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Playing with Aesthetics in Art Museums

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Playing with Aesthetics in Art Museums Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2011 Playing with Aesthetics in Art Museums Susan Glasser Virginia Commonwealth University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons © The Author Downloaded from https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/196 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PLAYING WITH AESTHETICS IN ART MUSEUMS A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University by Susan M Glasser, Bachelor of Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1978 Director: Dr. Margaret Lindauer Associate Professor & Museum Studies Coordinator, Department of Art History Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, Virginia April, 2011 ii Acknowledgements One of the surprising discoveries for me in the process of writing this dissertation was what a communal affair it turned out to be. There are numerous people without whom I could not have begun, persevered or finished this project. I want to thank my former colleagues at the North Carolina Museum of Art, including the director Lawrence Wheeler who gave me the freedom to experiment, and educators Ashley Weinard, Diana Phillips, Angela Falk, and Deborah Reid Murphy who were game to try new things. A special thanks goes to educator Camille Tewell who was the first to read what would eventually become the introduction and chapter five—her challenging questions and encouragement served as a key motivator in the early days of my writing. Donald Palmer read multiple versions of chapter five. The envelope of confetti (a cut-up version of the chapter with all his notes) that he mailed from France helped clarify important missteps I had taken in deciphering Kant. If more remain I have only myself to fault. Thanks go to Dewey Blanton for a fine editing job that surely doubled the number of commas, which now makes for an easier reading experience. Myron Helfgott who has read multiple chapters, multiple times, helped me to be mindful of the artist’s perspective in all matters aesthetic. Now that the dissertation is finished, we’ll need to find a new topic for our picnics by the river. Howard Risatti helped me fall in love with art history more than three decades ago and has been an indefatigable supporter of my on-again-off-again iii academic career, even when he has had serious reservations about some of my ideas. Thanks to Michael Schreffler and Elizabeth King who were willing to take the time and make the intellectual investment to serve on my committee. My dissertation director, Margaret Lindauer, courageously supported my unconventional dissertation topic and was a nurturing advisor. It would have been easier and quicker for her to simply tell me when something wasn’t working; instead, she took the extra time to help me discover for myself what needed to change. Eric Garberson, the first reader, gave the penultimate draft an impressively rigorous reading; his comments were welcomely blunt and helped me dismantle a number of potential intellectual minefields. I’m sure a few remain. He has also given me much to rethink should I decide to publish this study. Finally, I would like to thank my mother, Gwendolyn Louise Helen Chiprich Glasser, for reading this dissertation almost as many times as I have and for reminding me of the importance of keeping my own voice. And to my father, William Glasser, who together with my mother gave me healthy genes, a good education, and a love of learning and reading. They are my models for a life well-lived. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables . v List of Figures . vi Abstract . vii Introduction: Optimizing Engrossing Art Experiences in Museums . 1 Chapter 1: The Archetypal Visitor . 24 Chapter 2: Engrossing Experiences . 40 Chapter 3: Two Case Studies . 63 Chapter 4: Game Design as a Structuring Process . 90 Chapter 5: Framing Realaesthetik . 128 Chapter 6: The Realaesthetik Toolkit and Its Application . 159 Chapter 7: Realaesthetik Testing Tools . 202 Conclusion . 224 Bibliography . 232 Vita . 248 v List of Tables Table Page Table 2.1: Similarities between art and play experiences . 49 Table 2.2: Characteristics of art, play, and aesthetic experiences . 60 Table 6.1: Archetypal visitors’ needs and tenets of game design . 161 Table 6.2: Infrastructure tools . 164 Table 6.3: Design tools . 165 Table 7.1: Testing tools . 204 vi List of Figures Figures Page Figure 1.1: Maslow’s hierarchy . 26 Figure 5.1: Realaesthetik continua . 130 Figure 5.2: Epistemological continuum . 132 Figure 5.3: Human faculties continuum . 133 Figure 5.4: Realaesthetik framework . 134 Figure 6.1: Take the Grand Tour cover . 173 Figure 6.2: Take the Grand Tour invitation and task . 173 Figure 6.3: Take the Grand Tour currency . 175 Figure 6.4: Front of card for Volaire, The Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, and the back of the card for Canaletto, Capriccio: The Rialto Bridge and the Church of S. Giorgio Maggiore . 175 Figure 6.5: North Carolina Museum of Art Owner’s Manual cover . 187 Figure 6.6: NCMA Owner’s Manual instructions for the galleries . 187 Figure 6.7: NCMA Owner’s Manual tasks . 189 Figure 6.8: Welcome to the Inferno cover . 189 Figure 6.9: Welcome to the Inferno task; Ugolino and His Sons . 196 Figure 6.10: Welcome to the Inferno open-ended questions . 198 Figure 6.11: Welcome to the Inferno; Dante’s circles of hell . 198 Abstract PLAYING WITH AESTHETICS IN ART MUSEUMS By Susan M. Glasser, Ph.D A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University, 2011 Major Director: Dr. Margaret Lindauer, Associate Professor & Museum Studies Coordinator, Department of Art History ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to address the real-world challenge faced by all museums of art: how to maximize opportunities for engrossing art experiences for casual adult visitors possessing little knowledge of art history. It defines a typology of aesthetic theories—what the study refers to as “Realaesthetik”—that emphasizes the most utilitarian characteristics of a variety of philosophical aesthetic concepts. Using design thinking, it then asserts that the structuring principles of game design can be used in conjunction with the typology to create a toolkit that museum staff can use for engaging the archetypical museum visitor in engrossing art experiences. The interdisciplinary approach used is intended to replace the singular methodologies (whether art historical, pedagogical or aesthetic) that have informed museum practice in the United States since the late nineteenth century. The Realaesthetik toolkit synthesizes a psychographic portrait of the archetypal museum visitor, the most salient characteristics of an engrossing art encounter, the family resemblance between play and art experiences, the most germane tenets of game design, and a typology of aesthetic experiences in order to create a practical framework for delivering engrossing art experiences for museum visitors. The applicability of the toolkit is analyzed using four gallery experiences designed at the North Carolina Museum of Art. As the fields of game design, video gaming, serious games, educational games, and game studies continue to grow, more and more museums are entering into this domain to try engaging their visitors. Because game design is such a specialized field, museum staff will likely cede control of the design process to contracted game designers, running the risk of developing experiences that are more game than art encounter. If museums are to profit from the many advantages that game design thinking can lend to the creation of engrossing art experiences, they must be able to talk the language of game design while helping game designers understand the real work of museums. The Realaesthetik toolkit is a first attempt to create a common language and robust design framework that can be used by museum educators, curators, information technology specialists, game designers, and experience designers. Introduction OPTIMIZING ENGROSSING ART EXPERIENCES IN MUSEUMS Strolling through the galleries of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts at any time during the first decades of the twentieth century a visitor may have, on occasion, spied a tall gaunt man standing before a work of art with a shoebox-like contraption raised in front of his eyes. The man was Benjamin Ives Gilman, secretary of the Museum from 1893 to 1925, and the contraption was of his own invention: a skiascope. Inspired by the tubular eye shades that visitors were given to view masterpieces in European museums, Gilman’s more elaborate, folding eye shade had “at once practical and theoretical value.”1 Its practical purpose was to reduce the glare from ambient light in the gallery. Its theoretical value was to help users focus their field of vision to appreciate better a work of art’s aesthetic value. Eliminating all distractions and focusing the eye solely on a single work of art, the skiascope was “an aid to good seeing.”2 The kind of experience museum visitors have corresponds, in part, to the type of attention museums encourage visitors to bring to their encounters with art. Gilman’s skiascope was meant to assist visitors in having engrossing art viewing experiences as 1. Benjamin Ives Gilman, Museum Ideals of Purpose and Method, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1923), 238. 2. Ibid., 240. Gilman even published detailed instructions on how to make a folding skiascope at home (ibid., 241-248). While he admitted that most people were not likely to carry such a device around with them (even one that folded), he thought museums could provide such devices by hanging them in the doorways of galleries for visitors’ use.
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