Beatriz González x Barbican Young Creatives: Escuela de Guías Sessions at the Barbican

Development and facilitation of a series of workshops at the Barbican
January – May 2026

The Project

Escuela de Guías is a study group and training programme created by artist, curator, art historian and educator Beatriz González for the Museum of Modern Art in Bogota, Colombia, where it is still running today. The programme trains museum staff to mediate visitors' experiences, employing a methodology developed by González in the 1970s and 1980s that fosters engagement by bridging the gap between artistic production and the diverse real-life contexts of museum visitors.

Inspired by Gonzalez, a group of six alumni from the Barbican Young Creatives programmes were invited to meet over the course of five sessions to form their own 'Escuela de Guias', a Guide School.

The aim was to establish a supportive space for discussion and collective learning in response to Gonzalez's practice. Following the sessions, which included a private tour of the exhibition with the curator, participants will have the opportunity to design their own personalised, creative tours of the Barbican exhibition to share with the public.

Beatriz González

(1932–2026, Bucaramanga – Bogotá, Colombia)

Over the course of her six-decade career, Beatriz González developed a distinctive artistic vocabulary that makes her one of Colombia's most influential artists: la Maestra! Bright colours, simplified forms and references to mass media became her signature, as she moved from the humor and irony of widely circulated imagery on to increasingly critical and raw political commentary in response to the context of violence in Colombia at the time. As she gradually shifted her focus away from depicting figures of power to the victims of violence, her later works offer a sensitive account of grief and suffering, and propose a critical exercise in bearing witness that is highly relevant to our times.

The Workshops

SESSION 1 • Images all around us

An opportunity to connect with Beatriz González’s relationship with mass-media imagery and the collective imagination shaped around the consumption of visual references. Drawing attention to ‘appropriation’ as a key aspect of her practice, this session encourages critical reflection on contemporary relationships with the mass circulation of pictures.

SESSION 2 • On bearing witness to the suffering of others

An opportunity to discuss the political power of images as well as the ethics of producing and circulating them in the age we live in. Encouraging critical reflection on the act of bearing witness to injustice and the ethics of depicting violence, the session draws attention to Beatriz González’s overall political engagement, as well as her later focus on victims.

reading:
• Susan Sontag Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)
• Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui Sociology of the Image: A View from Andean History (2015)

SESSION 3 • Looking at art and talking about it

A shift towards attending to the qualities of an artwork, inviting participants to develop and present their own interpretations. An opportunity to get to grips with in-depth analyses of artworks and the narratives that can be created around them.

reading:
• Lotte Johnson Art Says Things that History Cannot (2026)

SESSION 4 • ‘The Ignorant Schoolmaster’ and a collective masterclass on González

A practical exploration of the concept of ‘knowledge’ as a dynamic, interactive, and process-driven phenomenon. An opportunity to deepen participants' knowledge of Beatriz González while practising how to guide an audience through artworks, considering the role of the viewer in that process and in line with González’s own views as a curator and educator.

reading:
• Paulo Freire The pedagogy of the oppressed (1968)
• Jacques Rancière The Emancipated Spectator (2009)

SESSION 5 • The art gallery as a space for recognition

A real-life encounter with artworks by Beatriz González, along with insights into the narrative proposed by the curatorial concept specific to the Barbican exhibition – a practical demonstration of Beatriz González’s vision of the museum as a place with a public, educational, and social purpose.