Mindfulness in Art Contemplation. The Story of a Rothko Experience

ABSTRACT

The nature and scope of the experiences offered to museum visitors are varied and changing, given that museums make it possible to explore new methodologies for unleashing and transmitting meaning during visits. In this regard, at the University of Navarra Museum, we researched the possibilities for mindfulness as a contemplative technique to train ways of looking at artwork and generating meaning. Bearing this purpose in mind, we selected Rothko’s Untitled (1969) as an ideal work with which to begin to develop and analyze an experience with students in a course on art therapy and mindfulness.

KEYWORDS:

• Meaningful experience
• museum education
• mindfulness
• Rothko
• art contemplation
• contemporary art galleries
• art centers
• aesthetic education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

About the authors

Fernando Echarri is PhD in Environmental Education (University of Navarra, 2009) and associate professor in the Department of Environmental Biology of the University of Navarra (Pamplona, Spain.) He is working as Head of the Educational Area of University of Navarra Museum. His subjects of interest are meaningful learning, SLE (significant life experiences) and environmental education.

Carmen Urpi, PhD, is associate professor at the School of Education and Psychology, University of Navarra (Spain), being aesthetic, arts and heritage education her main research concerns, within the broaden approach of the theory of education that incudes out of school contexts such as museum, media, cultural organizations. She coordinates the research group VOICES, Voices of Innovation and Creativity in Education and Society, which promotes arts education in the foster of creativity for individuals and communities.

ORCID

Fernando Echarri http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1886-8927

Carmen Urpi http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1032-0756

Notes

1. See Falk and Dierking, The Museum Experience; Hein, Learning in the Museum; Hein, The Museum in Transition. A Philosophical Perspective; Hein, Progressive Museum Practice: John Dewey and Democracy; Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the interpretation; Falk, Identity and the Museum; and Burnham and Kai-Kee, Teaching in the Art Museum.

2. See Pastor, Pedagogía museística.

3. See Rivière, La muséologie.

4. The University of Navarra Museum is a recently created contemporary art museum, founded in January 2015 in the heart of the university’s campus in Pamplona, Spain.

5. Falk and Dierking, The Museum Experience, xv.

6. Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Interpretation, 3.

7. Pastor, Pedagogía museística, 44.

8. See Berger, Ways of Seeing.

9. See Ausubel, Educational Psychology; Novak, A Theory of Education; Novak and Gowin, Learning How to Learn.

10. Rappaport, Mindfulness, 24.

11. The activity was coordinated with Entrama Association but was voluntary for students enrolled in the art therapy course because it was an innovative activity and had been first programmed apart from the course.

12. Olmo, S, ed. Colección María Josefa Huarte. Abstracción y modernidad.

13. The University of Navarra Museum has various collections, among which is that donated by María Josefa Huarte, which includes Rothko’s Untitled (1969), a work belonging to the movement known as American abstract expressionism.

14. Karkabi, Wald, and Castel. “The Use of Abstract.”

15. Muñoz, “Apunte sobre Mark Rothko,” 89.

16. Chave, Mark Rothko, 6.

17. Nodelman, The Rothko Chapel, 9.

18. Muñoz, “Apunte sobre Mark Rothko,” 86.

19. Ibid.

20. Phillips and Crow, Seeing Rothko, 2, 7.

21. Baal-Teshuva, Mark Rothko, 57.

22. Chave, Mark Rothko, 107.

23. Gonzalo, “Espacios de meditación,” 21.

24. Arya, Contemplations, 84.

25. Ibid.

26. Baal-Teshuva, Mark Rothko, 57.

27. Janson and Janson, History of Art, 817.

28. Phillips and Crow, Seeing Rothko, 1.

29. Falk and Dierking, The Museum Experience, 15.

30. Phillips and Crow, Seeing Rothko, 6.

31. Falk and Dierking, The Museum Experience, 157.

32. Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Interpretation, 15.

33. Hein, The Museum in Transition, 58.

34. Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Interpretation, 3.

35. Rappaport, Mindfulness, 16.

36. See Martín, Aprender a cambiar.

37. Ibid. Also, see Coholic, “Exploring the Feasibility.”

38. Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Interpretation, 108.

39. Ibid., 14.

40. Ibid., 108.

41. Ibid., 5.

42. Hein, The Museum in Transition, 66.

43. Falk, Identity and the Museum, 46.

44. Olds, “Sending Them Home Alive,” 11.

45. Muñoz, “Apunte sobre Mark Rothko,” 92.

46. Ibid., 88.

47. Ver Urpi, Garro and Montserrat. “El museo como lugar.”

48. Hein, Learning in the Museum, 3.