May 2009 - April 2012
Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
The PhD project "Appropriation and Experience at the Museum: Affordances in Exhibitions and Movement Patterns of Visitors" is affiliated to and extends the BMBF-project "Knowledge&Museum: Archive - Exhibit - Evidence". It focuses on certain movement patterns of museum visitors that are triggered by their own characteristics and the exhibition design. For this purpose, two exhibitions are examined: the temporary exhibition "Pacific Oases: Living and Surviving in the West Pacific" at the Linden-Museum Stuttgart, curated by Dr. Ingrid Heermann, and the permanent exhibition "nexus" at the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach a. N., curated by Dr. Heike Gfrereis.
Research revolves around the following question:
What are the affordances of certain design factors within the exhibition setting that trigger certain movement patterns?
In order to answer this question, exploratory mobile eye-tracking combined with cued retrospective reporting and systematic observation is applied. Furthermore, interviews with the curators and museum educators about their intentions and educational work are conducted and both exhibitions documented.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Widlok (Universität Nijmegen)
Prof. Dr. Stephan Schwan (IWM)
Dr. Thomas Thiemeyer
Felicitas Hartmann, M. A.
Yvonne Schweizer, M. A.
