In this article, Marilyn G. Hood, Ph.D., of Hood Associates, discusses African-American attendance and non-attendance at art museums. Hood presents findings from focus groups and individual interviews used to better understand African-American feelings about and perceptions of art museums, which she divides into internal dimensions and external dimensions.
This article highlights findings from a study conducted by researchers at Jacksonville State University that assessed group visitor behavior at four exhibits at the Anniston Museum of Natural History. Researchers studied if male and female adults behave differently at exhibits when they are with a child than when they are with another adult as well as whether or not adult behavior was consistent across different types of exhibits.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Stephen BitgoodChifumi KitazawaAndrea CavenderKaren Nettles
In this article, Jacksonville State University's Amy Cota and Stephen Bitgood share findings from a study of label content, specifically the effects of length and sequence. Researchers aimed to answer the following questions: (1) If the entire label is read, will retention of information be related to the length of the text? and (2) When information is presented in two paragraphs, is the order of presentation important?
In this article, Jacksonville State University's Ann Cleghorn summarizes a 1993 "Museum Management and Curatorship" article written by Paulette M. McManus. The article cites findings from a study of visitor's memories as indicators of the impact of museum visits. The study analyzed visitors ages 8-50 years, who visited "Gallery 33, A Meeting Ground of Cultures in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery," an exhibition about human society and includes materials on beliefs, values, customs, and art from around the world.
In this article, researchers from Colorado State University discuss a research study at the Denver Art Museum. The study investigated how one survey of visitors to the museum was used to increase staff awareness of different levels of audience commitment, while at the same time yielding evaluation information about an Asian Art exhibit to guide planning of new interpretation materials.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Ross LoomisMarc FuscoRuth EdwardsMelora McDermott
In this article, Eileen Walker of the Royal Ontario Museum discusses the usefulness of front-end evaluation as the museum renovates all of its galleries. In particular, Walker outlines the front-end evaluation process of the museum's new European Galleries, which aimed at determining visitors' interests, prior knowledge, activities, and preferences in areas related to European Decorative Arts and to the display of such objects. The data informed and facilitated decision-making in the early stages of the gallery development project.
In this article, M. Hagedorn-Saupe discusses visitor-related research efforts at the Institute fur Museumskunde in Berlin. Hagedorn-Saupe provides an overview of data collection studies on museum visits and related projects, visitor research projects and collaboration with other institutions, and long-term projects at the Institute.
In this paper, Elena Pol and Mikel Asensio of the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid discuss their research about how visitors perceive different kinds of artistic representations and which elements they interpret from masterpieces. The authors provide an overview of their work in this area, including three studies about artistic style.
In this paper, Daryl Fischer of MUSYNERGY discusses the Denver Art Museum's use of "visitor panels" to generate substantive changes in new exhibits. These qualitative studies rely on input from panelists who are representative of the museum's target audience. Fischer provides an overview of how the Denver Art Museum used visitor panels in the reinstallation of the two ares of the museum's permanent collection.
Saturday, March 6, 2010, Marshall Barnes did an experiment in blending art and science. At an art opening at the Ekklesia Gallery in Columbus, OH, he showcased, for the first time, the original video footage from an experiment in physics that conducted during New Year's eve of that year. The experiment was to determine what would happen if an attempt were made to produce a "wall of light" that would stand in free space and consist of a number particular properties produced by a proprietary technology that Marshall had developed. Small experiments had already been conducted that produced the visible effect of an area of free standing light produced by the reflection of a strobe from a wall. The New Year's Eve test was to see if a wall of light could be produced that would fill a space in a room and have a number of particular "interesting" attributes.
Marshall Barnes was chosen by Larry Bock, founder of the USA Science and Engineering Festival as a late addition to the USASEF after viewing Marshall's impressive SuperScience for High School Physics activities for National Lab Day and his emphasis on advanced concept science and technologies. Marshall was given free booth space to set-up an exhibit that featured what is now being called "STEAM" or Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math and was fairly interactive. Marshall's booth emphasized his actual research that the visitors could take part in or analyze themselves. He had a VCR, TV, CD player, MacBookPro laptop and his own invention - the Visual Reduction Window. There were four elements to the exhibit. There was a TV monitor that showed a scene from a movie that you could view with 3D glasses for TV that Marshall invented that work even with one eye closed. At different times that same monitor would feature footage from an experiment that Marshall conducted to produce one of Nikola Tesla's ideas that Tesla never accomplished - a wall of light. This same footage could be analyzed by the visitors - frame by frame, on the Mac computer to see exactly how the principle of resonance produced the wall of light from the build-up of reflections off a physical wall created by strobe lights. Visitors could also listen to hyperdimensional music that Marshall produced that takes any kind of music to a new listening experience. Based on the concept that music is a coded language with cues and instructions that are cognitively recognizable when translated, Marshall invented techniques and technologies that allow such translations and brought examples for visitors to listen to. They included an upcoming radio show theme and the soundtrack to a documentary on the reality behind Fox TV's FRINGE. The music featured song elements that move around between the speakers and make you feel like the music is alive. The most dramatic of all was the Visual Reduction Window, again invented by Marshall, that made kids look transparent and at times, almost completely invisible. Based on his famous research into invisibility, which is documented at the Santa Maria Experiment exhibit in the Santa Maria Education Visitor's Center in Columbus, Ohio, the effect of real life transparency is stunning and Marshall, the world's leading expert on invisibility research was able to describe the physics behind what he was doing and its applications in the real world. His approach to invisibility is superior to those methods pursued by Duke University and others, trying to do the same with metamaterials, and is based on a completely different model of invisibility that he calls, Visual Density Reduction or VDR. Using VDR techniques, Marshall can make attack helicopters, small gun boats, tanks and many other things invisible, which is why he doesn't reveal the current level of his research, due to National Security reasons. Overall, the exhibit was a wild success and serves as a model for a traveling exhibit for informal science at malls, fairs, science centers, and other festivals.