Through collections and exhibitions, museums are not absent, far from it, from public debate. On the occasion of the European Night of Museums, on Saturday 13 May, some of them are looking at our environmental concerns in a playful or offbeat way. The last part of our series: school children put climate in the spotlight at the Saint-Loup Museum in Troyes.
As every year, the European Night of Museums will be the opportunity, in many sites and in all territories, to propose the Restitution of the 2022-2023 school projects, as part of the Arts and Cultural Education (EAC) operation linked to it since 2013, The class, the work! ».
Among the museums of the city of Troyes, for example, the trio museum of Fine Arts, Archaeology and Museum, besides all its programming for the night of May 13, presented the presentation of three BEC projects, including a magnificent “Climate Project” supported by college students.
Discover and express
These are the 5th year students of the Eurêka College in Pont-Sainte-Marie, under the guidance of their art teacher, Ludivine Desmarecaux, a strong partner of the Saint-Loup Museum. Any project of this kind is based first of all on substantive work, provided in class all year round.
In this case, the teacher introduced the students to bands of global warming » by British climatologist Edward Hawkins (a very telling way to visualize the year-by-year temperature change). They also addressed the amazing works of the Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, and those of the street artist Blu. No doubt these discoveries will have given the students a good idea of what artistic expression and creation can be, and the exhibited works they have produced show this.
Understanding scenography
A room in the Saint-Loup museum is, in fact, attributed to them for the European Night of Museums. « The students came to the museum, says Martin Dehoux, the cultural mediator who received them, with his colleague Audrey Martinez, for a guided tour. They came to discuss with us the issue of museum scenography. Indeed, they had to determine for themselves how their own works would be showcased in an exhibition.
« So we looked at it from that perspective, continues he, the collections of the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Fine Arts, which have been recently renovated (2015 and 2019). They were able to understand the curator’s choices, the display of works, the writing of cartels, the design of signage… In this way they were able to reflect on the presentation of their own works: on which bases, in front of which panels, with which colours, in which dimensions… The technical team received instructions from the students and made it a point of honor to install their works according to their instructions. »
