| The purpose of this study is to identify and examine how eight East Asian visitors (two Chinese visitors for pilot study and six visitors from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan for formal data collection) of a comprehensive American art museum think about the knowledge presentation in the museum setting, including how they feel about collection arrangements, exhibition styles, or label contents in a museum gallery. Specially, this study explored and attempted to describe how people from another cultural perspective see things in the particular traditional American cultural institution. The intent of this study is to explore these foreign museum visitors' behavior patterns with a diverse sample, not to compare different nationalities' responses or generalize foreign visitors' behaviors in American art museums.;This study uses qualitative methods and was designed as a multiple case study to collect, analyze, and interpret the data which consisted of surveys, interviews, and museum tour observations with six participants from these three different East Asian countries. The three museum education models—Roberts' (1997) five museum education purposes, Hein's (1998) constructive learning, and Falk and Dierking's (2000) three learning contexts—were used to explain international museum visitors' personal and cultural backgrounds that related to their expectations and experiences when they visit American art museums. A conceptual model of how these international museum visitors make meaning in American art museum was proposed after integrating these three models into a single framework.;This study concluded that these East Asian museum visitors have similar and different, positive and negative reactions to the exhibitions at the comprehensive American art museum due to their art-novice and different cultural backgrounds. The findings suggest some improvements in practices and some questions for future research and may inspire museum professionals to question their own assumptions of art and about how to communicate information about it. As a result, American art museums can better bridge the gap between their scholarly perspectives and different needs from diverse visitors—international or domestic—who are eager to learn from American art museums' collections. |
