Month: June 2022

After the last study, I found that there are many differences in the behaviour of photographers at the exhibition. This time I have tried to change the behaviour of ‘taking pictures with exhibits in museums’, which most people are more concerned about according to the previous research.

“How can we refine the social contract around contemporary gallery spaces?”

Nowadays, people go to art galleries or exhibitions just to take pictures and post them on social media, rather than being interested in the artworks or seeing the exhibitions. These actions interfere with other visitors who want to enjoy the art space.
Therefore, to raise their awareness of the social contract, my intervention was to hold up a board with the sarcastic slogan “People looking at the exhibition, please don’t disturb the people taking photos” and stand at the entrance to the exhibition for about 20 minutes. Some people stopped to read it, others just passed by.

Then I interviewed those who had read the slogan. I started by asking them, are you people who like to take pictures with the artworks in the museum? I found that those who enjoyed taking photos with the exhibits did not see these actions as a problem and were not affected by the slogans. Sarcasm is a relatively strong expression and some of the subjects felt it was inappropriate. However, those who don’t normally take photos of exhibitions generally found these behaviours annoying and agreed with the slogans.

It seems difficult to change people’s minds, so I am thinking of changing another way, such as encouraging them, and I will need to read more about how to raise people’s awareness of the social contract.

A survey was conducted by asking 80 people who often visit art museums or exhibitions. The participants came from five different nations which are China, UK, Thailand, Brazil and Russia. The purpose of this questionnaire is to assess personal preferences and experiences in museums.

The online questionnaire was collected from a total of 80 participants via the Google Survey platform from the 8th to the 15th of June. There are 68% of females and 32% of males, between 22 to 32 years old.

In order to obtain the obvious amount of quantitive data, the below questions are designed in just a few options and in a straightforward way to make it easier for subjects to answer efficiently.

• Gender/ Nation/ Age
• Do you usually like to take photos in museums?
• Do you feel disturbed when someone takes photos with the artworks or selfies in the museum?
• What usually attracts you to an exhibition? (Multiple)

According to the research result, there are 57.5% of participants like to take photos in the museum, and 42.5% don’t like it. However, there are nearly two-thirds of people(65%) felt that when someone takes photos with the artworks or selfies in the museum was disturbing to them.

In addition, the research also observes that the major reason for attracting people to visit the art museum or exhibition is to enjoy the art atmosphere, and the second one is to gain inspiration.

//Reflective report//

In order to quickly get a broad understanding of what the stakeholders think, the questions were not designed with enough detail and precision. For instance, I discovered that more than half of the participants like to take photos in museums, but at the same time, many of them feel that taking selfies at exhibitions is annoying. This made me realize that there are many different ways of taking photos in an exhibition and that perhaps most people are accepting of taking pictures of the works with their phones as documenting them but not posing in front of the exhibits or taking selfies. Next time I would like to investigate that different behaviour in more detail.

Moreover, as the data on Asians is still more readily available to me, the majority of the subjects in this questionnaire were from China and Taiwan. This may have resulted in a lack of diversity in the questionnaire respondents. Perhaps next time I should try another way to get more ideas from people in different parts of the world.

On this field trip, I had planned to interview people who were posing with the artworks and behaving in an exaggerated manner, but instead of seeing disrespectful photographers, I saw mostly Westerners who were carefully looking at the exhibition and reading the information cards next to the works. They looked so serious that I didn’t bother them. However, I noticed that most of the people who enjoyed taking photos with the works were Asian, a phenomenon that is obviously more common in Asia countries. As Western countries have been educated in art and culture earlier, art has been integrated into their lives and has become a normal thing. On the contrary, Asians tend to think of art as a rare and precious thing, and therefore want to take photographs to document and have a record of it. Although I did not see anyone taking photos with the artworks in this exhibition, I did see people taking photos of the artworks with their mobile phones to record them, and most of these people were Asian.

Moreover, I find that the act is not so absolute. Some people may seem to be taking pictures of the artwork, but they may go home and review each work and its information. So the question is, How do we know if someone respects art or not? For example, it’s common (especially in Asia) to see people who post photos of an exhibition on social media saying they love it, but end up spelling the artist’s name wrong, or happily smiling and taking photos with the exhibits in a serious exhibition theme, or using the museum as a photo booth for their own outfit photos, etc. We can see that the reason they go to an exhibition is not only to learn about the artworks. However, taking photographs is only one of the manifestations of disrespect for art, copying and destroying artworks can also be regarded as disrespectful behaviour. The root of the problem is not whether to take pictures or not, but whether to respect art from the bottom of one’s heart. Yet, taking pictures does not mean that one does not respect art. People can take pictures in many different ways, and there are many invisible parts. It all depends on the real attitude of the person, which is not standardized, varies from person to person and can change from time to time.