Abstract
We report two studies considering the potential for gallery lighting conditions to modulate appraisals and emotional experience with works of visual art. As recently documented in a number of papers, art appreciation represents a complex blend of formal artwork factors, personalities and backgrounds of viewers, and multiple aspects of context regarding where and how art is experienced. Among the latter, lighting would be expected to play a fundamental role. However, surprisingly, this has received little empirical assessment, with almost no ecologically valid gallery analyses and no between-participant designs which would minimize awareness of lighting changes themselves. Here, we employed a controlled paradigm using a spontaneous art viewing context, a gallery-like setting, and a proprietary lighting system which allowed the minute adjustment of lighting intensity/temperature (CCT). Participants viewed a selection of original representational and abstract art under three different CCT conditions (Study 1), modulated between participants, and then reported on their artwork appraisal and emotional experience. The selected lighting temperatures were chosen based on an initial investigation of existing art museums within the Vienna area, addressing how these institutions themselves light their art—a question which, also somewhat surprisingly, has not often been considered. We also allowed the same participants to set the light temperature themselves in order to test hypotheses regarding what might be an ‘ideal’ lighting condition for art. In Study 2, we explored the question of whether artworks made by an artist to match specific lighting conditions show a resulting connection to the ratings of viewers when shown in the same or different light. Results showed almost no effects from lighting changes in both studies. Viewers’ self-set light temperature (mean = 3777 K) did roughly coincide with the suggested most enjoyable conditions for everyday living and some past research on art viewing, but again showed wide interpersonal variance. Results, and a general review of lighting factors are considered in order to provide art researchers and curators with a tool for conducting future study.
Highlights
Independent t-tests conducted within each lighting condition showed no significant differences for all scales
To analyze our first research question, regarding the impact of lighting on the experience of paintings, we ran a series of repeated measures ANOVAs with the three Paintings as a within-participant factor and Lighting condition as a betweenparticipant factor
We considered the impact of lighting on the abstract art (Figure 5; note, the color coding for the lighting conditions and paintings identifies the artist-intended combinations)
Summary
Lighting may be a key aesthetic aspect for artists Both in art production and in final artwork reception, lighting may interact with certain colors or materials, and be a key part of the ambient art making-(such as North facing studios or plein air painting) environment. Each individual museum may spend a great deal of money and attention on lighting, to very different effect This goes hand-in-hand with an increasing variety of lighting technologies (e.g., LEDs, which can reduce issues of damaging ultraviolet or infrared radiation that had limited previous lighting options), providing curators a wide pallet of light intensities or color temperatures (e.g., Pridmore, 2017) and leading to arguments (e.g., Druzik and Eshøj, 2007) that lighting is the most complex and, one of the most important factors in museum design, combining technology with perception, cognition, appreciation, and psychological experience.
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