Think Art – “Piensa en Arte”

The Piensa en Arte is an educational program, promoted by the AcciónArte, an association that works with a Costa Rican and International network of organizations that consider arts as a very important tool for learning.

 The Mission of the Piensa en Arte Program is to promote the analysis, interpretation and appreciation of the visual arts in the classroom, while the students develops cognitive capacities, critical thinking skills, ability to reason based on visual evidence, metacognition and values related to tolerance and mutual respect.

Its program was developed originally by the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Fundación Cisneros, Piensa en Arte aims to help students learn how to think by talking about art. Piensa en Arte is a highly structured educational approach that promotes an academically rigorous investigation of a work of art. It is based on three premises:

1. Classroom teachers know their students better.
2. Learners actively participate in building new concepts while constructing meaning, both as individuals and as members of a social group.
3. Visual thought is subjective. The program provides educators with the skills to guide their students in analyzing and interpreting art through mediated conversation, whether in the classroom or the museum or cultural institution environment. Thus, the program establishes numerous visual thinking laboratories that improve students’ critical thinking skills and develop their cognitive abilities. The program also promotes a high level of art-education expertise among teachers and museum professionals.

The program also develops a high level of expertise among Latin American teachers and museum professionals. The program has been developed and refined over the last decade in schools in New York, Boston, Venezuela and Argentina. As of July 2006, six Costa Rican schools have been involved in a pilot project, utilizing an adaptation of this methodology. In February of 2007, the program began to grow to a much larger number of public schools throughout Costa Rica together with the Ministry of Public Education.

On April 27 2007, the Ministry of Public Education, the Ministry of Culture and Youth, the Fundación Cisneros and AcciónArte, signed and agreement to develop the Piensa en Arte program in Costa Rica.

The program utilizes a discussion-based approach that aims to help students develop critical thinking skills while learning about art. The program directly engages students in a process of observing, analyzing and interpreting what they see in an artwork. It is designed to strengthen students’ observational and analytical skills through looking at and thinking about artworks that will be chosen from the permanent collections of both Costa Rican and international sponsoring cultural institutions.

www.accionarte.org
 info@accionarte.org
Tel. (506) 2291-2024