Finding the Aesthetic in Visitor Experience : A study of strategies used by Moderna Museet and Bonniers Konsthall to understand the visitor experience within exhibitions

Sammanfattning: This thesis examines the role of aesthetic experience of the audience within art exhibitions and its influence on their exhibition making and curatorial decisions of art institutions. This is done by comparing the practices within two case institutions located in Stockholm -Moderna Museet, a public art museum and Bonniers Konsthall, a private art institution. The research questions for this study are: What strategies do Moderna Museet and Bonnier Konsthall use to understand the aesthetic experience of their audience? Do the current visitor surveys used in these institutions capture the aesthetic aspect of the visitor experience? How does this knowledge about the aesthetic experience of the visitor influence the curatorial decisions within the two museums? The material consists of visitor survey questionnaires used in both the institutions as well as interviews that were conducted with staff members of the two institutions. The material is examined using the aesthetic experience theory, in order to focus specifically on the aesthetic aspect of the total visitor experience.  The thesis groups the different strategies used within the two institutions in two categories of formal and informal strategies, based on the formality of their conduction. It further compares the practices of the two institutions in order to examine the difference in the perspective of public and private art museums towards their visitors. By eventually tracing how knowledge collected by the formal and informal strategies reinforces each other, the thesis draws a more complete picture of the role the aesthetic experience of the visitor plays within art institutions and their art exhibitions.