Lindenwood University Digital Commons@Lindenwood University Dissertations Theses & Dissertations Spring 4-26-2019 Education and the Art Viewing Experience: The Evolution of Learning in Museums and Corporate Art Collections Piper Hutson Lindenwood University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.edu/dissertations Part of the Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons Recommended Citation Hutson, Piper, "Education and the Art Viewing Experience: The Evolution of Learning in Museums and Corporate Art Collections" (2019).edu/dissertations/114 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses & Dissertations at Digital Commons@Lindenwood University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@Lindenwood University. For more information, please contact phuffman@lindenwood. Education and the Art Viewing Experience: The Evolution of Learning in Museums and Corporate Art Collections by Piper Hutson A Dissertation submitted to the Education Faculty of Lindenwood University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education School of Education Education and the Art Viewing Experience: The Evolution of Learning in Museums and Corporate Art Collections by Piper Hutson This dissertation has been approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education at Lindenwood University by the School of Education Declaration of Originality I do hereby declare and attest to the fact that this is an original study based solely upon my own scholarly work here at Lindenwood University and that I have not submitted it for any other college or university course or degree here or elsewhere.
Full Legal Name: Piper Hutson Acknowledgements Special thanks goes to chair member, Frank Giuseffi for his unwavering positivity and continued suggestions for improvement. The researcher would like to thank her wonderful committee members, Joseph Alsobrook and Robyne Elder for their support and contributed wisdom. This project would not have been possible without the support of her biggest work compatriot, Shelley Hagen. Hagen’s optimistic outlook and belief towards all the researcher’s possible successes allowed her to push perceived limits.
Most of all, every accomplishment and daunting hurdle that has been untaken and overcome, would not be possible without her beloved husband, James Hutson. i Abstract By investigating the history of corporate art collections and the evolution of educational frameworks in museums, this case study questions the differences between exhibition formats to illuminate possible areas of improvement. Museums were initially formed to display collections donated by wealthy or royal families and constructed around the ‘Curator’s Gallery’ format. This exhibition type focused on the aesthetic arrangement of objects based on the established art historical canon hierarchy and were accompanied by minimal ‘tombstone’ labels with little, if any, didactic information.
Science museums emerged in the middle of the 19th century and were among the first informal learning institutions to consider the importance of education, illustrated by their use of the ‘Visitor’s Gallery’ format which included text panels with additional information. Influenced by the popularity of learning theories emerging in formal education, along with the increasing financial strain placed on art museums, led to the reevaluation of mission statements to include an educational purpose to justify federal aid. Despite the accepted change of exhibition design in most museums to include an educational component, there are no studies conducted on the evolution and importance for the same changes to be made in corporate art exhibitions. The researcher conducted a case study comparing the two different exhibition formats utilizing a corporate art collection’s exhibition in a dedicated art gallery inside one of the company’s history museums.
The researcher’s intent was to investigate if and how visitor’s perceptions changed when learning was involved in the art viewing experience. Visitors were asked to participate in an exhibition where the art was accompanied first by basic text labels listing the artist, title, medium, and date of creation. They were then asked to come ii back at a future date to experience the show again, with the additional of extended text panels. Through three post experience surveys and a follow-up interview, the findings which follow showed an overall preference to the second format of the ‘Visitor’s Gallery’ experience, as well as unanimous consensus the second format closer aligned with a company's mission statement of providing a culture of caring, being community based and innovative.
iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements. ii Table of Contents. iv List of Tables. viii List of Figures.
ix List of Images. x Chapter One: Introduction. 1 Rationale of the Study. 3 Purpose of Study.
4 Questions and Hypotheses. 6 Definition of Terms. 11 iv Chapter Two: Review of Literature. 13 Corporate Art Collections.
13 History of Museums. 27 Learning Theories in the Museum Setting. 41 Integration of Andragogy. 44 Learning through Labels.
57 Chapter Three: Research Method and Design. 58 Questions and Null Hypotheses. 64 Chapter Four: Results. 65 Results of Survey 1.
65 Results of Survey 2. 72 Results of Survey 3. 81 Results of Interviews. 86 v Results of Research Questions and the Hypotheses.
95 Chapter Five: Discussion. 96 Purpose of the Study. 96 Discussion of Outcome Results. 104 Appendix A: Invitation Letter.
115 Appendix B: Survey Instrument 1. 116 Appendix C: Survey Instrument 2. 117 Appendix D: Survey Instrument 3. 118 vi Appendix E: Interview Questions.
119 vii List of Tables Table 1. Reponses for ‘What was the Treason for your visit to the museum today?’ ……………………………………………………………………………………67 Table 2. Reponses for ‘What are your initial reactions to the exhibition?’……. Reponses for ‘What are your reactions to the addition of the text labels?’.
Reponses for ‘What was your overall impression after viewing the different formats of the exhibition?’………………………………………………………. Reponses for ‘Do you recall having an emotional or intellectual connection (memories, feeling of relaxation or anxiety, heightened curiosity, etc.) when thinking of one particular format over the other? If so, what were they?’ ,……. References to emotional or intellectual connection in interview questions. Instances of terminology in the interviews which relate to overall themes found throughout the case study……………………………………………………….88 viii List of Figures Figure 1.
Response to ‘What is the highest level of education you have completed?’. Response to ‘How many times a year do you typically visit museums?’. The frequency of museum attendance after viewing the exhibition. The perception of the company before viewing the corporate art collection exhibition.
The perception of the company after viewing the ‘Curator’s Gallery’ format of the exhibition. The perception of the first exhibition experience compared to other exhibits. The perception of the second exhibition experience compared to the first exhibition experience. The perception of the company after viewing the ‘Visitor’s Gallery’ format of the exhibition.
The frequency of museum attendance after viewing the second exhibition. The perception of the second exhibition experience compared to other exhibits. The perception of the company after seeing their efforts to present yearly exhibitions of the corporate art collection to the public. 85 ix List of Images Image 1: Example of tombstone label for Keds, A New Show with a New Charm…………………………………………………….…65 Image 2: Example of extended text label for Keds, A New Show with a New Charm……………………………………………………………………….66 x Chapter One: Introduction Introduction Patronage of the arts has its roots as far back as the Ancient Mediterranean and flourished with banking families, like the Medici’s during the Renaissance (Lewis, 1992; Yoon & Hyung-Deok Shin, 2014), as wealthy members of society wished to express their intellectual and financial accumulation of aesthetically interesting objects.
These collections were donated by affluent or royal families to start the world’s first art museums and reached new heights of popularity at the turn of the 19th century. At that time, private collections were shared with the public and museums were divided by two primary functions, based on how they displayed their objects and interacted with their viewers. The ‘Curator’s Gallery’ top-down format (Russell, 1994) focused on the aesthetic arrangement of objects based on the established canon of art historical hierarchy, reinforced by the curator’s interpretation and nationalistic sentiment. This type of museum perpetuated an air of elitism and ensured that only those with the proper education and background could fully appreciate the non-description presentation style.
Science museums emerged a generation later in the middle of the 19th century and were among the first informal learning institutions to consider the importance of education for all levels of society, which was reflected in their use of the ‘Visitor’s Gallery’ (bottom- up) format. Items were displayed within a clearly defined context and additional learning objectives were added to make the items relatable to the general public. With these historical foundations, there is little surprise that in the 1980s, the increasing financial strain of art museums (which previously focused their efforts on the preservation and continuation of the established object-centered exhibition format) resulted in the EDUCATION AND THE ART VIEWING EXPERIENCE 2 reevaluation of mission statements to include a unified educational purpose to justify federal aid. Influenced by the popularity of elementary learning theories emerging in formal education, art museums embraced the mission of considering how visitors learned and constructed meaning.
Beginning in 1938, Dewey (1859-1952) stressed the importance of learning through a hands-on approach, and this was quickly accepted by the institutions that used the ‘Visitors’ Gallery’ model for their collections (Hein, 1998). The theory had a profound pedagogical impact on museum design and expected impact on visitors. Expounding on the groundwork of Constructivist theory and principals of Andragogy, Falk (1948-) and Dierking (1956-) (often considered to be the father and mother of museum studies) confirmed the importance of giving contextualized information for viewers in museums, which is central to the foundation of the ‘new museology’ (Falk & Dierking, 2000, 2013). Current museum studies accepted the institutional role of educator and interpreter and only added to the literature by suggesting ways to improve the viewer experience.
The new museum was then understood as being interdisciplinary, multi- vocal, accessible, and open to criticism (Stam, 1983). At the time of this writing, education was then a well-established facet of the museum experience, but museums no longer held the exclusivity of housing vast collections of art. Over time institutions took the leading role in supporting the arts EDUCATION AND THE ART VIEWING EXPERIENCE 3 (Martorella, 1990; Yoon & Hyung-Deok Shin, 2014) and according to the International Directory of Corporate Art Collections “the most important patrons of the arts during the past 50 years has been not governments, or private collectors, or religions, or even museums. But corporations!” (as cited in Howarth, 1983, 2017a, p.
Though not as well known to the public, corporate collections came to the forefront of the art world, largely due to the fact that the amount of works of art on display in corporations around the world closely equaled that in municipal and private art museums (Howarth, 2017a). The United Bank of Switzerland’s collection grew to 35,000 pieces in the 50 years previous to this writing, while the largest global corporate art collection title went to Deutsche Bank, with more than 57,000 works (Martinique, 2016, p. The sheer quantity of works in corporate collections begged the question of how these stewards of culture should share or exhibit for the general public, and if so, what their role was in educating visitors on the nature and significance of said works. Rationale of the Study Despite the accepted change of nature and purpose of exhibition design in most museums, there were no studies to date conducted on the evolution and importance for the same changes to be made in corporate art exhibitions.
As mentioned, these companies held a large share of the world’s art, but kept it in private hands, often locked away from the public in storage areas or in structures inaccessible to the general public.