In order to make my project more diverse, I went to Adachi Museum and Teshima Art Museum in Japan. Compared to other museums that I have visited for the project, they are more related to alternative art museum. Adachi Museum is famous for their Japanese garden and how the architecture facilitates the visitors on visiting the garden, at the same time they also exhibit a collection of Japanese paintings. Meanwhile, Teshima Art Museum has only one exhibit, the museum’s architecture itself, and how it brings a new dimension on nature, architecture and art. Unfortunately, photo shooting inside the museum is prohibited in both museums, so I couldn’t make portrait of visitors inside. However, I have tried to do some shots in the area that is not under the rule.

By my observation, visitors in Adachi Museum are keen to be passionate towards the garden only, but not towards the paintings. People spent more time on taking pictures of the garden and observing the garden through the glass. When they get to the exhibition hall for paintings, they go through around everything painting by keeping walking and passing by the paintings, especially for foreign visitors like Taiwanese tourists in a group. They rather discussing playing mahjong loudly in the middle of the hall, instead of walking towards the exhibits. For the local visitors, they are more like having a bit discussion but still keep walking and don’t make a stop for the paintings.

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In Teshima Art Museum, since it is not the peak season, visitors are scarce. Rules are strict inside the museum, like no shouting, photography and using pen or pencil. Staff were inside to ensure providing visitors the best experience. Therefore, it is so quiet inside and only sounds from the nature and outside can be heard, though there were children talking a bit loud for a few time. All the visitors are so concentrated on the work and observing the work in different angles, by looking upward or kneeing down to see the water droplet going through. This is the quietest, though it is because of the strict guardians and rules, museum I have ever visited.

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Brief Analysis

By my observation, I have found out different interesting points in different museums. In Hermitage Museum, it is full of tourists around the world, but also a lot of Russians which are not from Saint Petersburg. Tourists are mostly in group with a guide presenting the important artworks from the collection. Most of the visitors have taken museum plan with them due to the museum’s massive size and number of collections.

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In Rijksmuseum, a lot of tourists can be found inside, but also Dutch, especially students in a group. They are following the museum staff and working in groups for some in-tour activities, for example, two persons in a group and one of them tries to describe an artwork and the other one tries to draw it out by not looking at the artwork but just listening to the description. Visitors are mainly distributed surrounding the Hall of Honor, where the famous painting, “De Nachtwacht” is located.

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In National Gallery, of course there are loads of tourists, but also I have discovered that a lot of British love to staying inside. There are student groups also, but they are from France mainly. Some locals are inside and sketch the scene of visitors observing exhibits, also imitate the exhibits. I also found out that some of them like to sit on the bench and start discussing the exhibits with their companies for a period of time. Visitors are mostly interested in the section of 19^th centuries’ works.

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In Hamburger Kunsthalle, there are relatively much less foreign tourists, most of the visitors are German elderly. Compared to other museum, it is much less visitors in total also. The German keen to join the guided tour and take the foldable chairs with them while visiting. Also there are visitors who prefer sitting on the bench and digging into the painting by reading reference book and also observing the real piece.

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Introduction

Before visiting museums, I have created a set of questionnaire with following questions in order to get to know how people think about museums.

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• What is your name?
• What is your nationality?
• What is your age group?
• What is your education background?
• What is your occupation?
• Can you name 3 keywords that would appear in your mind when mentioning “art museum”
• What is your favourite art museum and why?
• What does art museum mean to you?
• What is your expectation every time when you visit art museum?
• What is your criteria on choosing a museum to visit?
• Do you have any good/bad memorable experiences while visiting museum?
• What is the role of art museum towards the society?
• What is your opinion on the museum you are visiting?

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However, due to the limit of time, I have only carried interviews out in 2 museums with 16 people in total, at the same time observing visitors in all the museums that I have visited. All the result has been inputted to the Google Form that I have created beforehand.

During my visit, I have made some shots with specific moment inside the museum, with the presence of visitors, also I have made portraits of most of the interviewees, if they are welcomed for photo shooting.

The original plan is to interview visitors of the museum and then take a picture of them with their favourite works of the museum. However, there are obstacles to achieve it. First, it is pretty hard to ask people to interview while their visits, for instance, limit of time, proficiency in English speaking, less interest, etc. Second, it is not a wise idea to ask people to take picture in front of their favourite works, if the museums are big, so for example, if it is in the Hermitage Museum, the people wouldn’t be willing to walk back to their favourite art pieces for the picture. In addition, taking a portrait also includes privacy issue.

Art Traffic at the Louvre (http://senseable.mit.edu/louvre/#anchorabout)

This is a research-based project that is conducted by MIT Senseable City Lab that they studied and analysis the visitor traffic and behavior in the Louvre in Paris. They used Bluetooth sensors and located them in different rooms in the Louvre. Then the sensor can detect any Bluetooth-enabled device, such as mobile phones, and by all the sensor working together, the system can track the flow and duration of stay of a person. The lab created an analysis report of the traffic of visitors inside the museum, and also a simulation in animation of the traffic of the day they recorded in the Louvre.

I found it interesting because of their way of collecting data and also how they present the result at the end with animation. It is a combination of the field of technology and art research, which is related to what we are studying in Creative Media. I consider this project as a potential reference of the second stage of my museum project, by using similar method to collect data.

Photo’s from: http://senseable.mit.edu/louvre/#anchorabout

Stefan Drashan

He is a photographer that has his personal website, https://stefandraschan.com/. He did some photograph works that regarding the visitor behaviour inside the museum. For example, he has a photo series called “People sleeping in museums”. He captured the scene where people caught sleeping inside the museums with different nationalities and locations. He also has two series, one called “People touching artworks” and other one called “People matching artworks”. He took the photo in a passive way that only did photo shoots from the back of the people, which is similar to my idea, that capturing the specific moment of people reviewing artworks in the museum. Also, his idea is more documenting instead of presenting artistic or abstract meaning, so as I.

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Thomas Struth

He is a German photographer who always makes works of human portraits and also city landscapes. He has two photo series called “Museum Photography 1/2” which he showcased the photos that he has taken inside a museum with historical paintings as a background and visitors as the content. He did everything spontaneously, when he finds a good composition of figures, he takes the photo, which is what exactly I am doing when visiting the museums for the project.

“Understanding Museum Visitors’ Motivation and Learning” – Dr. John H. Falk

The author has introduced an idea of visitors’ identity throughout the whole essay. He gave a new model of 5 categories that are used to classify visitors’ expectation and behavior. He believed that visitors who come to a museum have their own purposes and gain experiences afterwards. The 5 categories are as follow:

• Explorers – who are curiosity with interest, what they see and find interesting while visiting.
• Facilitators – who are in the museum as accompanier, worried on what their significant others see and find interesting.
• Professional/Hobbyists – who have his/her habits and content-oriented interests on a specifically so as to facilitate them on developing their interest.
• Experience Seekers – who looks for experience and fun, and only cares how enjoyable the visit is instead.
• Rechargers – who seeks for refreshment, relaxation, having a peaceful or inspiring experience.

By classifying museum visitors’ purposes, the museum has a reference on how to support and facilitate their visitors, so that they can provide a more user-friendly and better environment for their visitors.

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“How to Visit an Art Museum” – Johan Idema

This book gives a lot of ideas on how a person can enrich his/her visit in a museum. For example, enhancing communication with others, especially guards and staff inside the museum, is an important idea, since the others may have different backgrounds that may bring you a new dimension of the exhibits.

He also suggests readers to be more interactive with the works and the surroundings inside the museum. For instance, touch it if it is possible, walking around and listening to your favourite music, looking around through every windows inside the museum. 

Meanwhile, he mentions his thoughts on how to make a museum better for visitors’ experience by introducing the idea on how to connect a self to the artworks, like suggesting taking picture of the artworks as a way to participate and connect with the artworks. Therefore, it is not a reference book for the visitors only, but also for the curators and museums.

Photo’s from: http://johanidema.net/how-to-visit-an-art-museum-en/

“Labyrinth. My Mother’s Album”, Ilya & Emilia Kabakov

They are a Russian artist group which have made hundreds of artworks with different medium. When I was in the General Staff Building of Hermitage Museum, I saw one of their artworks called, “Labyrinth. My Mother’s Album”. It is an installation of a room combined with corridors and a photo series with texts below the photographs is hung on the wall of one side of the corridors. The photos are from the artist’s uncle and the texts are from the memoirs of artist’s mother. The room has only one route, from the entrance to the central room, then lead to the exit. Inside is a bit vintage and neglected, with dull light. The corridors combine together and form a maze-like room.

I really like how they put the content of documents and the surrounding together. The content can be seemed as simple, just personal letters and photos of travelling. However, the environment makes you feel a bit mysterious and curious on what is going next, also enhance you to explore more by walking and looking at every frame carefully, which is suitable to apply the same method to my work also, by creating a space to capture people attention and enhance thinking.

Photo’s from: https://ilya-emilia-kabakov.com/installations/labyrinth-my-mothers-album/

The objective of the project is to raise a question to the observers on the meaning of museum or exhibition. I want to motivate them to think about what is museum actually mean to them and how they treat museum as a thing. The answer can be really diverse and personal, and I think it would be interested to see the diversity of the result may be various in different countries, cultures, background and environment.

I don’t want to judge people’s thoughts, especially the people who just want to take a picture and show off on social media through the project since it is actually the reason of them to visit museums. I prefer to make the project more like personal story-based with neutral stand and no objection to ideas. Therefore, it is also a project that to share ideas of different points of view from the participants to the public. In order to get the data, I will carry out interviews and observations throughout the museums that I am going to visit.

My idea is to display what I have found and present them by a medium, which the first idea is by photos. It is also possible to apply the ideas that I have collected, in order to creature a desirable art museum that combining all the thoughts from the participants.

The thought of making this project is because I am a fan of museum. I love going to museum in different topics, for instance, modern art, contemporary art, history, cultural, etc. When I was studying in Germany, it provided me a lot of chances to go to museums all over Europe, especially the famous one like Louvre in Paris or Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. I started to observe how the people there, of course not only locals but also tourists, appreciate art, and how those museums try to insist the visitors to appreciate art.

At the same time, I found it interesting that Hong Kong also do have quite a lot of art exhibitions no matter which specific types of art is. The media sometimes also promote those exhibitions. I remember once I saw an online media that were promoting Microwave International New Media Arts Festival. The way that they promote was like emphasizing which artworks are worth to see because of its “instalgramability”. They advised people on which angle is the best to compose yourself with the artworks, so that you have the perfect photo to upload on social media. I found it disgusting somehow, because I don’t think this is a good way to treat an exhibition but maybe a good way to boost the number of visitors. Then I started to think if this situation also happens in other country, and if the visitors in other countries also think of just taking a picture with their favorite or the most famous work of the museum and go.

As what International Council of Museums stated the definition of a museum, “A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.”, I would be interested to know if people think of the meaning of museum in the same way or not, also how different would it be if it is not.

Therefore, I would love to make a documentary project that can let me to find out how actually people nowadays think of art museums, or art exhibitions, and maybe how their different backgrounds help to build up their thought on it, so as to construct the idea of the whole society towards art.