Education was again a priority and was implemented through some splendid Viewer Guides, encounters, Masterclasses, equipped studios, the Kunstbuzz in collaboration with our main sponsor ING, and special guided tours, expert meetings, Think Tanks, and over 21,000 children visiting the Kunsthal with their schools.

Masterclasses

Students in higher education could participate in yet another series of Masterclasses in collaboration with the Willem de Kooning Academy. Exclusively for the students and Kunsthal Friends, renowned makers explained their working methods and body of work and entered into a public discussion with the participants. After an extraordinary series in 2017, we again welcomed some extraordinary ‘Masters’ at the Kunsthal in 2018: artist Melanie Bonajo (nominated for the Prix de Rome Visual Arts), artist Michael Kvium, fashion duo Viktor&Rolf, photographer Stephan Vanfleteren and artist and innovator Daan Roosegaarde. Each year, the programme proves to be an enormous source of inspiration for the participants, giving them valuable insights. With over 300 sold tickets, a number of these masterclasses were even fully booked. Each of these masterclasses is filmed and can be watched through the Kunsthal’s YouTube channel.

ING Kunstbuzz

Four times a year, the ING Kunstbuzz, an initiative of the Kunsthal and ING, drives classes of schoolchildren for whom transportation is a problem to the Kunsthal. In this way, over 750 Rotterdam pupils are introduced to the arts on a yearly basis; children who would otherwise not have an opportunity to do so. This year the Kunstbuzz facilitated the first edition of ‘Kijk ze Kijken’, which won the Kunsthal the incentive award for Museum Education in 2017. Together with elderly people from a nearby senior citizens home, a group of special education pupils paid a visit to the Kunsthal. In this configuration, the participants were able to look differently and more intently at art.

Summer School

During the summer of 2018, another edition of the All you can Art Summer School took place. With the Zuiderparkcollege as one of the regular partners, the artist David Bade worked on an artwork with several classes for a week. This ‘open studio’ took place in the assembly hall of the Zuiderparkcollege. Another Summer School was held at the Kunsthal, with over thirty motivated students participating. Together with five different artists involved in the project, they were able to develop their own work within the context of a master and apprentice relationship.

SPECIAL TOURS AND LECTURES

Special tours providing an added extra-curricular, educational layer to the exhibitions, have now become recurring educational events. A couple of times a year, the Kunsthal invites special guests to look at the exhibition from an entirely new perspective. In this context, visitors were, for instance, able to join plastic surgeon Xander Smit for a tour of the exhibition Hyperrealism Sculpture. Also, professor Tjeerd de Faber of the Rotterdam Eye Hospital educated visitors of the exhibition Action <-> Reaction about the ability of kinetic art to trick the eye. And during the Post Human Days, lectures were given by artists focusing on ‘technology’ and ‘new humans’.

ART MEDIATION

During the run of the exhibition Hyperrealism Sculpture, guides for all age groups were available every weekend. Instead of giving guided tours, these guides entered into discussions with the visitors, in so-called art mediation. By means of the Visual Thinking Strategies method, the guides provided more information about the various sculptures and also further examined the experiences of the visitors while watching the lifelike sculptures.