| This research explores the emerging trend of art museums incorporating interactives into their galleries. Literature suggests advantages to having interactives, such as enhancing the learning experience, making the art museum more family friendly, and giving visitors new ways to engage with art. The Denver Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, and Columbus Museum of Art serve as case studies for the ways in in which museums have implemented interactives into dedicated interactive spaces and the permanent collection. Interviews with museum professionals at each institution shed light on how the museum conceptualizes interactivity. Beverly Serrell's framework, "Assessing Excellence in Exhibitions from a Visitor-Centered Perspective," serves as a tool to explore how interactive experiences feel and look like from the perspective of a visitor. Analysis and discussion reveal the wide range of ways these three art museums have conceptualized and approached interactivity and what interactives look like in the museum. Emerging trends include the range of integration into the design of interactives and how that fits into the institutional approach to interactivity and the degree to which visitor studies and audience input in these cases influenced the direction of design. |
