Learning through art at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Bilbao, June 13, 2022.
Dear Ophelia,
§ Dates: from June 14 to September 18, 2022
§ Location: Education Space of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
§ Sponsored by BBK
• 135 schoolchildren between six and twelve years old, belonging to six educational centers in the Basque Country, have created works full of imagination and spontaneity that are exhibited in the Museum’s Education Space.
• Current events have inspired this year’s artistic proposals: languages and communication, the war in Ukraine, sustainability or the role of women in history are some of the topics that have been discussed in the program.
• Since 1998, 3,581 schoolchildren have gone through this educational program that aims to encourage their imagination and creativity, help experiment and, at the same time, reinforce the subjects of the school curriculum.
A large-scale installation that alludes to a space of peace for refugees, cardboard with planets, nebulae and meteorites, clay stones with representations of a future world, an animated film on female figures in the world of art and photographs of a Artistic intervention in the schoolyard to represent the shapes and lines that surround us are some of the imaginative proposals by primary school artists that they have used in this edition of the Learning through Art program, sponsored by BBK.
This year, Learning through art has focused on current social issues such as the war in Ukraine, migration, caring for the planet, the beauty of the universe or the role of women in history. Accompanied by the artists, the students have imagined the future, have reflected on the consequences of war, have learned the importance of caring for the planet and have discovered different ways of connecting with people and spaces.
Nerea Lekuona, one of the six artists who have collaborated in this edition, expressed her experience at the Miguel de Cervantes school in Vitoria-Gasteiz in this way: “Working with a multicultural group has been very enriching. As the course progressed, current news marked the route. The war in Ukraine has made us mobilize and think about creating an artistic installation. We saw that there were also armed conflicts in other countries and that children were one of the most vulnerable groups. The facility consisted of a safe space for children forced to leave their homes due to the war. In order for them to feel safe, we created a “new home” where we could receive messages of calm and encouragement from the whole class. The involvement of the teaching staff was key in the development of the experience”.
Since its inception, the exhibition that culminates the program has been sponsored by BBK and with the collaboration of the Department of Education of the Basque Government. It opens to the public from June 14 to September 18 in the Museum’s Education Space.
The artists Elssie Ansareo, Ibon Garagarza, Zaloa Ipiña, Nerea Lekuona, Maider López and Ibon Sáenz de Olazagoitia, in collaboration with the Subdirectorate of Education and Public Programs of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and teachers from six schools in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, have designed and invigorated the creative projects of this edition. They have approached the subjects of social sciences, language or mathematics with an artistic approach that aims to arouse the curiosity of schoolchildren, encourage new views of reality, encourage improvisation, exploration or experiment. The artist Maider López explains her work process in these words: “During the development of the project, the theme of how warm colors seem to approach each other while cold colors seem to be more distant arose. As we went along we changed shots and instead of continuing with the scheduled project we made one with this theme, moving colors, bringing them closer together and further away in an attempt to balance distances, to experiment with colors, bodies and spaces. We were adapting to what was happening, to what was emerging, to small discoveries”.
Six imaginative and surprising art projects
The 135 little “artists” who participate in the exhibition Learning through art belong to six schools in Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa.
“The languages of the world” is the motto chosen by the students of the Txomin Aresti School in Leioa. With the help of the artist Zaloa Ipiña, they compared a text in Basque by the poet Kirmen Uribe with its translations into Spanish, Portuguese and English and, in this way, they will be able to identify what is characteristic of each language and explore the diversity and richness of languages and dialects of the world.
The boys and girls of the 4th year of the San Vicente de Paúl School in Barakaldo made visible the role of women in history. Accompanied by Elssie Ansareo, they investigated female figures in the art world: painters, dancers, filmmakers, photographers or sculptors from all continents, and used drawing to devise artist’s books or art catalogs in order to spread the work of these creators.
The 4th grade students from Colegio Egape de Urnieta worked on geometry as part of the mathematics curriculum. With the support of Maider López, they began using plastic materials, cardboard, paints, colors and, later, they realized that through their bodies they could describe the shapes and lines around them. This dynamic allowed them to expand their body and spatial awareness and better understand their bodies in relation to the environment.
The 5th year students of the Miguel de Cervantes School in Vitoria-Gasteiz had the mission of promoting respect and inclusion in the class, learning from the cultural diversity that exists in the group. Nerea Lekuona guided them through a fascinating process of individual and collective work; firstly, the schoolchildren came to a class dressed in a garment or object typical of their country of origin, and then they worked together to create an installation, “Bakeleku” that would serve as a refuge for families displaced from the war in Ukraine.
The 4th, 5th and 6th grade children of the Samaniego School in Vitoria-Gasteiz imagined an ideal world, led by the artist Ibon Sáenz de Olazagoitia. They discussed the meaning of utopia and investigated from their closest environment to the most distant on the planet. They captured the different speculations about that future world in phrases that they inserted into clay “fortune cookies”. The schoolchildren also drew utopian means of transport, flags or coins of the future.
Students from 1st to 6th grade at the Turtziozko Eskola School in Trucios reflected on the universe and history. It was a teamwork of children of different ages that allowed them to combine different capacities, knowledge and interests. The group was inspired by the beauty of the images captured by the Hubble telescope to devise their own representations of the universe: nebulae, planets, stars and meteorites were some of the elements they created using Expressionism techniques.
Bilbao-New York interchange
A class from Colegio Txomin Aresti in Leioa and another from Colegio Público 28 in New York, helped by artists Zaloa Ipiña and Sharela Bonfield, have communicated by email for six weeks, exchanging information about their artistic projects through text messages and images, drawings and photographs of their creations. The two groups communicate in Spanish and English, promoting knowledge of different languages and cultures.
Since 1999, Learning through Art has provided participating schoolchildren, artists and teachers with the opportunity to develop a cultural exchange through art education between Primary Schools in the Basque Country and New York.
25 years of learning through art
The Learning Through Art program turns 25 years old with the satisfaction of having contributed to reinforcing the school curriculum of more than 3,500 primary school students through artistic activities and, at the same time, having taught these children to see the world from a creative and personal way, assimilating values such as teamwork, coexistence with other cultures or respect for the environment.
3,581 schoolchildren, 32 artists, 263 Primary Education teachers of the three linguistic models and 166 centers throughout the Basque Country have actively collaborated with the educators of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in the development of this program since 1998.
25 years after its launch at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Learning through Art program continues to show its enormous potential for improving the school curriculum through art. This educational program has its origins in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where Natalie K. Lieberman introduced it in 1970 as a response to the elimination of the teaching of the arts in public elementary schools in the city. . Cover image: Works carried out by the students of the Turtziozko Eskola School in Trucios.
A big hug from Bilbao culture,
Felix Jose Hernandez