Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis deals with museum experiences and how they are continuously negotiated\nbetween the museum and its users and between the users themselves. Centred on one\ncase study, Statens Museum for Kunst (The National Gallery of Denmark), it asks:\nHow does Statens Museum for Kunst understand and progress the experience of adult\nvisitors in the permanent galleries and how does this relate to actual visitor\nexperiences? Throughout the thesis, the history of the Museum and its conceptual\nframework are revealed, discussed and compared to the user experiences that take\nplace. This provides insight into the complex relations between users, artworks and the\nmuseum space.\nThe thesis investigates five historic scripts at Statens Museum for Kunst in order to\nunderstand the rationale on which the Museum was founded and the current script\ndeveloped. These scripts are compared to the results of detailed empirical studies,\nwhich reveal how users together form a highly personal and exploratory script.\nIt is concluded that museum experiences at SMK have an inherent social dimension,\nwhich has fundamental impact on how the aesthetic experience and the development of\nthe self take place in the galleries. Via bodily conduct and diverse conversations, users\nestablish a unique experience in which they negotiate and shape the aesthetic\nexperience together. This, the research demonstrates, is done through a re-framing of\ntraditional aesthetic categories and a new type of self-formation. Thereby a discrepancy\nbetween the museum script and the users’ performance is detected: where the museum\nscript mainly embraces knowledge, intention, structure and solitary contemplation,\nmany users practise curiosity, spontaneous attraction and social negotiating. Thus, the\nMuseum develops a script for ‘Bildung’ in which the enlightenment and education of\nusers are in focus. However, the users themselves are engaged in a self-formation\nprocess where personal responses to art and dialogue with one another stand as the\noverall purpose of the museum experience.
Source: Figshare
Author: Mette Houlberg Rung
Institution: National Gallery of Denmark
Language: English
Subfield: Museology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W591759767