Edu kids museem1/12/2023 ![]() Numerous art exhibitions in the first two decades of the twenty-first century have focused on what artworks and artifacts can tell us about young people and childhood. Still, these adult-made paintings, sculptures, photographs, and other media can provide a roadmap of changing perceptions of childhood, as well as of the social and cultural issues that have affected adult expectations of young people over time and in different places. Thus, objects associated with children and youth are acknowledged to be mainly the result of adult interpretations. At the same time, it is understood that most of the material culture relating to children and youth belong, or once belonged, to adults with the means to create, commission, or procure them. For example, examining images from the perspective of how the artists intended viewers to receive them can offer critical insights into conventions, practices, and beliefs. Historians recognize that while representation is not objective, it does provide evidence of the realities lived by children and youth. Of importance to using material culture when undertaking this kind of study are the methods of iconography, to comprehend how different types of images and objects are used to impart particular interpretations of reality. ![]() 2 Building on this premise, in recent years material culture-namely, the physical objects created and used by a society-has proven to be valuable when studying the history of young people. 1 Although historians have widely dismissed Ariès's conclusions about the lives of children, which he arrived at without an understanding of iconographic analysis, his use of visual material to explore the lives of children was groundbreaking. In the course of conducting research for Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (1962), he collected a large corpus of visual material, central to which were works of art he saw in exhibitions and art publications. This issue's emphasis on museums is an appropriate tribute to Philippe Ariès, the French medievalist and founding father of childhood studies who considered artworks and other artifacts to be crucial to his work. The second involves how exhibitions for children perceive their attitudes and educational needs. The eight papers in this special issue engage with one of two meanings of "children in museum settings." The first relates to how social concerns, economic conditions, and cultural trends influence the ideas we have about children and, as a consequence, the ways childhood is represented in museums and galleries.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |