RESEARCH SUMMARIES FROM THE HUMANITIES AND HUMAN FLOURISHING TEAM
Core Art Museum Survey for Well-Being: Research Summary and Guidelines for Use
How do art museums support well-being in visitors? It’s difficult to answer this question with confidence since empirical art museum well-being research is just beginning to emerge and currently relies on disparate measurement strategies, limiting the ability to reach consensus. To further this work, the Humanities and Human Flourishing (HHF) team has created, tested, and made freely available a survey instrument to enable art museum professionals and researchers to understand visitor well-being and inform programming and outreach.
This Core Art Museum Survey for Well-Being Toolkit offers a brief summary of research on art museums and well-being, an overview of the development of the Core Art Museum Survey for Well-Being, information on the modules of the survey, which emphasize five dimensions of well-being, the complete survey instrument, which can be used in full or by module, depending on assessment goals, and usage instructions on how to implement and score the survey.
Understanding Virtual Art Engagement: Exploring the Impacts of Immersion on Flourishing
Recently, there has been a rapid increase in the ways people are able to engage with visual art outside of art museum spaces. One major way people engage with visual art is digitally, from the ability to search for particular artworks online (e.g., visiting Google Arts and Culture) to participating in curated experiences hosted by art museums and other institutions. Given these new and increasingly available forms of digital art engagement, it’s important to understand how digital art engagement impacts us.
Across two projects, we examined the potential flourishing and emotional benefits of brief visits to a virtual art gallery. These projects were particularly interested in how people’s level of immersion during their engagement enhanced their flourishing.
Based on:
Cotter, K.N., Crone, D.L., Rodriguez-Boerwinkle, R.M., Boerwinkle, M., Silvia, P.J., & Pawelski, J.O. (2022). Examining the Flourishing Impacts of Repeated Visits to a Virtual Art Museum and the Role of Immersion. Behavioral Sciences 12(12), 500. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/12/12/500
Flourishing in Art Museums: Recommendations Based on a Survey of Art Museum Professionals
People visit art museums for a variety of reasons, including to see something beautiful or famous, to learn more about art, or to experience a sense of awe. Recently, there has been increased interest in how art museum engagement can promote flourishing. Little is known, however, about how the professionals shaping these experiences—the curators, educators, docents, front of house personnel—view the role of art museums in promoting flourishing outcomes. To learn more about their perspectives, we surveyed more than 200 art museum professionals from at over 100 art museums. According to our findings, art museum professionals felt that 1) the well-being of visitors should be more highly prioritized as an aim of art museums than it currently is, 2) several flourishing outcomes (e.g., cultivating empathy, increasing helping behavior, reducing closed-mindedness) should receive greater emphasis than they currently do, and 3) art museums are not yet fully equipped to address many flourishing outcomes. Based on these findings, we provide specific recommendations for the flourishing outcomes museums should focus on, as well as areas in which further research and development are needed to enable art museums to optimize their impact on human flourishing.
Based on:
Cotter, K. N., Crone, D. L., & Pawelski, J. O. (in press). Well-being aims of art museums: A survey of art museum professionals. Empirical Studies of the Arts.
Art museums and human flourishing
Millions of people visit art museums each year, and research is beginning to clarify how these visits can increase human flourishing. Flourishing can be understood in terms of high well-being and low ill-being, considered on individual and collective levels, and fostered through specific programs. A review of current research suggests that art museums can have a significant positive impact on human flourishing by boosting physical and mental health, raising subjective and emotional well-being, and promoting feelings of social connection.
Based on:
Cotter, K.N. & Pawelski, J.O. (2022). Art museums as institutions for human flourishing. The Journal of Positive Psychology. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2021.2016911