Engagement In Museums Research Articles

Textile Craft as Empowerment

Focusing on museums, this article illustrates how textile crafts can become a source for scholarly inquiry and can enhance more inclusive practices at museums. The empirical data comprises four museum-related projects conducted since 2017 focusing on textile craft and creativity with women in Denmark, particularly women of refugee, migrant, or second-generation migrant background. Through these cases, we unravel the potential of textile crafts as a medium and encounter for engagement in museums within a societal context, both as a professional outlook, an education, a cultural heritage, an object of research, and a pastime for pleasure and socializing. The common thread—our academic quest—is how, when, and why textile craft is entwined with female empowerment, and how textile craft, as a shared community action, can empower and represent an opportunity for museums to reach new audiences as well as use the museum space in new ways.

Eye-Tracking Analysis of User Experiences on TikTok MACAN Museum

This experimental study explores how Generation Z and Y in Indonesia interact with Museum MACAN’s TikTok content, using eye-tracking to understand engagement with cultural content on this pivotal platform. Participants undertook tasks of varying lengths (120, 300, and 180 seconds) to reflect different engagement scenarios, with metrics like Participant Quality Grade (PQG), test duration, browser dimensions, K-factor, gaze, and fixation counts assessing interaction depth. Results indicate high engagement levels, with quality ranging from good to excellent and a noted preference for focal processing, suggesting users’ concentrated attention on video content. Heatmaps confirmed video content as the primary focus area. This study highlights TikTok’s role in enhancing museum engagement and provides insights for cultural institutions to refine their social media content strategies.

In real life: Gaming community engagement in museums

AbstractThis article looks at the ways museums can collaborate with the gaming community to better preserve, curate, digitize, and understand video games. Museums have become increasingly drawn to the collection and study of video games. Ideally, the acquisition and preservation of video games would need to be overseen by museum professionals specializing in digital collections, however, the museum sector lacks such specialists and resourcing. Often curators and museum staff do not have the necessary cultural and technological skills to properly care for gaming material culture. To remedy this problem, this paper suggests a more collaborative approach whereby gaming communities could be included in the collection, preservation, and display of gaming history and culture in museums. Using examples from the United States and Australia, this article examines the many ways the gaming community can help museums understand, acquire, display, and preserve video games.

Developing a 3D strategy: Pipelines and recommendations for 3D structured light scanning of archaeological artefacts

Archaeology has faced increased pressure to digitise collections and make artefacts available and accessible to a wider audience. 3D imaging involves producing a 3D digital or printed model of an object or site. 3D models have the potential to augment the traditional approaches to museum engagement whilst breaking down the barriers to access, whether through providing 3D printed proxies in museums or sharing digital models online. 3D imaging has clear value in archaeology and public engagement but there is no standardisation or accessible pipelines available for achieving professional 3D imaging output. There is very little consensus in 3D modelling and worldwide, digital collections are being created with no methodological consistency. This research observed each stage necessary for producing high-quality 3D models with structured light scanning (SLS) technology. SLS was effective on a range of textures that may be encountered in archaeological scenarios, although highly reflective objects, or pale objects with black areas, may fail to be captured even with an altered strategy. In order to make the 3D model most representative of the archaeological find, it is recommended that a range of scanner settings such as brightness or shutter speed are tested on the object before committing these settings to the rest of the scans. Generalised 3D scanning pipelines are provided to inform archaeological teams on a 3D digital and printing strategy.

Fostering Cultural Awareness in Museums and Monuments by Employing Extended Reality

Fostering cultural awareness and user engagement in museums and monuments is fundamental for the successful promotion and valorization of Cultural Heritage. The current work aims at a brief discussion about the possibilities and benefits brought forth by the adoption of immersive technologies such as Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality, often jointly termed as Extended Reality (XR), in boosting user engagement and providing meaningful and long-lasting cultural experiences that ensure inclusivity and accessibility to all.

Images, Words, and Imagination: Accessible Descriptions to Support Blind and Low Vision Art Exploration and Engagement.

The lack of accessible information conveyed by descriptions of art images presents significant barriers for people with blindness and low vision (BLV) to engage with visual artwork. Most museums are not able to easily provide accessible image descriptions for BLV visitors to build a mental representation of artwork due to vastness of collections, limitations of curator training, and current measures for what constitutes effective automated captions. This paper reports on the results of two studies investigating the types of information that should be included to provide high-quality accessible artwork descriptions based on input from BLV description evaluators. We report on: (1) a qualitative study asking BLV participants for their preferences for layered description characteristics; and (2) an evaluation of several current models for image captioning as applied to an artwork image dataset. We then provide recommendations for researchers working on accessible image captioning and museum engagement applications through a focus on spatial information access strategies.

The Integrated Museum Engagement Model (IMEM): Bridging Participatory Design, Immersive Storytelling, and Digital Representation for Enhanced Museum Experiences

The Integrated Museum Engagement Model (IMEM): Bridging Participatory Design, Immersive Storytelling, and Digital Representation for Enhanced Museum Experiences

Soft and resilient: When embroidery encounters narrating the Nanjing Massacre in the Memorial Hall

ABSTRACT The paper engages directly with ‘Xuefang Liang’s Embroidery Art Exhibition’ held at the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders as a departure point for investigating the narrative presentation of the Nanjing Massacre through artistic practice. The exhibition uses embroidery images to tell the stories of foreigners who established the Nanking Safety Zone to protect and help refugees during the Nanjing Massacre. The materiality and cultural significance of the embroidery art is used to enrich and better interpret the meaning-making space of the trauma narrative. Meanwhile, embroidery exhibits, as the material expression of the human factors in intangible cultural heritage, are critical to generating emotions from intimate contact between objects and people. Further, the visitors’ prior sensory memories facilitate the embodiment of emotions, which in turn provides ways to strengthen the visitors’ ability to derive meanings from museum engagement.

Global Cultural Conflict and Digital Identity: Transforming Museums

This paper looks at key elements of global culture that are driving a new paradigm shift in museums causing them to question their raison d’être, their design and physical space, recognizing the need to accommodate visitor interaction and participation, and to reprioritize institutional outcomes and goals reexamining their priorities. As heritage sharing in online spaces reaches across national, political, and social boundaries on platforms and networks, this has been driven by museum engagement with Internet life during the pandemic. Museum relationships and interactions with communities both local and global continue to challenge core values and precepts, leading to radical changes in how museums define their roles and responsibilities. In this new cultural landscape, museums are responding to human digital identity in a tidal wave of human interactions on the Internet, from social media to online sharing of images and videos. This is revealing shared perspectives on cultural conflict as being tied to freedom of expression of one’s heritage embedded in digital identity.

“Horniman Museum and Library Publications” series: zoology and anthropology (1904–1977)

Horniman Museum and Gardens, London published a group of visitor guides and handbooks from 1904 to 1977 under the series title “Horniman Museum and Library Publications” to accompany the permanent galleries. This paper presents a bibliography for the series, which covered subjects in zoology and anthropology. The series included 16 publications. Many had multiple editions. Authors were not always identified explicitly, and attribution was assigned to the institution. This paper identifies authors and other notable contributors for each volume. The Horniman stopped assigning new publications to the series at the end of the 1930s; however, new guides and handbooks continued to be published in similar fashion. Some of those later publications asserted continuity, claiming to be new editions. Others did not. Both continuities and breaks reveal aspects of work within the museum environment as well as trends in British museum engagement with its audiences. For instance, simplification is a profound trend over successive editions.

Flourishing Aims of Art Museums: A Survey of Art Museum Professionals

People visit art museums for many reasons—to see something beautiful or famous, to learn more about art, or to experience a sense of awe. Recently, there has been increased interest in how art museum engagement can promote flourishing. Little is known, however, about how the professionals shaping these art museum experiences (e.g., curators, educators, front of house staff) view art museums as institutions that can promote flourishing outcomes. In the present research, we examined the perceptions of 208 art museum professionals regarding the functions of art museums and their ability to impact both well-being (e.g., empathy, self-acceptance) and ill-being (e.g., anxiety, loneliness) factors. The findings suggest that art museum professionals feel that the well-being of visitors should be emphasized as a goal more strongly than it currently is, and that there are some well-being and ill-being components (e.g., empathy, helping, closed-mindedness) that should receive greater attention than others.

265 The design of a virtual museum to address social disconnection and pain among individuals with chronic pain (IWCP)

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Engagement with art may reduce the social disconnection that accompanies chronic pain. Disaggregating specific from non-specific effects of arts-based programs is challenging. This study creates an experimental virtual museum to identify the separate and joint effects of art and social connection. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Two x two factorial experiment with repeated measures: (1) Artwork present condition is a virtual exhibition featuring paintings from the Google Arts & Culture collection; (2) Artwork absent condition is the same exhibition space but with the paintings removed; (3) Social connection condition asks participants to write about a situation in which they felt more socially connected to others; (4) Social disconnection conditions asks participants to write about a situation in which they felt more socially disconnected from others. Participants: (1) English language proficiency; (2) ≥18 years; (3) Chronic moderate to severe pain; (4) Lonely; (5) Has electronic device with internet connection. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Participants will be recruited through a 3-month social media campaign conducted by StudyPages, a clinical trial recruitment and management platform. This study will evaluate the effects of virtual art exposure and social connectivity priming on pain and social disconnection reduction among lonely IWCP. Pre-intervention scores for pain intensity, pain unpleasantness, and perceived social disconnection will be compared to post-intervention scores. Secondary outcome measures include (a) Museum visit data (e.g., user movement, click, object interaction, open comments) and (b) perceptions about artwork. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Psychosocial support for IWCP may improve pain-related outcomes. This studys data will help to optimize virtual museum interventions and provides the first data we are aware of to evaluate the specific effects of art in virtual museum engagement to reduce pain and social disconnection among IWCP.

Ludic Heritage: Supplementary School Plays, Museum Collaborations, and the Futurity of Histories in Migration

This article introduces the term "ludic heritage" to describe how people relocate histories in migration through play. In a collaboration between the Museum of London, an Albanian supplementary school, and the researcher, play became a point of intersection between adults' and children's worlds, the museum and minority communities, and imagination, memory, and reality. UK supplementary schools set up by migrant communities teach children their cultural heritages not taught in mainstream schools or represented at the museum. Despite an estimation of 3,000-5,000 supplementary schools in London alone, they exist on the periphery of public life. In school plays performed in museum festivals children embodied the past whilst improvising cultural representations on stage, redirecting the future of heritage in migration. Framing time as technique (Bear 2016) and as an embodied mental capacity (Da Silva Sinha 2019), I observe how people construct the temporalities they inhabit through a praxis (Munn 1992) in which play—as an adaptable and malleable form of cultural heritage—reconfigures cultural identities and mobilizes a new community in diaspora. I draw attention to how different partners approached play, as research method, embodied memory, pedagogy, or museum engagement or through transient cultural artifacts that open temporal possibilities.

The transition from in-person to virtual museum programing for individuals living with chronic pain - A formative evaluation.

Museum engagement may be an effective approach for decreasing social disconnection and pain among individuals living with chronic pain. In October 2019, we launched a randomized controlled trial to assess the feasibility of museum engagement for individuals living with chronic pain; the study was halted in March, 2020 due to Covid-19-related safety concerns. This paper describes the process of transitioning from in-person to virtual museum programing in order to continue the study. Virtual museum programing is a feasible option for individuals living with chronic pain that is amenable to research and which may improve accessibility, inclusivity, and scalability relative to in-person programing.

Affective Epiphanies

This proposition explores the potential of a pedagogy of affect as an arts- based research approach to museum education at the university level. Such an approach is predicated on a continuous movement of situated stories as the heart of the learning encounter, generated relationally between object-body-space, or artwork- learner-museum. As a forum for deliberation, the purpose of this conversation is to consider how emotions, as the basis for teaching with caring and sensory awareness, bring vitality, aliveness, and feelings to the fore. This conversation explores affective epiphanies sourced from personal practical knowledge as an expression of arts- research-in-progress. By drawing on autoethnographic life writing, I explore an alternate approach to three museum collections that demonstrate how and why the aesthetic relation of stories operate as pedagogic pivots in ways that reconfigure conventional museum engagement. Rethinking museum education with an arts research perspective is an effort to advance how context connects affective systems of knowing relationally, and why embracing stories offers new pathways to understand museum education through more expansive learning approaches, inclusive of feeling.

Museum engagement visits with a universal game-based blended museum learning service for different age groups

PurposeThis study develops a universal game-based blended museum learning service (UGBMLS) to engage museum visitors of different ages and promote their return visits. This study aims to provide a single service with flexible learning content matching the diverse needs and preferences for different ages. The contextual influences are considered to promote participatory experiences and meaningful social interactions. An experiment is conducted herein to understand how visitors of different ages experience the museum's services as well as to address the design issues in aiming to satisfy the different age groups' needs.Design/methodology/approachA UGBMLS, which includes a real-world adventure game system with flexible learning content and various types of learning support, was provided for different age groups. To investigate how the visitors of different ages evaluate their experiences with the UGBMLS, a mixed-method study was conducted. In total, two questionnaires were employed to examine the visitors' museum experiences and subjective measurements of cognitive load. In addition, observation and group interviews were used to explain the quantitative results.FindingsThe results show that the UGBMLS can engage diverse visitors of different ages in museum visits and promote their revisit motivations. However, there are significant differences among different age groups. The design issues in seeking to satisfy the diverse needs of different age groups are noted.Practical implicationsThis study provides a feasible and cost-effective approach to support diverse visitors of different ages learning in museums.Originality/valueThis study provides an effective solution for engaging diverse visitors of different ages with a unified service. The results can be used to better understand the needs of different age groups and to effectively improve their museum experiences, thereby boosting their motivation regarding return visits. This study provides a feasible and cost-effective approach to support diverse visitors' learning in museums.

Česká muzea, nová média a technologie v expozicích: Longitudinální studie mezi lety 2015–2020

Museums are traditional and collection based cultural institutions. From the very beginning of the 20th century the established approaches in museums have been continuously challenged by social and technological changes. New topics including modernization are newly in the centre of interest. The main method used to examine the current state of using new media in exhibitions and visitor engagement in Czech museums was quantitative research with surveys. With regards to the dynamic development in the area of the research surveys were conducted longitudinally in 2015 and in 2020. This approach helped to capture more complex reality and trends in time. Respondents are museum employees from 358 institutions. The use of new media for museum displays increased significantly, while less than a half of the museums launched an online exhibition project. Almost all museums are offering accompanying programs and more than 80 % also offer game activities. Adoption of new media methods and ideas in Czech museums is gradual but it is increasing. Technically less demanding displays are more frequent, lectures dominate in accompanying programs and games are predominantly non-digital.

Neighborhood cognitive amenities? A mixed-methods study of intellectually-stimulating places and cognitive function among older Americans

Neighborhoods structure health and wellbeing in later life. Local spaces can encourage physically active and socially engaged aging in place, and may also nurture opportunities for cognitively-stimulating creative and complex activities such as reading; playing and listening to music; learning; and engagement in galleries, performing arts, and museums. These activities are associated with better cognitive health outcomes. In this exploratory sequential mixed-methods study, thematic analysis of interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with 125 diverse older adults in the Minneapolis (MN) metropolitan area (mean age 71 years) explored how and where older adults participated in intellectually-stimulating neighborhood activities. Thematic analysis indicated that libraries, higher education campuses, and sites of arts and culture were frequented intellectually-stimulating places, with racial differences in perception and usage. The qualitative findings informed quantitative investigation of associations between these amenities and cognitive function in a large national sample of aging Black and white Americans (n = 21,165, mean age 67 years) in the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke Study. We used multilevel linear regression models to examine whether living in a neighborhood with higher kernel densities of libraries, higher education campuses, and arts/cultural sites had a net positive effect on cognitive function. Analysis identified statistically significant positive associations between arts/cultural sites and cognitive function, with a significantly larger effect size for white versus Black participants. The study contributes new evidence to the emerging ecological model of cognitive health. It critically considers racial disparities in access to health-promoting neighborhood infrastructure and opportunities to age well in place.

دراسة ارتباط المتحف بالملکیة الفکریة للأعمال الفنیة A study of Museum engagement to art works intellectual property

The efficiency of museums is interlinked with the social reflective skills in museum serving and conserving communities. We do not know any study in Saudi Arabia that have analyses the efficiency of cultural institutions. It might be due to the complicated rare acquisition of data and their complex processing of new Saudi cultural institutions which has no establishment history. The available data provide space for more urbane analyses that will enable deeper insight into the interests and activities of cultural institutions. This paper aims to analyze the technical efficiency of Saudi cultural museums. The latest social impact gathered data in the last 3 months after corona settling, reopening of museums and art galleries. The study was conducted to have more understanding of the Ministry of Culture and the activities of museums supporting intellectual property and the availability of art museum in the near future. Our objective was to perform a quantitative analysis of the efficiency of museums and identify the factors that influence their performance. As these are institutions funded from public resources, it is essential to deal with the optimization of their performance by preserving and documenting artworks ownership . In this study, we address the following research questions: What indicators on the side of input and outputs are suitable for evaluating the efficiency of museums for the intellectual property knowledge? How many museums in Saudi Arabia are knowledge efficient? Why are there differences in the performance of museums?

Communicating Environmental Research: Harnessing the Power of Curation

Never before has public communication of critical research, science, and knowledge on climate change and biodiversity loss been more important. The 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report, Global Warming of 1.5 ºC, stated that we only have 12 years to limit the catastrophic effects of climate change, including extreme weather, flood, drought, and poverty. The 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services revealed that roughly 1 million species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction. Given these dire warnings, the threat of climate change and biodiversity loss have never been more relevant, considering the impact these unprecedented issues will have on human survival, health, and well-being. This paper describes the results of our study, which explores findings used to develop the practice of research curation, which found that adapting and applying museum engagement strategies, using art to communicate science, and applying social media content curation and marketing strategies in combination with social learning practices are key to successful knowledge mobilization. This article focuses primarily on the methodologies and results of three projects: an art and literary exhibit, a biodiversity conversation series, and a sustainability-themed Instagram account. Based on our experience and findings, we share the lessons learned that we believe are actional for other researchers with similar goals, in particular those who are communicating research on climate change and biodiversity loss.