OASIS and Placed-based Curriculum, New Sites for Visual Inquiry
Abstract
In “Visual Landscapes, Literacies and Place: The South (Re)seen”, we discussed Carter’s OASIS, a critical visual research method, where Observation, Analysis, Synthesis, Implementation, and Sharing are employed through visual works/ artifacts. We revisit it here, doing a deeper dive into the methodology and potential to reconceptualize the gallery space as intentionally pedagogical. Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator for The Studio Museum in Harlem, sees the artist’s studio as laboratory, imagines the reinvention of the museum as think tank and recognizes the exhibition as the ultimate white paper (TEDTalk, “How art gives shape to cultural change”, 2010). She believes in art serving as a catalyst for complicated discussions with multiple entry points and believes these offer ways to question race and culture. We agree and borrowing from this thinking we see the gallery/museum’s curricular potential as a teaching site, at the crux of past, present, and future and expanding discussions of placed-based curriculum. In this curriculum, an immersive experience into local and cultural landscapes is key and the gallery/museum invites such inquiry and travel through time/space/ideas whether it’s in the middle of a city or college campus. Gallery/museum spaces become springboards for interdisciplinary inquiry and new curricular forms. Using OASIS as the method for access, gallery/museums are perceived, felt and used wildly different, rupturing demands for silent banking of art witnessed. We turn our attention to how OASIS changes our relationship to learning, curriculum, and living through the arts, especially how it shift-shapes galleries/museums as we know it.
Presentation Description
In “Visual Landscapes, Literacies and Place: The South (Re)seen”, we discussed Carter’s OASIS, a critical visual research method, where Observation, Analysis, Synthesis, Implementation, and Sharing are employed through visual works/ artifacts. We revisit it here, doing a deeper dive into the methodology and potential to reconceptualize the gallery space as intentionally pedagogical, as well as shift our relationship to curriculum as living.
Keywords
Visual inquiry, Curriculum in the making, Placed-based curriculum
Location
Oglethorpe
Publication Type and Release Option
Presentation (Open Access)
Recommended Citation
Carter, Roymieco A. and Villaverde, Leila E., "OASIS and Placed-based Curriculum, New Sites for Visual Inquiry" (2016). Curriculum Studies Summer Collaborative. 31.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cssc/2016/2016/31
OASIS and Placed-based Curriculum, New Sites for Visual Inquiry
Oglethorpe
In “Visual Landscapes, Literacies and Place: The South (Re)seen”, we discussed Carter’s OASIS, a critical visual research method, where Observation, Analysis, Synthesis, Implementation, and Sharing are employed through visual works/ artifacts. We revisit it here, doing a deeper dive into the methodology and potential to reconceptualize the gallery space as intentionally pedagogical. Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator for The Studio Museum in Harlem, sees the artist’s studio as laboratory, imagines the reinvention of the museum as think tank and recognizes the exhibition as the ultimate white paper (TEDTalk, “How art gives shape to cultural change”, 2010). She believes in art serving as a catalyst for complicated discussions with multiple entry points and believes these offer ways to question race and culture. We agree and borrowing from this thinking we see the gallery/museum’s curricular potential as a teaching site, at the crux of past, present, and future and expanding discussions of placed-based curriculum. In this curriculum, an immersive experience into local and cultural landscapes is key and the gallery/museum invites such inquiry and travel through time/space/ideas whether it’s in the middle of a city or college campus. Gallery/museum spaces become springboards for interdisciplinary inquiry and new curricular forms. Using OASIS as the method for access, gallery/museums are perceived, felt and used wildly different, rupturing demands for silent banking of art witnessed. We turn our attention to how OASIS changes our relationship to learning, curriculum, and living through the arts, especially how it shift-shapes galleries/museums as we know it.
