Contemporary Art Triennale for School Students

Prof. James Elkins. Photo: School of the Art Institute of Chicago. http://www.saic.edu/profiles/faculty/jameselkins/

As part of Eksperimenta! Eduko IDEAlaboratory for integrating contemporary art and education will take place from 24th to 25th October 2014 bringing together education experts, teachers, researches, artists and students. The keynote speaker of Eduko IDEAlaboratory is the internationally renowned art historian and critic James Elkins who asks why art cannot be taught.

Prof. Elkins is E. C. Chadbourne Chair of art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He will focus on teaching and evaluating art at the Eduko IDEAlaboratory. Elkins has been interested in psychological processes of art students, criticism inside the class, the influence between student and teacher. He has been interested in what defines a good art teacher. One of his most intriguing books is entitled “Why Art cannot be taught”.

Estonian art historian Heie Treier explains how Elkins supported the visual culture studies as a possibility to rescue the art history writing from a kind of narrow, elitist, object-related and relatively boring approach. “For example, Elkins himself has experimented by analyzing an X-ray, a blade of grass, a sunset etc. while using different methods of art theory. It is quite rare that an art historian is equally interested in theory of art education,” says Treier.

Professor Elkins has held lectures in Estonia twice before – in 2005 in Tartu at the invitation of Tartu Art College and in 2010 in Tallinn at the invitation of Estonian Academy of Arts.

In addition to Professor Elkins we invite researchers and practitioners in the visual arts and art education to submit abstracts for peer-reviewed papers, presentations and practical workshops that would help to understand contemporary art and integrate it into teaching process of creative subjects. The call for papers is open until 10th of June. Topics include “The Art of Teaching” and “The Art of Evaluation”.

The Contemporary Art Triennial for School Students Eksperimenta! is a unique art event, which challenges art education to break out from the classroom and creatively interact with contemporary life and society.
The main topic of Eksperimenta! 2014 is “Art and Science”. It collects the interpretations by young artists and curators about the society, ecology up to nano technology in Tallinn Creative Hub. The authors from more than dozen countries are not professional artists but students aged 14 to 19. See more www.eksperimenta.net

IDEAlaboratory takes place as part of Eduko programme that has been launched by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Science and supported by the European Social Fund with the mission to improve Estonian teachers’ education, so that our children would have the best teachers in the world.

More info:
Annely Köster
[email protected]
+372 502 7897