Object-based learning
Through teaching, I’ve learnt how crucial professional skills are to empowering and motivating students to enter and thrive in these worlds. For the past six years, I have embedded my courses in the incredible teaching and research space at the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA). I use the Collection as a space for students to work first-hand with artworks, interview artists, and to gain guidance preparing acquisition proposals and writing for publication. In a course I designed in 2019, students contributed to preparing Gone to Ground, a major exhibition of environmental art works to mark 25 years of ESCALA at our on-campus gallery. The classroom became a curatorial laboratory where we researched, discussed and selected artworks. Student assignments included writing labels for the show and essays for the exhibition catalogue, which enabled me to mentor their communication skills one-on-one. This helps me reframe coursework evaluation as an editorial practice: a supportive exercise designed to draw out their authentic voices and ideas. The presence of their proud parents at the exhibition opening was one of the most satisfying moments of my teaching career, which merited an Excellence in Education Award.
AR915: Collecting Art from Latin America, postgraduate course, Essex Collection of Art from Latin America / University of Essex
At Essex I teach a postgraduate course every year together with the curators of the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA), Dr Sarah Demelo and Giselle Girón. The course was created by the former ESCALA director, Dr Jo Harwood, as an innovative way to support students in acquiring hands-on skills in researching and formulating acquisitions proposals. Over 10 weeks, the students learn about ESCALA, the research it has pioneered into art from Latin America since its foundation in the 1990s, and key topics of artistic production from the region today.
It’s exciting to support students as they ask themselves key questions about the purpose and mission of an art collection. Who does it serve? How can it engage with people in the University and beyond? What are the ethics of researching and acquiring artworks from Latin America for a European collection? The course also invites them to probe their own curatorial interests and balance those with institutional needs. The term ends with presentations to an expert acquisition panel, featuring Emeritus Professors Dawn Ades and Valerie Fraser.
Most excitingly for us and the students, one pitch is chosen each year so that ESCALA purchases the artwork and it becomes part of this common heritage, available for teaching, research and impact activities. Recent acquisitions include works by Carolina Caycedo, Julieth Morales, Abraham Cruzvillegas, among others.
