Final Project (M.A.)--John F. Kennedy University, 2005. / "August 29, 2005"--T.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-133).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 212-234).

Final Project (M.A.)--John F. Kennedy University, 2004. / "August 30, 2004"--T.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-135).

Zugl.: Halle, Univ., Diss., 2005

This case study explores the collaborative conversation between curators and educators in the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, and how these conversations affect didactic texts in the museum galleries. By situating the Blanton Museum in a larger historical framework, the focus of this study maps out the historical perspectives informing the museum during a pivotal integration of collecting areas, including Latin American and American modern and contemporary collections, and explores how the Blanton Museum attempted to facilitate learning and meaning-making for the visitor through didactic wall texts. / text

Museums and libraries are considered large repositories of human knowledge and human culture. They have similar missions and goals in distributing accumulated knowledge to society. Current digitization projects allow both, museums and libraries to reach a broader audience, share their resources with a variety of users. While studies of information seeking behavior, retrieval systems and metadata in library science have a long history; such research studies in museum environments are at their early experimental stage. There are few studies concerning information seeking behavior and needs of virtual museum visitors, especially with the use of images in the museums' collections available on the Web. The current study identifies preferences of a variety of user groups about the information specifics on current exhibits, museum collections metadata information, and the use of multimedia. The study of information seeking behavior of users groups of museum digital collections or cultural collections allows examination and analysis of users' information needs, and the organization of cultural information, including descriptive metadata and the quantity of information that may be required. In addition, the study delineates information needs that different categories of users may have in common: teachers in high schools, students in colleges and universities, museum professionals, art historians and researchers, and the general public. This research also compares informational and educational needs of real visitors with the needs of virtual visitors. Educational needs of real visitors are based on various studies conducted and summarized by Falk and Dierking (2000), and an evaluation of the art museum websites previously conducted to support the current study.

Zugl.: Wien, Universiẗat, Diss., 2004.

The purpose of the research study was to find about who the National Museum visitors are and what is their five reasons and motives to visit the National Museum. To get a better understanding about finding out who are the National Museum visitors a qualitative method was used in the form of a questionnaire that dealt with questions about the respondent’s demographic background and open questions related to finding out more details about the respondents’ reasons to visit the National Museum that is an art and design museum. The data that was gathered from the questionnaire was analysed through the use of a thematic analysis to find specific themes based on the female and male respondent’s answers. The results indicate that most of the respondents who took part in the questionnaire on the 5th of April 2019 at the National Museum are a mix of female and male between the age 20-72 years from Sweden and other countries, all of them have a higher education (High School, Bachelor and Master Degree) and have studied art, history of art or design. The reason that many of the respondents choose to visit the museum and what attracted them to the National Museum was foremost for they all share an interest in art and design. The National Museum itself is an interesting place to be at because many of the female and male respondents have an appreciation in the art and design collections and exhibitions that is displayed at the museum. The National Museum offers a free admission and entry so many of them could visit the museum either by themselves or with a companion, and many of the respondents like how the National Museum teaches history about the art and design.

This thesis investigates the factors that influence whether visitors to art exhibitions experience accessible introductory art labels or not. From the need of making art exhibitions and their communication available to more people of society the aim with this study is to increase awareness about the factors that influence accessibility and generate ideas about useful theory concerning accessible labels. By connecting theory concerning the purpose of art exhibitions, the social context of art exhibitions, orientation and disorientation and different views related to exhibition labels the author, by influence from the swedish Special pedagogy educational authority (Specialpedagogiska skolmyndigheten) accessibility model ”tillgänglighetsmodellen”, creates a accessibility model concerning the context of introductory art labels. The study gathered material from visitor interviews and observations from two different art exhibition institutions in Stockholm: Bonniers Konsthall and Spritmuseum, one art gallery and one cultural museum with an art exhibition feature. The analysis from the field work then formed the content of the accessibility model concerning the context of introductory art labels. As a background to the ideas behind the labels interviews where also performed with personnel in command of the communication concerning the labels. The results show that the visitors experience of accessible introductory art labels can be related to physical, social and pedagogical factors. Where the physical factors included reading situation, placing, lighting and soundscape. The social factors included other visitors, the willingness to ”do things right” and disorientation, confusion and uncertainty. The pedagogical factors included legibility, readability and well worth reading. The study also shows that the visitors pre-knowledge of art and habit of visiting art exhibitions could influence the visitors experience of accessibility. Where visitors without pre-knowledge about art history in the art gallery Bonniers Konsthall all found the texts non-accessible depending on a mix of physical, social and pedagogical factors. At the cultural museum Spritmuseum however visitors without pre-knowledge of art could find the text accessible. There a positive experience of the reading situation, including lightning and few other visitors, made visitors feel that the text where more accessible even when they experienced some difficulty with the accessibility related to pedagogical factors like text length. The study shows that the different factors of accessibility related to introductory art labels interacted and influenced the overall experience of text accessibility. This is a two years master's thesis in Museum and cultural heritage studies.