Visual Literacy and Art Museums

How does the concept of Visual Literacy fit the work of art museums, in curating and mediating? Has the existing model be broadened towards a concept of multimodal literacy? How can we observe the visitors’ learning outcome? What works and why?

The group will reflect existing experiences in art museums and explore the chances to work with an elaborated competence model, like the one offered by the CEFR_VL. On this base proposals will be made to improve practice on the one hand and to develop further the existing concepts and models. To enable this more research in the field is needed.

A meeting will be held in Munich Germany in January 2018, to bring together experts from for example Austria, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Malta, and USA. The results will be published.

If you are interested in collaboration, please contact Franz Billmayer.

Members of the Working Group: Toledo Museum of Art, USA: Brian Kennedy, Adam Levine; Museum M Leuven, Belgium: Lode Vermeersch; Bavarian Museum Academy: Rainer Wenrich; ENViL Board: Franz Billmayer, Ernst Wagner.

Looking back: Two meetings and a public conference were already held at Museum M in Leuven in 2016 to discuss concepts and chances of implementing the CEFR_VL into an art museum. ENViL members presented the CEFR_VL and discussed the emerging ideas regarding new ways of showing art works in the gallery. The CEFR_VL turned out as a useful tool to give the discussion a helpful structure and to evaluate practice.screenshot-2016-11-21-19-52-48

Download: Presentation Museum M – ENViL 1 (PDF)

Conference on Visual Literacy in Art Museums at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, 2018 January 12 – 14