Photographing in the Art Museum: Visitor Attitudes and Motivations

ABSTRACT

There is an animated debate in popular media about whether or not photography should be allowed in art museums. However, there is limited research that examines how visitors themselves feel about visitor photography and the reasons why they choose to take (or not take) photographs in museums. This research, conducted at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, uses semistructured, in-depth interviews and photo elicitation with 40 adults to examine visitors' attitudes to using photography inside art museums and their motivations for doing so. The research results suggest that visitors with positive attitudes towards visitor photography see photographic devices as tools that enhance certain aspects of the museum experience, promote further education, and provide entry points to exhibitions and a more interactive, personal experience. Those with negative attitudes see photographic devices as mediating and distracting lenses that have a detrimental effect on intimate experiences with artworks. Many of the participants with negative attitudes still use photographic devices because they believe that the risk of diminishing art experiences in the museum is worth taking, considering the potential uses of photography. The six main motivations for taking photographs in museums are (a) to aid memory, (b) to share, (c) for further research, (d) to inspire, (e) as building material for self-identity, and (f) as an art form in its own right.

Acknowledgments

The research presented in this article was conducted while I was a Smithsonian Fellow in Museum Practice and I would like to warmly thank Stephanie Norby, Pino Monaco, and Tracie Spinola from the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access, and Rebecca Kasemeyer from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery for making my stay a smooth and productive one.

Funding

This work was supported by the Smithsonian Institute and the Cyprus University of Technology.

About the author

Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert is Associate Professor at the School of Fine and Applied Arts at the Cyprus University of Technology and the founder and coordinator of its Visual Sociology and Museum Studies Lab. Her research interests include museum studies and visual sociology with an emphasis on photography. She earned her Ph.D. in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester and her M.A. in Visual Arts/Museum Education from the University of Texas at Austin. She has received several scholarships and awards including a Smithsonian Fellowship in Museum Practice, a Fulbright Fellowship, and an Arts and Humanities Research Council Award. Address correspondence to: Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, 30 Arhiebishop Kyprianos, 3036, Limassol, Cyprus. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected].

Notes

1. For example, the Van Gogh Museum in 2014 and the Musée d'Orsay in 2011 have re-introduced photographic bans.

2. In his seminal book, The ecological approach to visual perception (1979), James Gibson provides a definition: “The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill” (p. 127, emphasis in the original). However, Gibson warned that what we are perceiving is a “value-rich ecological object” (p. 140).

3. Following James Gibson's (1979) steps, Norman (1988, 1999) makes a distinction between real and perceived affordances. Real affordances are closer to the relationship between humans and the physical or digital object. For example, a computer comes with built-in physical affordances, such as touching, looking, and clicking. However, a designer is more interested in the perceived affordances, which are influenced by the users' previous experiences and cultural understandings. For example, a website designer is interested in whether or not users can understand that by clicking on a specific button they can get more information.

4. The observation also included photo-documentation with a small and unobtrusive camera but due to legal restrictions only the photographs with participants who agreed to be photographed were kept.

5. I asked participants to report their age at the end of the interview.

6. A couple interviewees preferred to be interviewed in the museum galleries.

7. The coding sheet is available upon request from the author.

8. Real names appear in a caption of a photograph when the interviewee requested it.

9. Some categories use words mentioned by the interviewees (e.g., memory or sharing) while other are purely theoretical (e.g., self-identity).

10. Each interviewee during the interview mentioned one to four of these reasons.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert

Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert is Associate Professor at the School of Fine and Applied Arts at the Cyprus University of Technology and the founder and coordinator of its Visual Sociology and Museum Studies Lab. Her research interests include museum studies and visual sociology with an emphasis on photography. She earned her Ph.D. in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester and her M.A. in Visual Arts/Museum Education from the University of Texas at Austin. She has received several scholarships and awards including a Smithsonian Fellowship in Museum Practice, a Fulbright Fellowship, and an Arts and Humanities Research Council Award..