Abstract
Paintings in museums are often accompanied by additional information, such as titles or audio-texts. Previous research has reported mostly positive effects of additional information on the liking and subjective understanding of a painting. However, some studies have also reported negative effects when additional information introduces inconsistencies between the painting’s content and the represented reality. Therefore, the present study examined the negative effects of naming a painting’s historical inaccuracies, which are inconsistencies between the content of the painting and the real historic event, and whether these negative effects can be compensated by an explanation for the inaccuracies. The results revealed that liking was lower with inaccuracies named and that this effect was compensated by an explanation for the inaccuracies. No significant effects were observed for subjective understanding and aesthetic emotions. The results corroborate parts of the Vienna integrated model of art perception and have practical implications for the design of audio-texts in museums.
Highlights
Artworks in museums are often presented together with additional information, such as titles, text labels, or oral explanations in the form of personal or audio guides
A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was calculated across the three paintings with naming of inconsistencies and an explanation of the intentions of the artist as between-subjects factors
We presented historical paintings together with additional information either naming their historical inconsistencies or not
Summary
Artworks in museums are often presented together with additional information, such as titles, text labels, or oral explanations in the form of personal or audio guides. Since art- and art-history museums do not change the titles but frequently provide their visitors with audio guides that include longer explanations of the paintings, examining the viewer’s aesthetic experience of paintings in combination with longer accompanying audio-texts is both of theoretical and practical relevance. Such audio-texts are intended to educate the viewers, to help them to understand the artworks and thereby enhance the visitors’ aesthetic experience in the gallery. Research corroborates positive effects of titles and short text labels on the viewer’s subjective understanding of paintings (Russell, 2003; Leder et al, 2006; Swami, 2013; Bubicet al., 2017) and their aesthetic appreciation
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