"The things I see from here, you don’t see from there": Promoting multicultural awareness in a diverse society by intercultural encounters in two museum spaces

Abstract

Encounters with artworks in museum spaces are interactive processes that interweave physical, personal, and sociocultural contexts. This qualitative case study addresses an additional context – a multicultural one – in examining the impact of two contemporary art museum spaces associated with different cultures on the emerging awareness of multiculturalism in intercultural encounters. The study examines a “Multicultural Museum Dialogue” course attended by Palestinian-Arab and Jewish-Israeli undergraduate students of art and art education in college in Israel. Trained in co-teaching bilingual instruction, the college students led Palestinian-Arab and Isreli-Jewish high school youth in artwork encounters at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art (Jewish-Israeli majority culture) and the Umm al-Fahm Art Gallery (Palestinian-Arab minority culture). Analysis of twelve semi-structured interviews with students of both groups indicated that both characterized the museum space as fertile ground for intercultural encounters and diverse interpretive discourse that raised multicultural awareness as well as a universal human perspective. This effect was most powerful at the Umm al-Fahm Art Gallery, visited second. Nevertheless, additional training appears needed to further expand students’ multicultural awareness. Following Banks' (2009) and Chin’s (2013) five dimensions of multicultural education and art education, this research suggests a sixth – learning in diverse cultural spaces. To enhance cultural awareness, we recommend developing multicultural educational curricula that include joint active learning in cross-cultural spaces (e.g., art museums), focusing on physical egalitarian encounters and interpersonal and intergroup dynamics that consider power relations.