Teamwork makes the artwork : a qualitative case study examining how adult museum visitors experience aesthetic development through visual-thinking strategies (VTS) at a contemporary art museum.

Meaningful engagement is a challenge for museums today. Some museums continue with a passive experience of allowing visitors to look at the artwork with no other type of engagement during the visit. On average, visitors spend less than 30 seconds looking at a work of art and reading the label before moving on to the next piece (Carbon, 2017; Smith & Smith, 2001; Smith et al., 2016). Some museums treat visitors as listeners during tours rather than engaging them in conversations about the artwork (Best, 2012). Museum visitors come with a range of experiences with art, and educators must design programs for all experiences levels. Non-visitors feel their lack of art knowledge is a barrier to visiting a museum (Waltl, 2006). Visitors expect more engagement from museums and are challenged with where to begin. I applied Housen’s theory of aesthetic development (DeSantis & Housen, 2000) as a framework for this qualitative exploratory case study. For the data collection, I held three visual-thinking strategy (VTS) sessions with six participants per session and conducted six semi-structured interviews with six participants. I analyzed the transcriptions for the VTS sessions and interviews and used rich-thick descriptions and data triangulation to ensure validity and reliability for the study. I selected the Contemporary at Blue Star as the site for this study. The study focused on adult museum visitors with a range of art experiences to mirror the daily diverse audiences of museums. This study sought to understand how aesthetic development progresses through interactive museum experiences like VTS. There are five stages of aesthetic development. The findings of this study indicated that VTS participants can achieve all five stages of aesthetic development as a collective group through open dialogue and sharing diverse backgrounds and experiences to understand the artwork. Museum educators must design interactive public programs outside the traditional museum experience. Developing engaging social programs for visitors can increase art understanding and diversify museum participation. Current and future visitors should advocate for innovative art engagement and attend museum programs. This study showed the need for interactive museum experiences that can achieve a more aesthetically developed community.