Deutsches Historisches Museum - Verf�hrung Freiheit. Kunst in Europa seit 1945 - Blog

‘My name is Philippe Carasco. I work in the Museum Education department, where our aim is help visitors better understand the exhibitions.'

Q: At what point does the Museum Education department get involved in an exhibition project?

'That varies a lot and depends on the curators. We always are always under a lot of time pressure because we are already busy with other exhibitions in the lead-up to new exhibition opens. Our work is always split between accompanying the current exhibitions and preparing for the one about to open. That is our difficulty, because we sometimes have as many as four exhibitions to attend to at the same time.’

Q: What particularly interests you about working in museum education? What was important regarding The Desire for Freedom?

‘I want to make the museum an attractive place for visitors to learn and discover. This cannot work if we are constantly imposing a certain viewpoint on our visitors, especially in the interpretations. Our aim with The Desire for Freedom was to let the visitors discover the artworks for themselves.

As I see it, my task in this exhibition is to explain the historical background of the artworks and the context in which they were created, and to reveal what the artist is communicating. Take the painting by Equip Crónica, for example: there are interesting things to talk about.

For one thing, I can explain what happened in Paris in 1968, because the painting is ultimately about those events. I can then bring up the artists’ Spanish origins and explain the political system that existed in Spain at the time that the picture was painted. I can also go into the many references from the history of art. Visitors always find it fascinating. Most people recognise some things, for instance the sunflowers from Van Gogh, but many references are less known and discovering them is quite exciting.’

Q: Did The Desire for Freedom present any difficulties?

‘I found it difficult to memorise all of the artworks in a short period of time and to understand and be able to explain them. Naturally, the guided tour focuses on certain artworks, but that doesn’t mean that the visitors won’t ask about other ones, which I would just assume pass by.’

Q: How is such a guided tour organised? Which rooms or artworks are discussed?

‘We have two types of guided tours. There are tours that are reserved in advance, for which we then know the number of participants and whether it is a school class or a private group. The other tours are open to the public. These groups can vary quite a lot. They may include art students or someone who happens to be in the museum because the bad weather. It can also happen that art experts are along, who just want to have their own opinions confirmed. It can be challenging to find a common thread for all of these people, because of their very different interests.

Discussions will also then develop among participants about artworks that permit various interpretations. We do try to encourage these discussions. There are artworks in The Desire for Freedom that get vigorously discussed. Dan Perjovschi, for instance, or The Home by Antony Gromley: ‘Is he really free, when he is lying on the ground with the house over his head?’ I would say about two thirds of the visitors do not think that he is free. The other third argues, that he is lying there, quite relaxed, that the hands are in an open, relaxed position, and that his thoughts are free. The head is in his ‘home’, which is a positive term. The artist could have also have titled the work ‘prison’. But it is called ‘home’.

Q: Which criteria do you use when deciding which artworks to include in your tour?

‘Every tour requires a common thread. And every artwork is not going to be relevant to every tour. For instance, I do not include Damien Hirst’s Dead End Jobs. My common thread is the cycle of crisis and criticism. I take the tour from the room, ‘We are the Revolution’ to the room ‘, to the room, ‘Journey into Wonderland’, where my interest is primarily on the critique of historiography. In that room, I concentrate on the time of the Second World War and National Socialism, and that artwork has no bearing on that period.

The Hirst piece may be included in tours led by colleagues, which can happen because the education department does not prescribe one specific concept for tours, but instead allows the guides to develop their own concepts. All go their own individual ways within the exhibition.'

Q: What kind of feedback do you get from the public?

‘We will actually notice it during the tours. If someone stops paying attention, then you know that something isn’t working. The visitors’ level of attention is a good indicator of how interesting the tour is. It is a sure sign that your tour was not good enough, if the participants started to wander off or stop listening.’

Q: Which questions are you asked the most often?

‘One question I am often asked has to do with the relationship of the artworks to freedom. I get asked fairly frequently—right at the end of the tour— why there are so many works that in the visitors’ opinion have nothing to do with freedom. The only adequate response is to present freedom as an argument in favour of the broad possible range of artistic approaches. One person may find that an artwork has nothing to do with freedom and another may think that the same piece is all about freedom.

Artworks that often mentioned are Maria Lassnig’s Du oder ich (You or Me) and Opalka’s rows of numbers. Most visitors see that the artists were able to paint whatever they wanted, but they do not see a connection to the title of the exhibition. And in regard to Opalke, I would say that he used this form of presentation to experience himself. In addition, the fact that he increased the amount of white in the colour of each new painting by one percent indicates to me that it is about insight and intellectual freedom. I do not argue against the visitors. Everyone is free to decide whether a painting is appropriate or not.’