Month: August 2022

Standard exploration of the social contract and in-depth analysis of visitor perspective in art museum

As a result of the last tutorial, I was advised to try to find out the criteria for social contracts in museums. I wanted to explore what the standards were and how visitors reacted and really felt when they were disturbed by someone. Do they express this directly or do they look annoyed?

In order to be more intuitive and allow the stakeholder to actually participate in the situation, to get the most realistic feedback. I decided to play the role of taking selfies with the artwork in front of people who were seriously looking at the exhibition, to see how they reacted and to get their opinion afterwards.

When I simulated the photo taker trying to disturb people, most people simply walked away to see the next piece. When I stood in front of a painting that someone was already looking at, they also chose to leave and no one came up to stop me.

After that I interviewed a total of seven people who had seen what I was doing. As usual, I first asked them if they usually took photos in exhibitions and if they took photos with the exhibits. If yes, what is the purpose? If not, why not? Then I asked them what they thought when they saw me using the museum as a photo booth. And What else did they think was inappropriate and might affect them in the museum?

Most of the respondents were not people who like to take photos with artworks, but some of them would occasionally take out their mobile phones to take photos of their favourite pieces. When I asked why they didn’t take photos with the artwork, some replied that they thought it was weird, some replied that they didn’t need to because they didn’t have requirements like sharing it with others, and some thought that they came to the museum to enjoy the art atmosphere and that they wouldn’t be able to do so if they kept taking photos. Others felt that they came to the museum to learn from the artworks, to understand one piece and then move on to another and that there was no need to take photos unless they felt the need to record them to check them out then.

Moreover, when I asked what they thought of people who used the museum as a studio or did what I just did, most of them said they understood because nowadays, with the development of social media, they would respect it even if some of them didn’t like it. I then asked curiously what kind of behaviour would they find unacceptable. Is there a standard? They answered, for example, if they want to see a piece of artwork and someone keeps getting in the way, they would find it disturbing. Others said that a few people taking pictures quietly was acceptable, but too many people taking pictures would spoil the atmosphere of the exhibition.

There are a few people who took photos with the exhibits said they wouldn’t take photos in a normal exhibition, but they had taken photos with famous paintings before and they did feel a bit disturbed by my action, they said they would try to take fewer photos next time or take them as soon as possible without blocking others.

In addition, I also asked what other behaviours they thought were inappropriate in a museum and the answers were bringing food indoors, drinking, talking too loudly, not keeping a proper distance from others, etc. I also asked them what their ideal museum environment would be and most of them thought it would be a place where people take their time to look at the works, a quiet and tranquil space, appropriate privacy and a distance between people.

//Reflective report//

One of the important points I discovered from this intervention is that whether people take photographs or not seems to depend on whether there is value in doing so. If they think it’s worth taking a photo, perhaps of a famous artist’s work, etc., they will take it. This explains why there aren’t many people taking photos in ordinary art museums, but people at the Van Gogh exhibition are taking photos with their mobile phones. And if the photograph is useful afterwards, that is, if it has a purpose, then people like to take photographs, for example, to share on social media, to do research, to gather inspiration for their work, and so on.

So why do some people have these specific needs and others don’t? And why do some people find an exhibition ‘worth photographing’ and others don’t? Since the intervention was aimed at people from Western countries, as I had originally observed, most of them did not take photographs with the exhibits. If we divide the visitors into those who like to take pictures with the exhibits and those who don’t like them but simply to experience the artworks, next time I will look for those who like to take pictures and find out what they want and why.

To summarise previous research, it is clear that in the early days, many museums banned photography due to possible damage to artefacts, copyright issues, bottlenecks and traffic jams… etc. It was also thought that this was to increase the sales of souvenir shops.

Nevertheless, with the development of social media platforms, the restriction of photography has caused much discontent among the public. As a result, most museums are now open to general photography for personal, non-commercial use, as long as visitors do not record, or use flash, tripods, self-timer or other assistive devices.

However, it is often difficult to effectively restrain selfish visitors by relying solely on written regulations and the social contract of the general public. There are still many accidents, such as damaging artworks in order to take photos, or, more often than not, blocking aisles and causing inconvenience to others. Including the results of a previous survey, more than half of the people felt that taking photos or selfies with the exhibits in the museum would ruin their visiting experience.

In order to strike a balance between personal benefits and the visiting experience, there are several suitable ways for different museums. Depending on the different situations and themes of the exhibition, museums have their own way to adopt.

In addition, another way is to guide and encourage people to follow the social contract. It was also been mentioned in the 21st July tutorial, I think I can try to understand more about the thoughts of stakeholders. What do they really want from the exhibition? and what people think is the standard of the social contract? Therefore, my next step is to reach out to the stakeholder in more depth to get the most realistic view of them.

The Van Gogh Museum is located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The museum is by appointment only and usually has to book a few days in advance to enter the museum. As soon as I entered the ground floor of the gallery, I was shocked by the number of people taking photos, which was different from any other exhibition I had seen before, probably because the artists were so famous.

Not only did many people take pictures of each painting with their mobile phones or professional cameras, but many visitors also queued up to take photos and selfies with the exhibition. However, instead of crowding in front of the paintings, they lined up at the photo wall to take pictures. A photo wall was set up on each floor of the exhibition, based on the most famous works on each floor.

This way not only satisfies the desire of visitors to take photographs but also effectively enhances the atmosphere of the exhibition and avoids crowding in the aisles. I think this approach is suitable for exhibitions with a clear theme, or even to encourage participants to post photos taken on the photo wall as a trend to guide people to take photos in the right places, or to help the museum attract more interested visitors with online promotion.