Italian researchers studied the attitudes of visitors in museums. It turns out that with more clarification, people look longer and leave the museum with a more positive feeling.
Educational tools in art exhibitions seem crucial to improve the cultural and aesthetic experience, particularly of non-expert visitors, thus becoming a strategic goal for museums. However, there has not been much research regarding the impact of labels on the quality of visitors’ aesthetic experience. The study compares the impact on the cognitive and emotional experience of naïve visitors between essential and descriptive labels, through multiple objective and subjective measurements, focusing on the controversial modern art museum context. The researchers concluded, after detailed descriptions, observers spend more time inspecting artworks, their eyes wander more looking for the described elements, their skin conductance and pupil size increase, and overall, they find the content less complex and more arousing. The findings show that people do receive important benefits from reading detailed information about artworks. This suggests that elaborating effective labels should be a primary goal for museums interested in attracting a non-expert public.
Authors of the study :
Serena Castellotti1, Ottavia D’Agostino1, Angelica Mencarini1, Martina Fabozzi1, Raimondo Varano1, Stefano Mastandrea2, Irene Baldriga3, Maria Michela Del Viva1*
1Department of NEUROFARBA, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
2Department of Education, Roma Tre University, Roma, Italy
3Department of SARAS, Sapienza University, Roma, Italy
*Corresponding author: maria.delviva@unifi.it (MMD)
Read the full study here :
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284149#sec012--