What is the aesthetic experience of museum visitors? Is there an average, typical, or empirically documented way to characterize this experience? Can it be represented in an artistic, visually compelling way through photography?

​

27 Seconds … The Aesthetic Encounter aims to address these questions. 27 Seconds is the culmination of years of observation and photographing museums. It attempts to summarize both the research on this subject and my own practice as a visual artist photographing museums.

​

In the world of museums, visitors often spend mere seconds gazing at a single artwork, absorbed in the museum’s visual stimuli. Within this fleeting timeframe lies the essence of the aesthetic encounter—a momentary connection between viewer and art, where perception, emotion, and meaning intertwine. Inspired by studies on museum visitor behavior, 27 Seconds emerges as a photographic project that seeks to capture the complexities of this aesthetic experience. 

​

With over 95,000 museums globally, billions of artifacts, and 2 billion visitors annually, can we visually represent the visitors’ experience? Inspired by studies on museum visitor behavior and using as its starting point four significant studies in museology regarding visitor aesthetic experience:

• (2001, Smith and Smith – Spending Time on Art)

• (2017, Claus-Christian Carbon – How We Spend Our Time in Museums)

• (Psychology of Aesthetics and Art – Smith, Smith, and Tinio)

• (Tröndle et al., 2012)

• 27 Seconds builds a framework to visually and artistically represent this data by using photographic abstraction and appropriation. 

​

I am a Boston-based visual artist whose primary medium is photography. One of my major practices is photographing museums—their artwork, curatorial design, architecture, museum spaces, and the visitor experience. This project is a culmination of months spent in multiple museums observing and documenting the viewing patterns and behaviors of museum visitors. Additionally, it is an attempt to represent the above-mentioned research on the subject of museum visitors’ experiences

.

Using a conceptual photographic project and non-documentary style, I am providing commentary on the following:

• Visitors’ interaction with and viewing of art

• Curatorial design and visitors’ experiences

• Galleries—architecture and Museum Spaces

• Appropriation and abstraction of art, sculpture, and artifacts to convey visitor experiences

• Labels and language

• Individual and group movement through museum spaces

​

The exact numbers vary, but studies have determined the average time a person spends viewing a piece in a museum is between 15 and 30 seconds. To better understand the time/visitor relationship to viewing, I conducted a statistically accurate random sampling of 49 people viewing Paul Gauguin’s Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA. Using a stopwatch and camera, I timed and photographed people viewing this work. The average time was 27 seconds, which inspired the project’s title. My photograph of this piece intentionally blurs its details, leaving only the essential elements that a viewer might remember: the bold colors, the basic composition, the feeling of human figures in a landscape.

​

Other factors considered from the four major research projects as part of the photographic project include:

• Distance of viewers from art and sculpture. On average, 1.71 meters

• Single viewers, pairs of viewers, and groups

• Viewing sequence: first the art, then the label, then back to the art again. Often, viewers spend more time reading the label than viewing the art (see Smith, 2014).

• Spatial dynamics—the interplay of visitors with the artwork, the gallery space, and each other

• Typical visitors spend 2.5 to 3 hours in the whole museum (The Museum Effect, Smith and Smith, 2001).

​

Drawing on these data points and other observations from the four research projects, I began to contemplate how best to represent these findings through a photographic project. While a straightforward documentary approach was a possible option, I found it insufficient for capturing the rapid pace at which visitors engage with art in museums. Such an approach also seemed inadequate for conveying what a visitor might retain from the experience or the lasting impression the artwork leaves. What do visitors truly see? I aimed to artistically represent the impact of art on the viewer, particularly considering the brief 27 seconds spent viewing individual works and the three hours typically allocated to covering an entire museum. In essence, I sought to explore what this blur of visual stimuli and time might look like photographically.

​

To depict this experience, as suggested by the data, I opted for abstraction and appropriation as my primary techniques. Utilizing soft focus, blur, and other photographic methods, this project aims to interpret the fleeting and fragmented nature of the museum experience.

​

In an era where museums are questioning their role and relevance, 27 Seconds offers a unique perspective on how we consume culture in these spaces. The project suggests that while we may not remember every detail of what we see in museums, the cumulative experience creates its own kind of artwork—one made of fragments, impressions, and emotions.

e