A Comparison of Art Engagement in Museums and Through Digital Media

As cultural consumption increasingly moves to a digital space, it is crucial to understand the evolving landscape of art consumption both in and outside of a physical museum context. The current study delves into this contrast, seeking to understand how art is perceived and appreciated in museums and on a digital medium (like a computer screen). Across two experiments at the Barnes Foundation and Penn Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, we explored how the aesthetic engagement of paintings and artifacts is influenced by the physical context in which an artwork is encountered and by the characteristics of the viewer. Our findings suggest that the cognitive and emotional impacts of artworks on viewers, as well as the viewers’ overall aesthetic experiences are comparable across physical museum spaces and digital platforms. However, participants reported gaining more understanding from art viewed in museums, compared to participants who viewed art in the lab. Art experience and openness to experience influenced aesthetic impacts and ratings differently in the museum and in the lab. Overall, routes to broader valuations of liking were more similar than different between the museum and lab contexts, whereas patterns of impacts that might lead to new knowledge or understanding gained differed between museum and lab contexts. As digital technologies are increasingly integrated into diverse processes in museums such as collections management, curation, exhibitions, and education and learning, our research highlights how museums can leverage digital expansion to achieve their missions as centers of learning and education.