1/13Karen Grøn02/11/18
BERA 2007Empowering the Audience
Empowering the Audience!
How using the audience’s personal resources in a playful, safe and challenging way can improve the (learning) experience in an Art Museum.
Karen Grøn
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Institute of Education, University of London, 5-8 September 2007
There seems to be an ongoing battle in the museum world about how to understand what museums are about. The core of the discussion is whether museums should focus on the audience (Falk &Dierking 1992, 2000; Hein 1998; Lang&Reeve&Woollard 2006) or whether the main concern of the museum work is the collection (Cuno 2004, Wood2004, Montebello 2004). On the whole there has been a shift from absolute emphasis on collections towards including interests of the visitors in different degrees in many museums over the last decades. This is partly due to demands from funding and partly due to new generations of museum employees with greater theoretical knowledge about learning, experience development and cognition. In many art museums, however, there is no tradition to work across the professional boundaries of curators and educators. The discrepancy between the visitor centred approach often held by educators and the collection centred approach to museum work often held by curators is obvious just by looking at the way that these work fields in many museums function as two parallel and divided worlds. The core questions that divide the two approaches are: For which sake do museums have collections? Which audience do the museums want to attract? Why is it important to have museums in a world full of information, illustrations and replicas?
Visitor studies and educational theory have created an understanding and acknowledgement of the museum visit as a complex situation with many agendas at the same time and that learning itself is more than just encountering and understanding objects. This acknowledgment is clear when reading the GLO´s made by MLA showing learning targets from museum visits including enjoyment, inspiration, creativity, attitudes, values, activity, behaviour and skills besides more traditional learning targets. Therefore, in order to create a space where all this can happen there is a need for the museums to consider more than just the objects on display. The whole situation can be considered as one big multiple learning situation on many different levels at the same time.
Also in the curatorial arena there have been major changes in the practice of displaying art over the 20th century. Museums seemed to have taken over much of the authority that the church used to have (Duncan 1995) with objective truthful displays of genuine objects (O´Doherty 1976). However the notion of truth has been questioned in the 20. Century mainly through post-structuralists works claiming that everything is interpretation (Barthes 1968; Fish 1980) which have inspired many museum curators towards a greater awareness of the subjectivity of curating and displaying and the possibilities and restrictions in this.
However not only the status of the objects and understanding of learning have changed. The entire arena for experiences has changed. People have more leisure time than ever. But this has not given them more time to visit museums. It has rather turned them into busy consumers of the growing market of experience products. Among many others the business writers Nordström & Ridderstråle (1999, 2003) from Stockholm School of Economics describe how the consumer landscape is under siege from increasingly powerful individuals, who are free to know, go, do and be who they want to be. Life-long loyalty to a country, a company, a brand, a rock band, a husband or a wife has vanished and people no longer accept standardization in their lives and purchases. Following this, it might be dangerous for the institution of the art museum to take its status as secular church for granted. Since leisure time spending is rather driven by intrinsic than extrinsic motivation and leisure time values (Csikszentmihalyi & Hermanson 1994; Hood 1983), it is an interesting challenge to understand and acknowledge the motivations peoples might have, and combine the mission of the museum work with the motivations of the public in a way that considers both equally.
Experience Economy
The new experience consumer landscape has been closely examined and described by Pine & Gilmore in the book “The Experience Economy. Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage” from 1999. The subject of experience economy is businesses – meaning companies selling experiences as products for profit. Since art museums traditionally do not see them selves as institutions for profit but rather as institutions for aesthetic experiences and knowledge, experience economy has not been introduced and seen as a valuable parameter to work with. However the model is interesting to look at, since it reveals how Art Museums are perceived by the business of profit through analysis of audiences actual behaviour and true desires instead of the more ethical view on the art institution we find in the learning theory which is at all times loyal to the core mission of the museum instead of the multiple kinds of desires held by the public.
According to the experience economy, staging experiences is actually not just about staging but rather about engaging audiences. Pine & Gilmore introduce a model with two crucial dimensions of experiences.
On the horizontal axis they distinguish between the experience with passive participation (listening to a classical concert) and the experience with active participation (going skiing). The second vertical axis describes the relationship that unites the audience with the experience. On the one end lies absorption - occupying a persons attention by bringing the experience into the mind (watching tv). On the other end lies immersion – becoming physically or virtually a part of the experience itself (playing a virtual reality game). Passive is in this case understood as not directly interfering with or affecting the product, one is engaging with.
The coupling of the two dimensions defines what they call the four “experience realms”: entertainment, educational, aesthetic and escapist as shown in model 1.
Model 1:
Entertainment occur when one passively absorb an experience through the senses. Listening to music, viewing a performance or reading a book are examples of entertainment. The person absorbs the product but has no affect on it.
Educational experiences involve the active participation of the individual while absorbing the events unfolding. The term edutainment is mentioned within this realm. Playing knowledge into the participants by engaging them in multiple learning experiences and activities with clear educational goals. Historical museums where kids can dress up and cook foods from the good old days are examples of educational experiences. The person absorbs the message through active participation.
The escapist experiences are the polar opposite of entertainment experiences. Here the individual becomes an actor, able to affect the actual performance. The guest is completely immersed in it as an actively involved participant. These environments include theme parks, casinos, virtual reality headsets, chat rooms and paintball. The internet is an active medium in contrast to television. The value which people find online, derives from actively connecting, conversing and forming communities. The development and rapid growth of web 2.0 can be seen as results of these values. The person immerses in creating both the concrete situation and the message.
In the aesthetic realm individuals immerse themselves in an event or environment but have little or no affect on it them selves. They will be touched, but the environment stays untouched. Visiting an art museum, looking at Grand Canyon or drinking coffee at Café Florian in Venice are examples of aesthetic experiences. The person has no affect on the situation but immerses in personal emotions.
It is notable that Pine & Gilmore place the art museum in the aesthetic realm - as if this is the only obvious and true way of understanding the art museum. This placement might not be the only true story about art museums and their value in the life of the audience, but it tells how the art museum is perceived by people with no deep distinct knowledge about museums and art and presents an interpretation of the art institution from the outside. This might tell us something about how museums are understood in the eyes of the general public.
Pine & Gilmore state that the richest experiences encompass aspects of all four realms. These centre round the “sweet spot” in the middle of the framework. Pine & Gilmore suggest that the businesses wanting to use the framework, might begin by analyzing the institution with the model in order to turn the business into a rich, compelling and engaging experience.
So how does the traditional art museum look from the perspective of the experience economy?
Model 2:
Using the framework for an analysis of the traditional products at art museums reveal some challenges in the way many art museums are run. Starting with entertainment it would be right to put the guided tours and labels into this category. Here the audience watch and listen to knowledge about the objects in the museum given to them. They may respond to the guided tour and informative labels with a feeling of having been taken care of and hosted well. These products mainly serve adult audiences.
Looking at the art museums from the perspective of the educational realm, many art museums have an educational department that gives guided and sometimes interactive guided tours to children – often followed up by workshops where the children can try a new skill and use gained knowledge. It is interesting to note, how Pine & Gillmore distinguish between education and entertainment – which places labels away from learning and into entertainment. This places their understanding of education in the Dewey inspired tradition of “learning by doing” up to “discovery learning” as described by George Hein (1998).
In the aesthetic perspective many art museums offer beautiful surroundings and genuine pieces of art and design objects displayed in beautifully designed exhibitions. Audiences can immerse in the spaces and engage with the objects. However it requires a certain cultural capital (Bourdieu 1993) in order to engage this way and accept that it is not necessary to “understand” the space and the pieces. This understanding of the Art Museum is very different to the understanding most audiences have, since many as children during school visits have learnt, that museums are about “understanding and learning” in a very specific way. The habitus of “being” with art is usually transferred through family behaviour – not through schooling.
In the perspective of the escapist realm it is difficult to think of situations where the audience can participate, create and affect the actual performance through active involved participation. V&A use web 2.0 – but there does not seem to be any obvious examples of possibilities of participation by the audience in the actual galleries of art museums.
This brief analysis indicates that art museums mainly serve the aesthetic and the entertaining realms towards adults and the educational realm towards children. However it might be important in the future to consider the modern life arena as described by Nordstöm & Ridderstråle where the audience might not continue to accept the authority of the art museum automatically. Also Pine & Gilmore challenge the institution when they state that experiences must provide a memorable offering that will remain with the guests for a long time. Here the guest must be drawn into the offering so that they feel a sensation. And to feel the sensation, the guests must actively participate and contribute. Those companies that wish to offer their customers an experience need to see themselves as stagers of events. It has to be truly interactive experiences to the point where the guests have as much or more influence on the actions as the actors. The actors can here be understood as the curators – those who stage the event (exhibition). In the light of this the traditional hierarchical institutions such as the art museum cannot take its authority for granted. The art museum might have to consider how to meet demands for engagement in the great halls if it wants to continue to be considered relevant and important to the public.
Trapholt Museum of Modern Art and Design in Kolding, Denmark learnt about the experience economy through a national project (ODA) about attraction development together with theme parks, zoos, Tivoli and other large attractions. The theory represented a different approach towards exhibition development, which became part of the background when the big autumn exhibition 2006 called “Arbiters of Taste” was conceived.
Arbiters of Taste
The idea with “Arbiter of Taste” was to make a move away from the pure silent contemplative “White Cube” “aesthetic” exhibition towards an “escapist” and more engaging and involving product with elements of play that would affect the exhibition. We also had the three other realms in mind – making sure that the exhibition should be aesthetically designed, with labels and information and possible to experience both by attending and not attending the activities.
In the exhibition Arbiters of Taste the audience was given the challenge to value the Trapholt chair collection. The question was: what do you think is good design? The task built on previous knowledge the audience might have – their own personal view on design. It became the framework within the audience would make sense of their own experience – not any external standard or truth about design and taste. The motivating factor for the exhibition was the personal investigation of one self in relation to the objects and the shared investigation of taste and preferences with others. Categorisation into different lifestyles made them more aware of reasons to be different. In this way we hoped that both audience and museum through shared knowledge and evaluations could learn both about the objects, lifestyles and personal tastes.
Using a “questionnaire key” before entering the exhibition, they grouped them selves into four different lifestyles each represented by a colour. They could then take 20 tags in there own colour and enter the exhibition. The exhibition was organized with about 80 pieces from the permanent collection. These were divided into 20 imaginative situations where one would have to choose between the chairs. As an example: you need a new kitchen chair. Which of the four would you choose? Here the audience had four very different chairs to choose among. One was practical and easy to clean. One was iconic and well known by the architect Arne Jacobsen. One was sculptural and created in a way that considered environmental issues. One was old and cute. The audience was encouraged to discuss the different preferences with each other and put a vote with the tag in a hole.
Some audiences love labels – others don’t. If the art museum writes labels some audiences think they are too long. If the art museum does not write labels, some audiences feel they lack information. In the exhibition Arbiters of Taste it was not necessary for the audience to read the labels if they did not wish to. Since their own taste, prior knowledge and lifestyle preferences were the motivating factors and drivers of the exhibition, they did not have to look up new knowledge about the chairs in order to “do” the exhibition. On the other hand, if they wanted information they could look it up at labels hung on each chair in order to provide information to those who would have missed it.
Every week the voting tags were counted. The results from the voting were put on display in a large “Barometer of Taste” which hung on one wall. In the barometer the audience could see which chairs were the most popular, which lifestyle groups voted for what and compare their own choices with others from the same lifestyle groups. The results from the exhibition will be used for an exhibition later showing highlights and results. This part of the exhibition changed every week.
How did the audience respond?
Two weekends after the opening of the exhibition we conducted a small piece of research to find out how the audience responded to the exhibition. During the weekend there was placed a box with questionnaires at the exit of Trapholt for the audience to fill out. The museum had altogether 363 adult visitors and 33 children visiting during this weekend and 110 questionnaires were filled out. On the Saturday the research also included 6 in depth interviews with visitors, observations and video recording. The video recording was announced at the ticket sale and at the entrance of the exhibition.
The essential part of the questionnaire was about how the audience responded to “Arbiters of Taste”. In order to compare the responses we asked the audience to respond on the same questions about the exhibition “Traces” which was on show at the same time. “Traces” was a traditional “white cube” art/architecture exhibition set up in the three first galleries the visitor encounter when they enter the museum. This exhibition was made in the way we often make exhibitions at Trapholt. It was made as a cooperation between an architect and an artist and the objects were mainly to speak for them selves supported by a few labels. On the back wall on the left hand when entering the exhibition there was a written introduction to the concept of the exhibition. The audience could only find this text if they turned around after entering the exhibition.