We prepare students for their visit to the Museu de Lleida: Diocesà i Comarcal. What is a museum, a collection? What is art, heritage? What can we discover by visiting the Museum?

The Museum of Lleida believes that school visits to the Museum must be a positive, attractive experience both for pupils and teachers.

With respect to the Museum visit, we recommend holding a class debate based on the pupils' knowledge and, in some cases, their personal experiences of visits. First you ask for the pupils' questions and, afterwards, ask them to look for different arguments themselves in reply. You can immediately confirm and complete their answers with the definitions given below. The objective is to present the Museum specifically. In this respect we also recommend giving examples explained at other museums and/or heritage sites of our city or region. Additionally, in order to enrich your explanations, we suggest illustrating your discourse with images from our collections, which you can find on our website.

The sections entitled What is heritage? , What is a museum? and What is a collection? can be assigned to all kinds of museum and centres of interpretation and you can therefore adapt our methodology to other museums you wish to visit, which you can find in our museum guide. The rest of the sections, What is history? , What is art? and What is archaeology? are focused on museum's such as our own, fundamentally made up of art and archaeological collections.


What is heritage?

It is no easy task to attribute a specific definition to the term "heritage" but we might say that it is a series of assets, objects, material remains, traditions, landscapes, etc. that a person, institution or community inherits from its predecessors. This cultural and physical inheritance allows us to interpret how our region and the societies that inhabit it have evolved, from ancient times to the present.


What is a museum?

The most widely accepted definition was proposed by the International Council of Museums (ICOM): a museum is a non-profit making, permanent institution in the service of society and of its development and open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment (ICOM, 1989).

The concept of museum has evolved over time. It currently has a very broad interpretation that includes, in addition to classic museums, historical monuments (the "Seu Vella" or old cathedral), permanent exhibition centres (La Panera Art Centre), archaeological and ethnographical sites (the settlement of Els Vilars), nature parks (Aigüestortes) and heritage sites (the Romanesque sites in the Boí valley, the modernism route in Barcelona, etc.).

Do you know of any museums, exhibition or interpretation centres? Which ones have you visited?

The museum guide on our website allows teachers to get information from various museums, exhibition and interpretation centres, both in Catalonia and in the rest of the world.

What did you discover during your visit to a museum?

The class should be encouraged to talk about their experiences at museums. Which museums they have visited, which they liked and which they didn't, what most caught their attention and what disappointed them, etc.

Why do people visit a museum?

Museums allow us to discover and get to know art, history, archaeology, science, etc. They help us to understand where we come from but also question us about the present. Currently many museums tackle themes inspired by contemporary issues, such as the environment, science, industry, communications, etc.

 What distinguishes one museum from another is, on the one hand, its collections and, on the other, the objectives and methodology of communication and dissemination used with these collections. The large majority of museums have collections. Museums acquire and conserve works of art or different kinds of objects according to the kind of institution. Exhibition and interpretation centres do not have collections but, as with museums, they carry out research and interpret heritage via activities of dissemination: exhibitions, conferences, educational workshops, publications and other entertaining and cultural activities. There are therefore museums, exhibition and interpretation centres that are created in order to conserve and promote monuments, nature parks, archaeological sites and buildings of all kinds catalogued as being of particular historical or cultural interest.

What is a collection?

Do you have a collection or have you put objects together into a collection? Do you collect? Can you explain what a collection is? Why are you interested in the objects you collect?

A collection is a group of objects with a link between them. These objects can be selected for different reasons: for their historical, aesthetic or documental value. They may also have been chosen because they are different or exotic. In the case of collectors such as yourselves, the reasons may be due to your personal preferences or tastes, but in the case of a museum objects are chosen following highly precise criteria. These objects collected together may be the origin of a private collection (such as your own) or a public collection (like the Museum's). Visit the collector's workshop.

Do you have any way of classifying your objects so you can find them more easily? Do you classify them according to their use, shape, material, age or place of origin?

Museums also use various criteria to classify their objects. The most usual classification parameters are: the kind of object, its place in time (period) and its place of origin. As a result, they are easy to investigate and provide an interesting experience. For reasons of conservation, some objects are classified according to the material they are made from. A Renaissance tapestry is not conserved in the same way as an Ilerget coin or a Romanesque painting, for example. Many objects need specific environmental conditions or specific display supports.

What is art?

What is art? But, above all, what is a work of art (since we are talking about a collection from an art museum)?

This is an abstract concept and difficult to define specifically but we will try. How someone perceives art or a particular work of art is highly personal and also subjective, but it could be any material thing produced with various techniques and materials by a human being called an artist or craftsman that corresponds to a certain concept of beauty and aesthetic canons (think of how fashion evolves). Since time immemorial people have produced art in various ways according to the different eras and cultures, often even objects that have not always had either the same objective or purpose.

A work of art can have a large number of meanings: it can translate an ideology, represent a singular aesthetic scene, a particular view of the world, etc. The work can express a mood, feelings and emotions and, therefore, can awaken different sensations in the spectator when interpreting it.

The collections at art museums often contain various forms of expression depending on their own particular characteristics. The Museu de Lleida: Diocesà i Comarcal has a wide range of objects: paintings, sculptures, clothes, precious metalwork, documents, coins, etc.


Can you define, in your own words, what a painting is, or a sculpture, clothing, precious metalwork?

Propose to the pupils that they take any dictionary and look up these terms and comment on the definitions. Ask them if they know of any work of art or monument and what perception they have of it.

What is history?

History is no more than an ordered, truthful narration of the events referring to a person, object, occurrence, affair, etc. A systematic explanation of the events that affect a people, an institution, a science, an art. Our Museum is an institution that, by means of the objects from its collections, narrates history, communicates experiences, spreads cultures and propagates ideas and concepts of the world with the purpose, among others, of knowing where we come from, where we are and to help us interpret what our reality will be like in the near future.

What is archaeology?

Archaeology is the discipline that studies the material remains of human activity from past eras. The archaeological remains exhibited at the Museum permit the study of the history of humanity via material remains and objects that bring us closer to the everyday lives of past societies that had developed their own cultures and evolved over time to form our present-day society.