미술관 전시관람 유형에 관한 연구

Studying Behavior and Perception of Museum Visitors

Visitor study is becoming more important activity of museums, based on the results that exhibitions planned with a thorough understanding of the visitors can increase the level of visitor attention and satisfaction. Especially “Visitor Tracking Studies” have been developed by Arthur Melton and Carlos Emmons Cunnings. Pioneers of visitor behavioral study, such as Robinson and Melton concluded that the level of interest in an exhibition affected the viewing time. Since then, “time” became an important scale of measurement, and “room time” and “stops” were quantified to understand the level of interest and learning of individual visitors. Cunnings broadened the range of tacking study by including more variables like demographic statistics, motivation, behavior, understanding and attitude after viewing exhibitions. National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea conducted a tracking study using observation and survey in parallel for better understanding the characteristics of the visitors. This tracking study was conducted on 82 visitors of Georg Baselitz: Russian Paintings from June 12th to 17th. This study shows us that the average “exhibition viewing time” was 19 minutes and 24 seconds and the average number of “stops” was 15.9, 34% of the total exhibits. Out of all the individual exhibition elements, visitors stopped at the video room for the longest time with an average of 7 minutes. Visitors showed more interest in video, introductory text, the most known pieces and the ones displayed in the beginning of exhibition. 60% of the visitors turned around in the “rightwards” direction as curators intended to while most left the gallery after a single viewing. Based on room time data, we categorized them as 3 groups called “streakers”, “browsers” and “studiers”. Through the study, we found out that the longer visitors stayed, the more specific motives and purposes they had. In addition, “studiers” recorded higher satisfaction rates and wanted more professional information on the exhibition. These individuals preferred “study type” method to get the information with PDA’s or audio guides. This study will provide a guideline in understanding visitors and some valuable insights for the museums from the earlier phases of exhibition planning. First of all, understanding that visitors’ satisfaction correlated directly to room time, we realized that we need to extend the time people would stay in a gallery. Visitors fatigue must be taken into consideration by adjusting the size of exhibition spaces or providing appropriate “rest points” furnished with benches and other objects strategically placed for the visitors’ convenience. Also, providing hands on visitor experience or participation would be a good way to increase the level of visitor interest and satisfaction. Strategic planning to increase the areas of the exhibition “hot spot” is necessary. Consideration of visitor movement paths, adjustment of the distance and location between each exhibits, and display methods, layouts, labels and descriptions of the art work are also needed to be planned in advance. This study, which was conducted on an exhibition with paintings, has some constraints to be applied directly to other exhibitions, composed of photography, installations, sculptures and other genres of art. Also, the results were drawn from a single test with a limited number of samples. In order to obtain more accurate and reliable data we should conduct more tests using larger data samples while testing on a variety of art genres.