Adult visitors in museum learning environments

Although contemporary arts are considered an excellent way for museumgoers to practise the process of meaning making, these processes are often hampered by visitors' difficulties with equivocal interpretations and the heterogeneity of the museum public. In order to design and provide qualitative educational tools, more insights are needed to tackle these barriers. This paper reports on two related studies examining the development and use of educational tools from both the visitor and the museum educator perspective. Besides considering eight variables of influence and different degrees of difficulty and profundity in their educational tools, art museums must reckon with the perceptibility of educational tools to target new audiences or sustain audience loyalty.

Publication year:2015

Keywords:arts education, contemporary art, audience engagement