Cultural mediation in this publication
  • 9.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 9.RL For Reading at Leisure
• Service
  Case Studies:
  • SC Intro
  • SC.1 Case Study 1
  • SC.2 Case Study 2
  • Glossary
  • Resource Pool
  • Literature and Links
  • List of bookmarks
  • PDF Download
  • Bibliographic information and legal notice

List of bookmarks →

Download text as PDF ↓ Quick Reads

3.0 Intro

An art museum hosts an exhibition on medical themes in paintings dating from ten different centuries. In conjunction with that the museum offers a special cultural mediation programme for nurses in training. The programme starts with a guided tour of the exhibition, in which the group learns about the works on display from an art historical perspective while sharing their own associations with the paintings against the background of their work experience. Subsequently, the participants themselves engage in creative activity in the cultural mediation room. Taking images in their instruction texts as a starting point, they use various visualization techniques, such as analogue paper collage, acetone frottage, tracing projected images and digital image processing software. After a period of time, the mediator goes to the prospective nurses’ university for a session with the group. Together, they review the day in the museum and consider whether anything from their experiences at the workshop could transfer to their daily routine in training or in their professional lives. In this context, discussion turns to a Damien Hirst piece from 2002 shown at the exhibition: a large printer’s type case holding hundreds of brightly coloured pills, displayed like jewellery in a glass cabinet. The participants discuss whether a defamiliarization method like the one used in the Hirst piece might open up possibilities for them to develop new perspectives on everyday materials and thereby avoid falling into routines, stay alert. In that context, heated discussion erupts over the fact that Damien Hirst is currently one of the world’s most expensive artists and that his works are included in the collections of many museums.

This example contains a great variety of educational content: above all, the artworks themselves; then techniques of image composition and artistic processes (such as shifting the significance of ordinary objects) and their potential relevance for other fields of action. The museum as an institution is also a subject matter, though, as are museum collection policies and what is currently happening in the art market.

This chapter explores in somewhat greater detail the various subject matters that cultural mediation can address. The final, more in-depth text turns to tacit content in cultural mediation in the past and the present, which has itself been a subject of critical discourse among professionals in the cultural mediation field in recent years.