Universidad Complutense de Madrid :: NILS mobility project

Venue: Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Norway

From: May 1, 2010

to: May 30, 2010 

María Acaso is Professor at the Department of Art Education at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). She obtained her degree in Fine Arts and focused her career in the development of innovative methodologies for learning about visual arts.

Her project, together with Johan Sandborg, consists of a case study on the hidden visual curriculum of the Bergen National Academy of the Arts.

About her work:

"In 2005 I have conducted a comparative research project on visual configurations at different art schools in Europe and the United States. I was interested in exploring the relationship of visual culture and hidden curriculum on campus, and the effect of these on students perception of their role as emerging artists in the society. The study of hidden visual curriculum examines how knowledge and cultural/political/social values can be transmitted to students through the content of images or spatial arrangement of school facilities. For this first study, I chose the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) especially for its contrasts with the school where I teaches in Madrid. The Universidad Complutense is relatively conservative and does not have the SAIC's reputation for teaching innovative contemporary art.

By now, I want to explore the same topic but in a different context: in Europe and the UCM-EEA Abel and Munch Extraordinary Chairs gives me the opportunity to continue my research interest in Bergen National Academy of the Arts (KHIB). In this place I will research haw implicit information that the Academy gives to their students. Eric Margolis defines the hidden curriculum as ‘‘the element of socialization that takes place in school but [is] not part of the formal curricular content'' A new category of study has emerged-‘‘visual cultural studies,'' as coined by Nicholas Mirzoef in 2002. Visual cultural studies focus on a variety of aspects of culture through re-examination and reinterpretation of visual images. This field of inquiry has become increasingly popular in the field of art education and aims to create a more engaging curriculum that allows students to be self reflective critical thinkers".