Interaction between Visitors and Panel Text: A Case Study of Alphonse Mucha – Art Nouveau & Utopia at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts

• Main Authors: Cheng, Ya-Ping, 鄭亞萍
• Other Authors: 曾信傑
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/82aj7d

碩士 === 國立臺南藝術大學 === 博物館學與古物維護研究所 === 101 === Audio-guide, brochures, panels and labels are commonly employed within the field of art exhibitions to provide visitors with better understanding and therefore able to interpret or explain the content. These are generally known as the “museum text”, and have been fundamental tools in museum exhibitions. The focus of this research is on the text on panels, which is one of the earliest guiding information for visitors when they entering the museum exhibitions, leading visitors to artworks and the concept of the exhibition. By reviewing the literature, it is obvious that audience has their own awareness, and is self-determined, which corresponds with the feature of museum education, such as liberation and self-learning. Meanwhile, visitors choose their perception of information, including text and images to help himself or herself to read, understand, and interpret the artworks. Consequently, the guidance provided by the panel text has to be really helpful otherwise it will be filtered out by the ‘self-determination’ of the visitors. When investigating the interaction between the visitors and art exhibitions, it is essential to review and define the meaning of the existence of the panel text. There could be several levels related to the meaning of the panel text, including “educational feature of art exhibitions”, “aesthetic experience of visitors”, “panel text as part of the curation”, and by listing how these function with the inner information perception and knowledge gaining of audience, as the user, the research tries to explore the value of the panel text and the ideal way of using it to guide. The Alphonse Mucha – Art Nouveau & Utopia Exhibition at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts was a typical art exhibition which employed panel text as a guidance for visitors. This research explores the interactivity of visitors’ viewing and reading the panel text through natural observations and in-depth interviews on site. It also aims to understand the reaction of visitors between before, during, and after viewing the panel text, via a cross comparison of collected data. It is important to find out the real situation of the visit, and hopes to unveil the process of how visitors interacts with panel text. From studying the process of interaction between visitors and panel text, to discovering the introductory benefit of the panel text, it is significant to take visitors into account: how their self-determination function, how they perceive information, and how panel text include knowledge and stimulation to continuity and expectation for further artworks and text. Lastly, it points out that panel text within an art exhibition is not just assisting, but more of connecting. It not only provides visitors a path to view artworks, which is connecting the content of the artwork with visitors; furthermore, it embeds the context into visitor’s knowledge system and transforms the content of artwork into new applicable information. It helps visitors to communicate with artworks, and encourages more interactivity, and demonstrates information perception in order to develop more aesthetic experiences. The interactivity and guidance of the panel text is indeed a profound and everlasting issue for art museum professionals to rethink.