Gabriela Mistral Museum of Education

This Museum was created in 1941 as the Chilean Museum of Pedagogy in order to conserve the material gathered for an exhibition on the history of education in Chile, held that same year in Santiago’s National Fine Arts Museum as part of the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the city’s foundation. The decree under which the Museum was  created was signed by then President Pedro Aguirre Cerda, who was also interested in promoting his own plans for educational reform.  In 2006, the Museum was re-launched and re-named in honor of Chilean Nobel poet, Gabriela Mistral, who started her working life as a teacher. 

The building 

Since 1981, the Museum has been housed in the building that, from 1886 to 1973, served as Santiago’s Girls School N°1. This was the first school at which Gabriela Mistral worked when she moved from her native Vicuña in central-northern Chile’s Elqui Valley to Santiago in 1910.   

Inside the Museum

The Museum’s collections are divided into three principal categories: 

• School furniture and teaching materials. With over 2,000 pieces, inherited mostly from the country’s schools, this collection provides an insight not only into the physical changes that schools have experienced over the years, but also the evolution of teaching methods. It includes, for example, a “punishment cabin” in which pupils who misbehaved were shut.
• Heritage library. This collection’s over 40,000 objects include school texts and teaching plans as well as general books on education. Some items in this valuable collection date back to the eighteenth century. 
• Photographic archive. Comprising more than 6,000 digital and documented images, this archive provides a record of different aspects of Chilean education in the twentieth century.  

The Museum also includes a Storytelling Room, where activities include puppet shows and mini-theater shows, and a School Vegetable Garden, designed to foster awareness of the environment through workshops and community activities.