Beyond the Lab

Author(s)
Matthew Pelowski, Michael Forster, Pablo Tinio, Maria Scholl, Helmut Leder
Abstract

The authors present a comprehensive review and theoretical discussion of factors that could influence our interaction with museum-based art. Art is an important stimulus that reveals core insights about human behavior and thought. Art perception is in fact often considered one of the few uniquely human phenomena whereby we process multiple types of information, experience myriad emotions, make evaluations, and where these elements not only occur but dynamically combine. Art viewing often occurs in museums, which-in conjunction with "real" artworks-may contribute greatly to experience. However, to date, psychological aesthetics studies have only begun to consider in-museum examinations, focusing instead on highly controlled laboratory-based studies, and leading to calls for a need to shift to ecologically valid examinations. To provide a foundation for such research, the authors consider what key psychological differences may be expected between original/reproduced and museum/lab-based art, and why the art experience may be different when occurring within the museum context. They also review factors that should be controlled for, or which may raise new, unexplored areas for empirical research. These include 3 main levels: the artwork, the viewer, and physical aspects of the museum. The authors connect these factors to a model of art processing and relate to findings from sociology and general museum studies, which have largely been overlooked in psychological aesthetics research.

Organisation(s)
Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology
External organisation(s)
Montclair State University, City University of New York
Journal
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts
Volume
11
Pages
245–264
No. of pages
20
ISSN
1931-3896
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000141
Publication date
2017
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
501001 General psychology, 501011 Cognitive psychology
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Developmental and Educational Psychology, Visual Arts and Performing Arts, Applied Psychology
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/beyond-the-lab(886d92b5-ec56-468c-aff9-5abae4402f00).html