Mediation Laboratories: participatory spaces at MoMA 1939-1972

• Sara Torres Vega

  Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España

  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8847-5622

A lab is a space for ideas to be tested, challenged or co-created. The lab as a concept can offer the future museum a framework for being experimental, research-based and committed to questioning itself. Powered by honest curiosity, it promotes an ideal frame for education. In 1939 Alfred H. Barr, the first director of The Museum of Modern Art, defined the museum as a ‘laboratory’. In 1937 Victor D’Amico had been appointed Director of the Educational Project to fulfill MoMA’s educational mission which included the opening of the Young People’s Gallery. The Young People’s Gallery served as a safe, participative space for pushing the limits of the idea of the museum as a laboratory. This article is an exploration of the concept of museums as labs through MoMA’s educational past, in search for socially relevant practices to inspire the museum of the future.

1. Sara Torres Vega, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España

   Personal docente e investigador de la Facultad de Bellas Artes. Departamento de Escultura y Formación Artística. Coordinadora de artes y humanidades y directora del programa cultural de los cursos de verano de El Escorial y profesora de la New York University.

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