The Way We Look at Art: How Alternating Gazes and Interest Shape Museum Learning

Through curation, museums shape the way visitors engage with exhibitions. An essential aspect of curation is arranging artworks to convey meaning, therefore, we aimed to understand how visitors may pick up on these interrelations by focusing on gaze behavior, and, specifically, alternating gazes. The present preregistered study (N = 104) aimed at investigating whether alternating gazes (as a measure of visual exploration) improve the understanding of a museum exhibition (an indicator of museum learning). Overall, results showed that alternating gazes did not improve art understanding. Despite that, participants were able to correctly identify the themes of the exhibition (i.e., objective understanding, d = 2.86). But, this was not related to alternating gaze behavior nor subjective understanding (felt understanding). Instead, a lower proportional time spent alternating gazes was related to a higher subjective understanding, suggesting that visual exploration, may reflect initial uncertainty/confusion, offering preliminary insight into the role of viewing behavior in museum learning.