Drawing the Para-Pedagogical (after Helguera)

The para-pedagogical is a neologism I have developed to name a distinct mode of institutional learning that operates beside—not beneath—dominant exhibitionary logics. It emerges in critical dialogue with, and in productive tension to, the para-curatorial (Hoffman, 2011, 2013; McDowell, 2016), which has typically framed pedagogical and discursive programs as supplementary to the ‘exhibition proper’. By contrast, the para-pedagogical asserts that learning is not an afterthought. It is not interpretation, facilitation, or audience engagement. It is a sovereign form of enquiry—relational, situated, and durational—that does not rely on artworks to legitimise its presence.

This concept builds on over a decade of practice across varied cultural institutions—from Khoj in New Delhi, to the Powerhouse Museum in Western Sydney, to Konstmuseet i Norr (KIN) in Kiruna, Sweden, and currently in Ngāmotu, Aotearoa at the Govett Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre and Puke Ariki Museum and LIbraries. Across these sites, I encountered persistent gaps: spaces where pedagogical practices did not fit comfortably within existing institutional logics. Rather than resolving these tensions, I worked within them. This accumulated practice became the grounds on which I could theorise the para-pedagogical, as a deliberate reorientation of institutional intent. It treats pedagogy not as a supplement to curatorial activity, but as a central structuring force within the institutional ecology.

The diagram, Drawing the Para-Pedagogical (after Helguera), is a visual articulation of this shift. Reworking Pablo Helguera’s Education as Art (2010), I replaced the triangulation of art instruction, interpretation, and transpedagogy with a relational dynamic between institutional mission, artistic programming, and pedagogy as infrastructure. Learning here is not content delivery—it is a method of institutional enquiry. At the centre is not the artwork, but the question: What is this institution for, and who is it working with and for what purpose? As Helguera (2010) insists, education in art should not be seen as support material—it is material. The para-pedagogical takes this assertion seriously, positioning learning not as an add-on, but as a material, conceptual, and relational condition of institutional life.

Naming the para-pedagogical is an intentional refusal of pedagogical subordination. It is a move toward institutional learning that begins with context, communities, and care, often beginning with people as entangled bodies in the wider world. It challenges inherited hierarchies that position education as supportive, responsive, or downstream from curating.

The para-pedagogical is not an add-on, nor a thematic gesture. It is not anchored by the artwork or confined to the exhibition. It is infrastructural. It is conceptual. It is a framework for thinking otherwise about the role of pedagogy in cultural institutions. It asks: What if pedagogy led? What if programming began with relation, with a story, with the format following afterwards? It is a mode that can be embraced, reworked and made relevant to diverse spaces and contexts. It is a diagram of difference. A vessel for the now.

References

Helguera, P. (2010). Notes towards a transpedagogy. In Art, architecture, pedagogy: Experiments in learning. California: Center for Integrated Media.

Hoffman, J. (2015). Theater of exhibitions. Sternberg Press.

Hoffmann, J. (2013). Curating Between the Lines. Critique D’art, 41. https://doi.org/10.4000/critiquedart.8314

McDowell, T. (2016). The Post-Occupational Condition. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 16(1), 22–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/14434318.2016.1171723