Dr. Bitar has been a big fan of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights for several years now. She works is scientific director in the Rosengart Collection in Lucerne and also works as art educator and art historian at the Kunstmuseum Basel as well as the Kunsthaus Zürich. Dr. Bitar teaches pupils of different ages on different topics in art with a holistic approach. It is in this capacity as art educator and art mediator, that Dr. Bitar will be working closely with the foundation to set up new ways to introduce (especially young) people to human rights through art.
Dr. Kerstin Bitar on joining Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Switzerland: "The education of young people around the world is a great good and a very important prerequisite for a hopefully democratic future. As an art historian and especially a museum educator, I have been working for many years to bring human rights issues closer to students from first grade to high school in a holistic way: more recently, equality for women; be it in the collections of some museums, be it specifically in exhibitions, for example, in the very worthwhile, insightful exhibition "Peintres femmes" at the Palais Luxembourg in Paris, which I saw earlier this week, or the impressive exhibition "Sophie Taeuber Arp Living Abstraction" in the Kunstmuseum Basel and from the 15th of July at the Tate Modern in London. Here it became clear that equality for women artists is a process that has been going on for many centuries and is by no means a matter of course. Just as school education for girls as a whole did not initially coincide with the one of the boys.
Dialogues and workshops, consisting of a guided tour and a creative part, in which the students, among other things, with a specific task on the theme: draw, paint, develop film contributions or create collages, is one possibility. Art can thus be a podium in which topics on freedom of expression, on protection from torture, discrimination and arbitrary state interference, the defined rights included the right to education, work, health care, cultural life, and freedom of speech and opinion, on collective participation, on history as a whole, on religious freedom are negotiated.
I look forward to giving more of these tours for the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Switzerland. And for all people staying or visiting Switzerland this summer: the foundation is presenting a wonderful program with workshops, an exhibition and lectures in Lucerne, all on the theme of the “The Art of Activism”."