Art Perception in the Museum: How We Spend Time and Space in Art Exhibitions.

Claus-Christian Carbon

doi:10.1177/2041669517694184

Abstract

Aesthetics research aiming at understanding art experience is an emerging field; however, most research is conducted in labs without access to real artworks, without the social context of a museum and without the presence of other persons. The present article replicates and complements key findings of art perception in museum contexts. When observing museum visitors (N = 225; 126 female, M(age) = 43.3 years) while perceiving a series of six Gerhard Richter paintings of various sizes (0.26–3.20 sq. m) in a temporary art exhibition in January and February 2015 showing 28 paintings in total, we revealed patterns compatible to previous research. The mean time taken in viewing artworks was much longer than was mostly realized in lab contexts, here 32.9 s (Mdn = 25.4 s). We were also able to replicate visitors spending more time on viewing artworks when attending in groups of people. Additionally, we uncovered a close positive relationship (r2 = .929) between canvas size and viewing distance, ranging on average between 1.49 and 2.12 m (M = 1.72 m). We also found that more than half of the visitors returned to paintings, especially those people who had not previously paid too much attention at the initial viewing. After adding the times of returning viewers, each picture was viewed longer than had been estimated in previous research (M = 50.5 s, Mdn = 43.0 s). Results are discussed in the context of current art perception theories, focusing on the need for the ecologically valid testing of artworks in aesthetics research.

Highlights

Aesthetics research aiming at understanding art experience is an emerging field; most research is conducted in labs without access to real artworks, without the social context of a museum and without the presence of other persons
It was revealed that information on style was only available after processing of content issues had been started (Augustin et al, 2008), a finding which was further demonstrated via an Event-Related Potentials (ERP) study making use of lateralized readiness potentials combined with the N200 effect (Augustin, Defranceschi, Fuchs, Carbon, & Hutzler, 2011)
We tested a total of 225 visitors (126 female, M(age) 1⁄4 43.3 years) attending the special exhibition on Gerhard Richter by unobtrusively observing them from a balcony above, which was barely detectable by typical visitors; 104 people visited the paintings on their own, 100 visited them with one other person, 11 in a group of two or more, and 10 with their children

Summary

Introduction

Aesthetics research aiming at understanding art experience is an emerging field; most research is conducted in labs without access to real artworks, without the social context of a museum and without the presence of other persons. Even the differential viewing time conditions of artwork titles had a clear impact on the understanding of artworks—people with a deeper knowledge of art especially benefitted from longer viewing times (10 s compared with 1 s) of the titles (Leder, Carbon, & Ripsas, 2006) This result is of particular interest here, as the 10-s viewing condition is much closer to natural viewing conditions in museums than those typically realized in lab-oriented research (Smith & Smith, 2001). Systematic information on typical, self-chosen distances which visitors use to inspect an artwork is mainly missing Such data are highly important to adequately simulate typical museum behaviour in the lab; such data should provide some information on how perception potentially changes with the size of the observed painting and how we might adjust distances in the lab to be in accord with such practices (cf Locher et al, 2001). The interaction between visitors while viewing an artwork might change the art experience as well, generating a social event out of it

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