Visitor Studies

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Looking to Read: How Visitors Use Exhibit Labels in

the Art Museum

Luise Reitstätter, Karolin Galter & Flora Bakondi

To cite this article: Luise Reitstätter, Karolin Galter & Flora Bakondi (2022) Looking to Read:
How Visitors Use Exhibit Labels in the Art Museum, Visitor Studies, 25:2, 127-150, DOI:
10.1080/10645578.2021.2018251

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Visitor Studies
2022, VOL. 25, NO. 2, 127–150
https://doi.org/10.1080/10645578.2021.2018251

Looking to Read: How Visitors Use Exhibit Labels

in the Art Museum
Luise Reitstätter , Karolin Galter and Flora Bakondi
Department of Art History, University of Vienna, Austria

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

“Do they read? Oh, yes, they do,” was the conclusion of a paper Received 7 April 2021
identifying the proof of label use in visitors’ in-gallery conversations Revised 26 October 2021
versus the difficulties of observing them reading. This paper Accepted 6 December
­methodologically refines this research question by asking how exactly 2021
exhibit labels are used. Answers are derived from an empirical study
that analyzed viewing behavior both before and after the reinstalla- KEYWORDS
tion of a museum’s collection through mobile eye tracking (MET), Art museum;
exhibit labels;
subjective mapping, and questionnaires. As the introduction of inter- interpretation;
pretive labels was one of the major changes implemented, the paper memory;
demonstrates differences in visitors’ responses to the artworks with reading affinity;
or without contextual information. Analytical emphasis rests on the viewing patterns;
exploration of patterns in the process of decision making (differen- visual engagement
tiating between visitors’ reading affinities); visual engagement (ana-
lyzing the combined activities of looking and reading); and memory
(echoing label texts in visitors’ artwork reflections). Our findings show
that all visitors read, albeit to very different extents, the majority
being medium-affinity readers; that the basic viewing pattern
“art-label-art” becomes more complex with more text and more
­visitors on-site; and that art interpretations deepen and differ through
additional information. The power of labels to guide eyes and
thoughts suggests their intentional use in museum and curatorial
practice.

Introduction
In 1989, Paulette McManus published the paper “Oh, Yes, They Do: How Museum
Visitors Read Labels and Interact with Exhibit Texts,” countering the frequent comment
that visitors do not read labels with empirical evidence from recorded conversations
in addition to visual observations. Thirty years later, mobile eye tracking (MET) can
reveal much more fine-grained insights regarding such museum reading practices. This
new technology was utilized by the Laboratory for Cognitive Research in Art History
(CReA Lab) at the University of Vienna in the two-part study “Belvedere Before and
After.” The aim was to investigate how the major reinstallation of the permanent
collection of the Austrian Gallery Belvedere in March 2018 affected visitors’ art per-
ceptions by combining the methods of MET, subjective mapping, and questionnaire.

CONTACT Luise Reitstätter luise.reitstaetter@univie.ac.at Department of Art History, University of Vienna,

Garnisongasse 13, 1090 Vienna, Austria.
© 2022 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
128 L. REITSTÄTTER ET AL.

To realize this complex empirical endeavor, we partnered with colleagues from the
Perception Engineering Group at the Department of Computer Science at the University
of Tübingen and the EVAlab at the Department of Psychology at the University
of Vienna.
The reinstallation of the permanent collection aimed to offer fresh approaches to
700 years of Austrian art history from the Middle Ages to the present. In the exhibition
chosen for our investigation, “Vienna Around 1900,” three major interventions were
implemented: First, uniformly white walls were introduced, replacing a variety of muted
wall colors. Second, the art historical narrative was drastically changed, matching
Gustav Klimt’s paintings—a major attraction of the museum—with artworks from
fellow artists instead of their earlier concentration in a single large room. Third,
interpretive labels in the form of introductory room texts and explanatory captions
for selected artworks were added, an information base that had been completely missing
before. Our results show that, aside from visitors’ interest in specific artworks and a
preference for painting over sculpture that proved to be independent of presentation
modes, the new display did indeed make a difference: it increased the viewing times
of the artworks, clearly extended the reading times of labels, and deepened visitors’
engagement with the artworks in their exhibition reflections (Reitstätter et al., 2020).
In the present paper, we will expand on the impact that the introduction of inter-
pretive labels had by exploring visitors’ viewing and interpretation patterns with and
without contextual information being provided. This empirical endeavor is contextu-
alized by a discussion of relevant literature and guided by our analytical grid of decision
making, visual engagement, and memory in accordance with three research questions:
1. How do visitors differ in terms of reading affinity (as defined by the extent of
reading activity in relation to available text)? 2. How do visitors combine looking at
art and reading labels? 3. How do visitors remember artworks in relation to label
information?

Relevant literature
As text accompanying exhibitions and exhibits in museums has evolved over time
(Fragomeni, 2010; North, 1957; Penzel, 2007) and remains a common information
source today, the topic of exhibit labels is both classic as well as current (Schaffner,
2006). Ravelli (2006) set the stage for understanding museum text at the heart of
institutional practice. In contrast to a “curatorially-driven agenda with an audience of
peers in mind” that “could function successfully with just minimal labels,” an institution
aiming to appeal to a variety of audiences “needs to make use of extended texts” (p.
3). In this sense, Bennett (1999, pp. 27–28) traced the museum’s concern for “clear
labelling” back to the 19th century and the intention to educate the masses. In the
20th century, and especially in the course of changing education policies following the
protests of 1968, the amount and quality of texts in cultural-historical exhibitions
increased drastically. However, art museum representatives resisted this tendency by
referring to the auratic qualities of art objects (Flügel, 2009, p. 112). In the spirit of
the “New Museology,” Vergo (1989, p. 49) questioned this text-object understanding
of the esthetic exhibition and concluded that this concept is not only based on a
 Visitor Studies 129

coherent, educated view, but also negates the fact that an interpretive effort is needed
to make objects (of any kind) meaningful.
If one looks at museum text beyond the notion of a distracting attachment, it offers
a tool for institutions (and the exhibition organizers, who are usually not physically
present) to communicate with visitors through their interpretive work (Meszaros, 2006).
In this context of audience communication, we have generally seen a shift from a
rather behavioristic transmitter-receiver model to a more constructivist learning per-
spective. In the latter, text works as material for individual interpretation (Black, 2005;
Hein, 1998) and stimulus for social exchange (Jeanneret et al., 2010; Leinhardt &
Knutson 2004; McManus, 1991). This line of thought is followed within a museum
practice that aims at increased visitor orientation and appreciates informal learning
practices. Veverka (2015) emphasizes that visitors self-select learning opportunities in
a leisure-time mindset. Interpretive programs must therefore stimulate interest and
relate to visitors’ everyday lives. Participatory efforts in exhibitions have also encour-
aged the inclusion of visitor panels (Bailey-Ross et al., 2017; Denver Art Museum,
2001; Fischer & Carr, 1993; Serrell, 2015, pp. 252–256), visitor-written labels (Nashashibi,
2003), or language course work based on easy-to-read labels (Reitstätter 2019).
Recommendations on how to write and design good exhibit labels have varied
according to changing museum cultures and concepts. These have evolved from early
contributions that focused on typography and style (North, 1957; Weiner, 1963; Williams,
1960) to more recent texts (Dawid & Schlesinger, 2002; Piehl, 2021) acknowledging
Bitgood’s (1990, p. 127) advice that successful labeling “involves applying an under-
standing of how people behave, think, and feel in an exhibit environment.” Apart from
manuals compiled by museums themselves (e.g., Australian Museum, 2019; Biermann
& Deutsches Museum München, 1995; Leopold & Weber, 1993; The J. Paul Getty
Museum, 2011; Trench, 2018), Serrell’s book Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach
(Serrell, 1996, 2015) is a standard work to consult. Comprising insights from empirical
studies and consultancy work, it provides a solid basis of information on issues ranging
from the exhibition’s big idea to forms of evaluation meant to facilitate efficient labeling.
While some authors still claim that there is no consensus on what works and what
visitors want (Smith et al., 2015, p. 284; Yi et al., 2021, p. 220), it is generally agreed
that labels should be easily legible and stimulate engagement with exhibits.
The influence of basic text information such as artist and title has been the subject
of numerous laboratory studies. Titles have been shown to have a strong guiding effect
on visitors’ interpretations of artworks (Franklin et al., 1993) as well as raising their
perceived understanding of them (Leder et al., 2006; Millis, 2001; Russell & Milne,
1997). Elaborative titles, providing more information than what could potentially be
deduced from the artworks themselves, were found to increase one’s esthetic experience
(Cupchik et al., 1994; Millis, 2001). Additional information beyond titles was found
to increase meaningfulness (Russell, 2003) in line with the “effort after meaning theory”
(Bartlett, 1932) that stated that some of a viewer’s pleasure in looking at an artwork
stems from its successful interpretation. However, other authors found no evidence
for an increased appreciation of artworks accompanied by labels (Bailey-Ross et al.,
2019; Smith et al., 2006) and attributed this to the lab conditions of their studies:
working with art-naïve students and digital reproductions shown on computer screens,
among other aspects.
130 L. REITSTÄTTER ET AL.

Given the proven differences between art perception in a laboratory versus museum
setting (Grüner et al., 2019), museum studies have explored the effects of label
positioning (e.g., McMurtrie 2017) and label information on learning and reasoning
(e.g., Blunden 2020; Gutwill & Dancstep, 2017; Land-Zandstra et al., 2020; Wang &
Yoon, 2013) as well as memory (e.g., Sweetman et al., 2020). Examining reading
behavior on-site, Smith et al. (2017) reported that almost half of the visitors did
not read labels and those who did had much shorter mean viewing times of the
artworks than those who did not. However, the mean total time of looking at art-
works and reading labels very much extended the “looking-at-art-only” time, with
some visitors spending “most of their time with the label” (p. 81). Carbon (2017)
found that about half of the visitors looked at the artworks more than once, extend-
ing their viewing times through returns, albeit with no reference to label reading.
Bitgood and Patterson (1993) discovered that reading increased when the label was
either positioned closer to the exhibit, divided into three parts or doubled in font
size, but even under the best conditions only 56% of visitors read. Apart from the
possibility of further improvements and the existence of convinced non-readers, they
agreed with McManus that manual tracking “may not have measured all of the
reading” (p. 777). While McManus (1989) initially observed half of the visitors
reading as well, she corrected the reading rate from five to seven out of ten visitor
groups after analyzing their recorded conversations with proof of concrete “text echo”
(p. 175). This reference of label information in visitors’ talk thus indicates the
researcher’s impossibility to observe (all) reading through visual observation and also
contradicts visitors’ self-reports of not having read as found in later conversational
studies by Leinhardt & Knutson (2004).
MET studies in the museum, on the contrary, are able to provide much more
fine-grained accounts of visual behavior than traditional human-based observation. In
one of the first MET museum studies reporting on reading, Eghbal-Azar (2016) devel-
oped a pattern library including the “long gaze” (on exhibits) and the “alternating
gaze” (between exhibits and labels). She also evidenced that identification labels are
more often read than captions (and even more so, the closer they are placed next to
an exhibit) (p. 113). In their MET study in the Van Gogh Museum, Walker et al.
(2017) found that children relied much more on bottom-up processing (i.e., their own
visual exploration of the artworks), especially in the free-viewing phase. Top-down
factors (such as general art knowledge or the depicted content of the artwork) proved
to be dominant in the perception mode of adults in both the free-viewing and
listening-to-a-label-text phase. This reliance on knowledge—and, in consequence, a
text-over-art orientation—was also proven by Lin and Yao (2018). Comparing the effect
of short and factual versus detailed and contextual information, they observed that
viewing times of artworks decreased with the amount of text information given.
Rainoldi, Neuhofer & Joos’ (2018) MET study demonstrated the importance of
appropriate positioning to avoid contradictions with intuitive exploration modes: Visitors
only looked at room texts within their visual range, ignored translated text parts that
were not given in reading direction, or had shorter fixations on text that was placed
next to a touch screen. Consequently, MET does not only show whether labels are
read but also to what extent (Garbutt et al., 2020): The range spanned from only
 Visitor Studies 131

glancing at an artist’s name to attentively reading the entire label. In addition, a higher
cognitive load of the “task” of reading labels versus looking at the artworks was proven
when the average fixation duration was 0.5 s for the labels compared to 0.2 s for the
artworks (p. 95).

Research design
While (eye) tracking studies in the museum have shed some light on the time spent
with art and text as well as the occurrence of specific gaze patterns, we still lack
empirical models on how exactly this activity takes place in a museum setting.
Addressing this need identified in our literature review, we focused especially on the
exploration of reading patterns in the art museum in our in-depth analysis of the data
generated in the “Belvedere Before and After” study. As stated above, we specifically
asked: 1. How do visitors differ in reading affinity? 2. How do visitors combine looking
at art and reading labels? 3. How do visitors remember artworks in relation to label
information?

Data collection and methods

The data collection took place in the last week of January 2018 for “Belvedere Before”
(hereafter BB) and the last week of January 2019 for “Belvedere After” (hereafter BA)
in the Baroque palace venue Upper Belvedere in Vienna. We were present from Monday
to Sunday to cover a full week of the museum’s opening hours in comparable seasonal
settings. Data was collected with a rotating team of 12 (BB) and 17 (BA) field research-
ers and four MET devices. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the
University of Vienna under the reference number 00306, participants signed a detailed
consent form, and no visitors under 18 took part.
Both parts of the study followed the same procedure: Visitors were informed
about the study and invited to participate. On a positive response, they then signed
the consent form and were equipped with an eye tracking device consisting of a
Pupil Labs Headset with two adjustable eye cameras and one scene camera. Each
headset was connected to a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Tablet carried in a light back-
pack (<1 kg). The software, EyeRecToo (Santini, Fuhl, Geisler, et al., 2017), was
used to record the eye tracking data, while the calibration was conducted with
CalibMe (Santini, Fuhl, & Kasneci, 2017). Participants were then asked to inde-
pendently visit an acclimatization room and three consecutive gallery rooms, accord-
ing to their own art-viewing preferences with regard to pace, companions, etc.
(Figure 1a). Following the visit, they each took part in the subjective mapping and
answered the questionnaire (Figure 1b). While the subjective mapping (a drawing
task with an open interview) qualitatively captured their thoughts on the exhibition
experience, the questionnaire (mainly working with Likert scales) was applied to
have visitors quantify their impressions of the artworks and their display as well
as report on their visiting context, art interest (Specker et al., 2020), and
socio-demographics.
132 L. REITSTÄTTER ET AL.


Figure 1. (a) Individual exhibition visit with MET equipment. (b) Subjective mapping following the
exhibition visit.
© Department of Art History, University of Vienna.

Participants
A total of 259 museum visitors participated in the “Belvedere Before and After”
study, 109 of them in the BB condition, and 150 in the BA condition. All participants
contributed to the study voluntarily and without monetary compensation. Due to
the time-consuming nature of manually coding the MET data, at first only 100 par-
ticipants (BB: 50, BA: 50) were chosen for analysis based on quality checks and quota
sampling (Reitstätter et al., 2020). With regard to the research focus of label use, a
further six were excluded: five of them for using an audio guide in the gallery rooms
(hence their primary source of contextual information about artworks differed from
other visitors) and one participant for an incomplete subjective mapping. This new
sample of 94 participants (BB: 47, BA: 47) remained similar to the original dataset
in terms of gender (BB: 28, BA: 27 female), age (BB: M = 32.4, SD = 14.0; BA: M = 34.0,
SD = 13.6), art interest (BB: M = 48.1, BA: M = 50.9), and tourist prevalence (BB: 29,
BA: 34 tourists). The sample was also in line with the Belvedere’s visitor statistics
of that time.

Setting and label conditions

The three gallery rooms that were part of the study contained a total of 26 (BB)
and 35 (BA) artworks from the exhibition “Vienna Around 1900,” including works
by famous Austrian artists such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, as well as inter-
national contemporaries such as Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch. In the BB
condition, the identification labels next to each artwork were composed of vinyl letters
pasted on the walls, while the labels in the BA condition were set on small plaques.
When further text was introduced in the course of the museum’s reinstallation, six
selected artworks received explanatory captions of approximately 55 words each that
were placed next to the identification labels. These newly contextualized artworks in
the BA condition were “The Kiss,” “Judith,” “Sonja Knips,” and “Josef Lewinsky as
Carlos in Clavigo,” all by Gustav Klimt, as well as “The Sisters Karoline and Pauline
 Visitor Studies 133

Fey” by Richard Gerstl, and “The Plain of Auvers” by Vincent van Gogh. In addi-
tion, each of the three gallery rooms was provided with an introductory room text
and a description of the palace room on a white stela of approximately 175 words
each. All labels in both conditions were bilingual, with the German text above and
an English translation below.

Data preparation and analysis

A key challenge in the preparation of MET data is that stimuli are viewed from
various positions and perspectives. In our study, the objects that visitors looked
at were not a direct output of the recording software. Instead, we applied a manual
annotation method concerning our areas of interests, i.e., all artworks, labels, and
other relevant elements of the exhibition visit, such as other people present and
used smartphones. The annotated MET videos were watched by us, one by one,
to determine, e.g., reading scores, as well as statistically processed with Python
3.7, departing from lists with areas of interests and viewing periods. At the same
time, we qualitatively analyzed periods of focused engagement with artworks and
labels based on 670 visualizations in order to explore patterns of sequentiality that
were later statistically verified or falsified. The subjective mapping data was pro-
cessed by transcribing the interviews and annotating the artworks that participants
referenced in their post-visit talk. Using the qualitative data analysis program
NVivo, we thematically coded the interview transcripts by marking statements in
relation to specific artworks, singular exhibit labels (differentiating between direct
and indirect text references), and more general aspects such as willingness to read
or viewing strategies. All visitors’ statements on specific themes were then exported
for content analysis in group interpretation sessions. Data from the questionnaire
was extracted from the survey program Qualtrics, and statistical data analysis was
conducted in Python 3.7. Our mixed methods approach thus relied on quantitative
as well as qualitative procedures that were combined in a circular hypothesis-generating
and -testing process.

Results
In this section we present our results following our three research questions (RQ) on
exhibit labels in use through an analytical grid referring to 1. decision making: dif-
ferentiating between visitors’ reading affinities; 2. engagement: discovering typical
viewing patterns between art and label; and 3. memory: echoing label texts in indi-
vidual interpretations.

RQ 1: How do visitors differ in reading affinity?

“Not everyone is a dedicated, serious reader,” Bitgood (1990, p. 125) once stated. We
were, however, surprised, by the positive impact the addition of interpretive labels (as
one decisive new ingredient of the reinstalled collection) generally had on visitors’ art
134 L. REITSTÄTTER ET AL.

perception (Reitstätter et al., 2020): Across the four of thirteen artworks that were
presented in both conditions and given captions in BA, the mean art viewing time
increased slightly (BB: M = 26.3 s, SD = 29.3; BA: M = 27 s, SD = 33.1 s) while the mean
total viewing time (including artwork and label) increased drastically from 29.3 s
(SD = 29.6) to 45.3 s (SD = 45.6). The comparative boxplots on the label viewing time
in BB versus BA furthermore show that, after the addition of captions, the median
label viewing time and the reading diversity among visitors increased in all cases
(Figure 2).

From reading times to reading scores

In our in-depth data analysis of exhibit labels in use, we wanted to further explore
this positive label response by clarifying how visitors differ in their reading affin-
ities, i.e., who decides to read for how long and when. Our first approach was to
look at the general reading activity per subject, measured in total reading time in
the BB and BA condition (Figure 3). Reviewing these bar charts, we noted that—
independent of the small or extended amount of given text—visitors differed widely
in their reading activity, with individual participants lifting the upper end of
the scale.
However, as reading times cannot offer clear insight regarding to what extent
labels were used—due to different reading speeds and paths—we decided to assess
reading affinity in BA through reading scores. When visitors read one of the
seven labels (four captions and three room texts) fully, they received 1 point,
when they read a label partially 0.5 points, and when we observed only short
glances at a label 0 points. In total, visitors could score between 0 points, for
very little or no reading (6 out of 47 people), and 7 points, for reading every
label attentively (2 out of 47 people). Thus, the reading behaviors of our partic-
ipants resembled a normal distribution: many visitors tended to read some texts
in the gallery rooms, while only a minority of participants scored on either end
of the scale. According to their reading scores (from 0 to 2.3, 2.4 to 4.6, and 4.7
to 7.0), participants were then grouped into three categories as low, medium or
high affinity readers for later analysis. As indicated by Figure 4, the high reading

Figure 2. Boxplots for label viewing time “Josef Lewinsky as Carlos in Clavigo,” “The Plain of Auvers,”
“Judith,” and “The Kiss” in BB vs. BA.
 Visitor Studies 135

Figure 3. Bar charts for total text viewing time per participant in BB vs. BA.

affinity group was the smallest group with only 12 participants (25.5%), followed
by the low reading affinity group with 16 participants (34.0%). The medium
reading affinity group was the biggest with 19 participants (40.4%). Despite dif-
ferent reading affinities, the majority of participants in BB expressed the wish for
more textual information (78.7%) in the questionnaire, and even after the appli-
cation of captions in BA participants still expressed the same wish albeit to a
lesser extent (68.1%).

Reading scores and label response

Our analysis also explored how the three reading affinity groups responded to
the different available labels through aggregated reading scores. In sequential
order, from the first to the third gallery room, our analysis pointed toward a rise
of detected reading activity, in contrast to potential reading fatigue (Table 1). This
is true for the room texts, where the total aggregated readings scores increased
from 20 to 21.5 to 25 points, with an incremental rise in thematic interest from
“Vienna around 1900” in room 1, to “The Secession” in room 2, and finally to
the text concerning the popular Austrian artist Gustav Klimt in room 3, which
was read by even more visitors and for a longer time. Partly, this is also true for
the four captions, where the total aggregated reading score rose from the caption
“Josef Lewinsky as Carlos in Clavigo” (22.5 points) in room 1, to a higher score

Figure 4. Visitors’ reading scores and distribution into low, medium, and high affinity readers in BA.
136 L. REITSTÄTTER ET AL.

Table 1. Aggregated reading scores of captions and room texts in BA.

Josef
Room text 1 Lewinsky Room text 2 Plain Auvers Judith Room text 3 Kiss
Low reading 1.5 2 1 2 3.5 2 1
affinity group
Medium reading 8 11 8.5 10.5 13 11 6.5
affinity group
High reading 10.5 9.5 12 11 10 12 8.5
affinity group
Total 20 22.5 21.5 23.5 26.5 25 16

for “The Plain of Auvers” (23.5 points) and “Judith” (26.5 points) in room 2. In
room 3, however, we noticed a sudden drop in reading activity, where the caption
of “The Kiss” (16 points) was given much less attention. As visitors were appar-
ently interested in Gustav Klimt (see the reading scores for room text 3) and the
museum’s highlight “The Kiss” (as shown in our survey data), we ascribe this
comparative reading disinterest to the label’s low visibility. Although positioned
on each side of the painting, the labels were hard to see in the rather dark
niches and the regularly crowded viewing situation (Figure 5). This argument is
supported by visitors’ statements1 reporting, e.g., “a lot of people in front” (ba-s052)
of “The Kiss,” their feeling that it was “too full” (ba-s058), and the need to “wait
a bit” ( b a - s 0 1 6 ) , re su lt i ng i n of te n i nte r r upte d ar t p e rc e pt i ons
(see Section “The scattered viewing pattern: Art, label, other, and people”).

Figure 5. Installation view with “The Kiss” by Gustav Klimt in BA.

© Department of Art History, University of Vienna. For images of further artworks discussed in the
text, please refer to the Belvedere’s Collection Online: https://sammlung.belvedere.at/.
 Visitor Studies 137

Reading affinity, mother tongue, and art interest

Contrasting the three groups with background information from the questionnaire, we
saw that neither gender (Pearson’s X2 (2, N = 47) = 1.57, p = 0.46), nor age (F(2, 44) =
0.89, p = 0.42) influenced reading affinity. We did, however, note that the ratio of native
speakers (English or German, as the labels were written in both languages) was slightly
higher in the high affinity (50%) versus the medium affinity (44%) or low affinity (32%)
group. It appears that, although being a native speaker is not a requirement for reading
affinity, the interpretive texts being provided in the first language of participants enhanced
their chance of being read. Regarding art interest, we noted that the high reading affinity
group had the lowest rate of art interest, while the medium and low affinity groups had
similar, higher rates of art interest (low r.a.: M = 4.7, SD = 1.0; middle r.a.: M = 4.7, SD = 0.9;
high r.a.: M = 4.2, SD = 0.6). While at first this result might seem counter-intuitive, as
visitors who are highly interested in art would probably also be the ones who are most
likely to read about art, it can also be interpreted the other way round: visitors with a
high art interest might not need additional information to interpret the artworks. This
argument tends to be supported by the selection of artworks with additional captions
that were more often already familiar to visitors with high interest in art. We should
note, however, that this difference in art interest across the groups is not statistically
significant (F(2, 44) = 0.70, p = 0.70) and thus needs further exploration.

RQ2: How do visitors combine looking at art and reading labels?

As artworks and labels are the core and classic stimuli in an art exhibition that are
connected by visitors through their gaze, our second research question focused on this
specific way of relational seeing. Watching a MET video, one first notes that eye
movements are extremely fast and, so to speak, “jump” between various stimuli in the
exhibition space. Visitors only selectively slow down to engage in focused interactions
with exhibits. “Attentional windows,” as we have named this phenomenon, are periods
of at least 3 s where visitors dedicate at least 50% of this period to the artwork, its
label or their mobile phone (as this is very often used to take photos of the artworks).
Attentional windows also include other elements of the museum space such as other
artworks or people; however, we defined that turning attention away from the artwork,
label or phone could not last longer than 3 s. Since the minimum duration of a fixation
is suggested to be 80 to 100 ms (Hansen et al., 2010, p. 486), all shorter eye movements
were filtered out to avoid noise in the data. The threshold of 3 s refers to other studies’
selection criteria in tracking procedures (Eghbal-Azar, 2016; Serrell, 2020; Smith et al.,
2017). At the same time, it relates to deeper levels of esthetic experiences—such as
the integration of previous experiences and expertise—that take place after the initial
perception of low-level features such as color or contrast (Leder et al., 2004).

Occurrence of attentional windows and returns

In our analysis of attentional windows, we focused on the engagement with the four
artworks that received captions in BA and were shown in both conditions. This allowed
us to compare the relational seeing between artwork and label under the condition of
very compact information in BB (with identification labels only) versus contextual
138 L. REITSTÄTTER ET AL.

information in BA (with additional captions). In total, we counted 312 attentional

windows with an average duration of 21.4 s in BB and 358 attentional windows with
an average duration of 25.9 s in BA. Visitors engaged in focused art viewing or reading
behavior in about half of the cases only once (BB: 56.7%, BA: 51.2%) and partly twice
(BB: 21.3%, BA: 24.1%) or even three or more times (BB: 21.9%, BA: 24.7%). This
means that visitors returned to an artwork or its label 1.7 times in BB and 1.9 times
in BA on average. Apart from this general proof of an extended engagement through
a higher number of returns in BA, “The Kiss” represented an outlier in our artworks’
sample: Visitors returned (or, maybe more accurately, had to return) 3.2 times on
average in BB and BA to properly look at this popular museum piece, as explained
in detail below. But how is looking at art and reading labels combined within these
attentional windows in terms of sequentiality? Deciphering every single attentional
window by describing and annotating the sequence of eye movements, our qualitative
analysis combined with later quantitative verifications revealed the following patterns:
basic, scattered, and mediated.

First and last looks

Looking at the art first was the most common starting point for attentional windows
in both conditions (BB: 94.9%, BA: 80.5%). This clear result of first looks being directed
at the art initially surprised us, given that labels work as “starting points for many
visitors” (Screven, 1992, p. 184) or the comment of a participant describing his viewing
pattern with “Before I look at the pictures, I try to look at the titles” (bb-s017). These
quotes, however, do not necessarily contradict our findings, as first looks at the art
were most often quite brief (BB: 3.0 s, SD = 5.7; BA: 2.6 s, SD = 5.5), before the eyes
moved on to the label or other stimuli in the exhibition space. In the majority of
attentional windows, the last looks were also mainly dedicated to the art (BB: 90.9%,
BA: 79.6%). In BA, with additional captions, we did, however, note that ending the
attentional windows with a look at the label became more frequent (20.4%). In com-
parison to the first look, which worked as a sort of visual orientation, the last looks
at the art (BB: 6.2 s, SD = 9.3; BA: 5.0 s, SD = 7.9) or the label (BB: 2.2 s, SD = 2.0; BA:
5.5 s, SD = 8.8) tended to be longer, possibly in an attempt to remember what one had
just seen or read.

The basic viewing pattern: Art-label-art

Relational seeing between artworks and labels happens in a variety of ways during
attentional windows. However, in the most common sequence, taking place in a quarter
of attentional windows (BB: 26.3%, BA: 24.6%), visitors looked at the art first and last
with attention toward the label for one or more time(s) in between (Figure 6).
Resembling a kind of checkered pattern, this sequence mainly exists as art-label-art
(a-l-a) (BB: 13.5%, BA: 13.4%), its extension art-label-art-label-art (a-l-a-l-a) (BB: 9.9%,
BA: 5.0%) or even longer (BB: 2.9%, BA: 6.2%). Comparing the percentages, it becomes
evident that this basic viewing pattern was more common in BB, depicting the classical
condition that an artwork was accompanied by an identification label only. Of the
frequencies of alternating gazes, we typically observed one longer viewing block directed
 Visitor Studies 139

Figure 6. Check pattern in the attentional windows of two individual participants (bb-s004 left,
ba-s057 right) looking at “Josef Lewinsky as Carlos in Clavigo” and its label.

at the art (BB: M = 8.8 s, SD = 9.3; BA: M = 7.6 s, SD = 9.0) or the label (BB: M = 2.5 s,
SD = 1.8; BA: M = 9.1 s, SD = 10.3), with the main focus of attention lying inside the
specific attentional window. Unsurprisingly, the longest viewing block of an identifi-
cation label rarely exceeded the longest viewing block of an artwork in BB (6.7%).
However, we did observe longer viewing blocks of labels over art in more than a
quarter of attentional windows in the caption condition of BA (28.5%).

The scattered viewing pattern: Art, label, other, and people

The quite simple, basic viewing pattern—most common for “regular” artworks such
as “Josef Lewinsky as Carlos in Clavigo” or “The Plain of Auvers” and their labels—
changed regarding popular museum highlights. The Belvedere’s two most famous
artworks, “The Kiss” and “Judith,” revealed that, although our research question focused
on the combination of art and label in visitors’ perceptions, the ingredients of atten-
tional windows such as “other” and “people” were nonetheless important. While in
basic viewing patterns “other” often had the function of taking the gaze from the art
to the label or vice versa, as a kind of gliding link (Figure 6), in more scattered
viewing patterns “other” rather fulfilled the function of spatial and social orientation.
Thus, scattered viewing patterns often also included “people,” as looking at “The Kiss”
or “Judith” rarely was a solitary activity. Indeed, the perception of these artworks was
characterized by a kind of negotiation of walking paths and viewing positions among
other visitors. This way, visitors often needed more than one or two attentional win-
dows to look at the art, thereby demonstrating a variety of viewing patterns in an
interchangeable sequence: When, for instance, one of the sequential attentional windows
was characterized by many ingredients including “other,” “people,” and additional art-
works, another attentional window could show a kind of slowing down with fewer
elements in focus, and yet another, third window could be devoted to looking at the
art only (Figure 7).

The mediated viewing pattern: Art, label, and phone

The mediated viewing pattern worked as a kind of variation of the more scattered
one, with an additional (and now quite common) ingredient of the exhibition visit:
140 L. REITSTÄTTER ET AL.

Figure 7. Sequence of attentional windows of an individual participant (ba-s043) looking at “The

Kiss” with a variety of viewing patterns.

the smartphone. Independent of gender or age, more than half of our participants
(BB: 53.2%, BA: 55.3%) used their device at least once to take a photo of one the
four paintings. About a third of all attentional windows (BB: 29.2%, BA: 34.4%)
included the smartphone as an ingredient of art perception. By far, we encountered
the heaviest phone use within the attentional windows of “The Kiss” (with the phone
appearing in 41.5% of all cases in BB and 58.7% in BA). It was the popularity of “The
Kiss” that led to photo-taking, as we can see when it is compared to Klimt’s lesser
known “Josef Lewinsky as Carlos in Clavigo,” which was almost neglected in mediated
viewing patterns (BB: 2.0%, BA: 3.9%). In contrast to the commonly held view that
smartphones distract attention from the art, our data revealed no differences in the
art viewing times of visitors who used their phone and those who did not (BB: F(1, 45)
= 1.49 p = 0.22; BA: F(1, 45) = 2.75, p = 0.10). Smartphone use consequently did not
replace or hinder immersion in art. Indeed, as phone use at the very end of one or
more attentional windows suggests, this activity primarily serves as a mnemonic act
whose purpose is to produce a visual souvenir. As can be seen in a sequence of
attentional windows, this partly resembles a form of approximation: first, gain an
overview, then look closer at the art, and finally take a photo as a kind of trophy at
the end of the encounter (Figure 8).

RQ3: How do visitors remember artworks in relation to label information?

In our last research question, we move from moments of focused engagement to accounts
of memorizing the art post-visit. We thus tackle the phenomenon of “text echo,” as
McManus (1989, p. 175) dubbed it, with regard to visitors’ repetition of label text through
reading out loud or paraphrasing during their visit. In our analysis, we define text echo
in a wider and later sense as part of a posteriori exhibition reflections. In our subjective

Figure 8. Sequence of attentional windows of an individual participant (ba-s039) with phone use
at the end.
 Visitor Studies 141

Table 2. Top five title mentions (only one counted per participant) in BB and BA.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
BB Kiss Evil Mothers Judith Bride Judgement
Title mentions 13 9 7 7 4
BA Kiss Judith Evil Mothers Lost Flowering Poppies
Title mentions 23 14 10 7 7

mappings, participants were asked to mark the areas they remembered the strongest on
a digital, illustrated floorplan while reconstructing their exhibition visit for us.

Titles as a first evidence of text echo

In our study, we first identified a text echo in memory, starting with the titles of
artworks: Out of 47 participants in either display condition, 26 participants in BB and
37 in BA mentioned at least one title during their subjective mappings. Not surpris-
ingly, remembered titles were those of famous artworks and those marked by visitors
as artworks they had already known before their visit, as in the case of Klimt’s artworks
“The Kiss” and “Judith” (Table 2). However, this was not the case for “The Evil
Mothers,” a painting by Giovanni Segantini, whose title was stated quite frequently
(BB: 9, BA: 10), despite being known before to only one participant in BB and none
in BA. Glancing at the painting, the viewer first recognizes willow-like trees in a
snowy landscape. On closer inspection, however, the trees seem to blend together with
nursing female figures. After reading the title, one participant in BA recalled her
thought process: “I don’t know quite how that conveys evil. I wasn’t sure if these are
meant to be evil mothers growing from the trees. […] The way they branch out kind
of curly, they convey almost like […] some evil creature reaching out and grabbing”
(ba-s056). In the case of “The Evil Mothers,” we could thus see that an ambiguous
artwork and title made a strong argument for recall.

Captions and trigger topics

Moving from titles to captions that were given to six artworks in BA, our analysis
revealed that an agenda setting that works via labels is all about universal human
concerns: Labels that gave insight into the artists’ or the models’ lives, or talked about
love, death or conflicts, were clearly the most effective. For example, the artistic
dispute between Richard Gerstl and Gustav Klimt proved to be such a trigger topic.
Six participants referenced Gerstl in relation to Klimt, calling him his “opponent”
(ba-s058) and “the guy who didn’t like Klimt” (ba-s057), with one participant even
talking about their differences in artistic style (ba-s041). Another caption that proved
to be a trigger for five participants hinted at an amorous relationship between Klimt
and the portrayed Sonja Knips. One even recalled that Knips “was the love of his
[Klimt’s] life” (ba-s046), turning the alleged affair from the caption into a deep love
story. The red, unidentifiable object that Knips holds in her hand also struck a note
of visual interest among three participants. The caption, identifying the object as a
sketchbook now in the possession of the Belvedere, made the painting more mean-
ingful, since it delivered relevant background information that could not be inferred
from the artwork itself.
142 L. REITSTÄTTER ET AL.

Artwork responses with or without contextual information

Focusing on differences in the way visitors (can) talk about art, with or without given
contextual information, we examined two artworks and visitors’ responses to them
in BB vs. BA in detail. The caption accompanying van Gogh’s “The Plain of Auvers”
contextualized the painting art-historically in the artist’s oeuvre and in its relation to
the Austrian avant-garde movement, the Secession. In addition, it linked the painting
to the artist’s death, stating that it was created “shortly before his suicide” and repre-
sented “hopelessness and loneliness.” In BB, i.e., without this label information, three
participants talked about how they liked the colors of the painting, with one even
explaining that they made her feel “happy” (bb-s004). None of the 20 participants
who talked about the painting referenced Van Gogh’s arguably infamous suicide. In
BA, the painting was talked about by 22 participants, with three similarly referring to
the colors positively. Yet, the label left four people with a rather different impression:
They explicitly echoed the label text, talking about the panting’s mood and the artist’s
suicide. One recounted that there was “a description and so I could understand it more
[…] it was talking about loneliness, so I walked back and I looked at it and I could
see […] what it was meant to be” (ba-s022). Interestingly, the artwork’s provenance
referred to in the caption was not mentioned by anyone in BA, while in BB one par-
ticipant wondered why a Dutch artist was part of the Austrian Secession presentation.
Suicide as a major topic, it seems, left no place for art-historical side-stories among
visitors’ memories.
Comparing visitors’ statements regarding “Judith” we noted that the artwork was
talked about intriguingly more often in the BA condition, after a caption was added
to it (40 of 47 participants in BA vs. only 21 of 47 in BB). Apart from this impressive
increase in visitors’ responses—which we also ascribe to the artwork’s new position
in the Secession room as the only artwork by Klimt—we also observed that the art-
work’s interpretations deepened considerably. While the painting was described in both
conditions as a famous artwork by Klimt, depicting an attractive woman with golden
ornaments, the addition of a caption helped in detecting the biblical story of the
Jewish widow Judith seducing and murdering the Assyrian commander Holofernes to
save her people. Taking up this textual hint, five participants mentioned seeing
Holofernes’ head in BA, compared to only one in BB. In addition, the motif was
discussed by way of referring to “the power of women” (ba-s040) and the strength of
“seduction” (ba-s144), echoing the label’s description of Judith as a “prototypical femme
fatale” and a “lethal seductress.” The caption closed by connecting the depicted motif
to Klimt’s love life. While love proved to be a trigger topic for five participants in the
case of “Sonja Knips,” with “Judith” this did not elicit any reaction. In looking at
“Sonja Knips,” visitors could see one of the women Klimt might have had an affair
with, but in the case of “Judith” such a connection was too metaphorical and thus
less relatable to visitors’ everyday (love) lives.

Discussion
The contextualization of our key findings on visitors’ general reading affinity, their
specific art and label viewing patterns, as well as their potential text echo in post-visit
talk led to the following considerations in reference to previous research.
 Visitor Studies 143

Visitors all read, but to different extents

Beyond ideological discussions regarding the question of whether and how much text
should be used in (art) exhibitions, our findings revealed that if text is provided,
visitors will use it. The additional captions to four artworks that were shown in both
conditions led to a substantial increase in mean total viewing times (including the
artwork and the label) from 29.3 s in BB to 45.3 s in BA. In contrast to other studies
where the addition of text caused shorter viewing times of artworks (Lin & Yao, 2018;
Smith et al., 2017), we even detected a small increase in art viewing time across all
four artworks. Contrary to an art-versus-label debate, we underline the visitors’ com-
bined perception and agree with Serrell (2015, p. 98, 2020, p. 4) that doing more
things than only one works as a proof of engagement with the exhibits and extends
the total dwell time.
Regarding a reader typology, our findings showed that high affinity readers (25.5%)
and low affinity readers (34.0%) were in the minority, compared to the larger group
of medium affinity readers (40.4%). In comparison with other studies (Bitgood &
Patterson, 1993; McManus, 1989; Smith et al., 2017), which roughly observed half of
the visitors reading, our findings suggest that the percentage of willing readers is
situated at two thirds when we add the medium and high affinity groups. This is in
line with McManus’ upgrading of the readers’ ratio from five to seven out of ten
visitor groups, after finding more reading evidence in their recorded conversations.
We, however, consciously termed the group with the least reading activity as low
affinity readers, as opposed to simply being non-readers. These visitors at least looked
briefly at the labels and were thus able to access such information as the artist’s name
or the artwork’s title (Garbutt et al., 2020), which serve as interpretation frames
(Franklin et al., 1993; Leder et al., 2006; Russell & Milne, 1997). In contrast, our high
affinity readers can be compared to Serrell’s diligent users (2020, p. 5), who consciously
look at more than half of the exhibits in a very attentive fashion. We did, however,
encounter the interesting (yet not statistically significant) tendency that high affinity
readers were the ones in our sample with the lowest art interest, which suggests the
interpretation that non-expert visitors especially depend on provided information
(Dawid & Schlesinger, 2002, pp. 10–11; Vergo, 1989; Weiner, 1963, p. 155).
Regarding the reading response to the different captions and room texts, we con-
clude that not only content but also usability is king, as has been shown by others
with regard to placement and attention correlations (Bitgood & Patterson, 1993;
Eghbal-Azar, 2016; McMurtrie 2017; Rainoldi et al., 2018). In the case of “The Kiss,”
even the museum’s double placement of the label could not overcome the low visibility
and crowding effect that resulted in visitors overlooking the label or not being able
to read it calmly. Successful labeling thus needs to consciously consider spatial and
social conditions in gallery rooms (Bitgood, 1990; Piehl, 2021).

There are quick looks and long gazes, with different functions
Contrary to the ideal of the connoisseur, the visible form of engagement of slowing
down the body and focusing the eyes on the artwork (or the label) for lengthy periods
only happens occasionally. While other studies (e.g., Carbon, 2017) have used distance
144 L. REITSTÄTTER ET AL.

as a basis on which to analyze focused interactions with artworks, our approach was
to frame this engagement temporally (>3 s on art, smartphone or label) via attentional
windows. Visitors dedicate one (BB: 56.7%, BA: 51.2%), two (BB 21.3%, BA: 24.1%),
or even three or more (BB: 21.9%, BA: 24.7%) attentional windows to an artwork. In
comparison to 1.7 returns in BB or 1.9 in BA on average, “The Kiss” represents an
outlier, since visitors returned 3.2 times on average in both BB and BA to approach
and appreciate the museum’s highlight in crowded viewing situations. These findings
thus refine the observation by Carbon (2017, p. 5), who reported, based on manual
tracking, that 53.3% of visitors returned for a second time to the art, and some even
for several times.
The alternating gaze between artworks and labels is a viewing pattern already found
in earlier MET studies (Eghbal-Azar, 2016; Garbutt et al., 2020; Lin & Yao, 2018).
Our detailed analysis of attentional windows revealed that the sequence of art-label-art
(a-l-a) with possible extensions was the most common pattern, especially in the con-
dition of an identification label only. In both, the identification label and additional
caption condition, we frequently encountered short looks at the art in the beginning
and longer ones at the end of the attentional windows. While the first short look at
the art can be traced to saliency, as the artwork is almost always considerably larger
and more visually arresting than the label, last looks at the artwork or at the label
can be interpreted as a kind of memorizing “good-bye-look” at what one has just seen
or read before moving on in the exhibition. The “long gaze” was empirically introduced
by Eghbal-Azar (2016) and theoretically backed up by Assmann (1995, pp. 240–249).
The latter characterized the “long gaze” by subjective un-knowing, ecstasy, and fasci-
nation in contrast to the “quick look” that serves to transform the signs of the world
into knowledge.
In what we call attentional windows, especially in the more scattered versions
with the additional ingredients of other people, artworks, and the environment, we
encountered both the orienting “quick look” as well as the immersive “long gaze”
on artworks and labels. In accordance with the observation that about a quarter of
participants (26%) “spent most of their time with the label, not the work” (Smith
et al., 2017, p. 81), we confirm this finding with longer focused label than art view-
ing blocks in 28.5% of attentional windows in BA. Our investigation, however,
increased the number of photo-takers from the 35% reported in that study (p. 81)
to more than half of our participants (BB: 53.2%, BA: 55.3%). In addition, we were
able to prove that, although it leads to additional alternating gazes, smartphone use
does not take away from the time spent with art but rather works as a souvenir
“take away” of the art.

Starting with titles, interpretations deepen and differ with additional content
The adjusted terminology of “text echo” (McManus, 1989, p. 175) in participants’
post-visit exhibition reflections clarified that textually-led art interpretation already
starts with titles. Titles that were remembered the strongest were those that could
either be assigned to a famous artwork or were found to be ambiguous in that they
(apparently) did not match their corresponding artworks. This suggests that findings
 Visitor Studies 145

from previous lab research, where titles were generally found to guide interpretations
(Franklin et al., 1993; Leder et al., 2006; Russell & Milne, 1997) and metaphorical
titles led to higher esthetic experiences (Cupchik et al., 1994; Millis, 2001), are also
valid in a “real” museum setting. Captions with topics such as love, death, and conflict
acted as “human connection labels” (Denver Art Museum, 2001, p. 7) and as hooks
that enabled emotional and personal links (Sweetman et al., 2020, pp. 38–39).
Interestingly, however, these trigger topics did not work out equally well when they
were overly metaphorical. This is in line with Veverka’s (2015) golden rule that inter-
pretation needs to relate to visitors’ everyday lives, since “[m]eanings are in people
not words” (p. 16).
Regarding visitors’ art interpretations we found that they both deepen and differ
when they have contextual information, i.e., interpretive labels, at hand. “Judith” was
very often and differently talked about in BA, with extended references to its biblical
background story and contemporary gender issues. This effect also refers to captions
that induced viewers to look consciously at some artworks’ details, such as the scarily
sculpted head of Holofernes or Sonja Knips’ sketchbook. This matches Serrell’s (2015,
pp. 2–3) advice that labels should be concise with their concrete visual reference to
the objects they explain as well as go beyond the information an artwork can give on
its own. In the case of “The Plain of Auvers,” it became clear that the artist’s suicide
mentioned in the caption overshadowed other possible ways of interpreting the paint-
ing—as was already outlined as a thought experiment in John Berger’s Ways of Seeing
(Berger et al., 1977, p. 27) with another artwork by Van Gogh painted shortly before
his death. Our findings thus confirm the potential problem that adults generally tend
to rely more on what they know and read (from prior knowledge or information given
at the moment) than what they see (Lin & Yao, 2018; McManus, 1989; Walker et al.,
2017). We acknowledge this guiding textual principle, but without claiming that labels
are overly didactic tools. Indeed, we conclude that successful exhibit labels invite vis-
itors to look closer and think further.

Limitations
Limitations of our exploration on exhibit labels in use are, on the one hand, based
on the fact that we worked with a major empirical but not specifically designed
label study. Partly, we thus lack more focused data, as visitors were not asked to
talk about selected artworks and their labels but to reconstruct their exhibition visit
with 26 (BB) or even 35 (BA) artworks. On the other hand, we were limited by the
MET technology, which currently still struggles with automatic image recognition,
and the cumulative mapping of visitors’ gazes in an unconstrained setting such as
the museum. Although we did put enormous effort into data collection and prepa-
rations (see the list of contributors in the Acknowledgements), we were only able
to work with 47/47 out of 109/250 participants in this two-part study. As label use
differs widely among visitors, we thus see our results as a first step toward a sys-
tematization of reading patterns in the art museum and look forward to further
exploring them in future studies, utilizing improved mobile eye-tracking tools and
an expanded sample of participants.
146 L. REITSTÄTTER ET AL.

Conclusion
Our present findings on reading patterns in the art museum indicate the following
implications: First, we think that museums should welcome and acknowledge visitors’
interests and their need for contextual information. Taking into account that two-thirds
of visitors can be considered to be willing readers and that the other third grasps at
least bits of information, there is a considerable audience waiting for text to be pro-
vided. Having said this, however, we do not advocate for label walls in opposition to
the esthetic exhibition. In reference to our concept of attentional windows, i.e., periods
when visitors are open to deeper engagement with artwork and labels, we simply
suggest that these intertwined ingredients of art perception be more strategically con-
nected so as to enable joint visual and textual explorations in relaxed viewing situations.
The scattered and mediated viewing patterns—including looking at the environment,
other people, and one’s phone—should not be considered, to our mind, as negative
art perception foils in contrast to moments of focused engagements. Rather, these
more diversified rhythms of attentional windows refer to more complex textually,
socially, and medially enriched situations. Since there is no single recipe for looking
at art, and as visitors very often return to look again at specific artworks, the different
attentional windows simply link to different perceptual modes and moods.
Content-wise, we conclude from our findings that labels of potential value to visitors
offer information that an artwork itself cannot give, including stories that relate exhibits
to each other, and subject matters that resonate with visitors’ everyday lives. Inspired
by the effect of apparently mismatching titles, we also suggest developing label content
based on controversies and ambivalences that will make visitors look and think rather
than simply be informed. Contrary to equipping only the most famous artworks with
captions and reproducing dominant narratives, we look forward to seeing more exhibit
labels that point toward artworks formerly left aside or that provide alternative nar-
ratives. In line with the metaphor of the echo that changes over time, we also aspire
that visitors simply use the label’s voice as an impulse to unfold their individual
meaning-making.

Note
1. Our subjective mappings were conducted mainly in English (BB and BA: 37 out of 47) and
some in German. In this article, quotes that were originally in German were translated
to English by the authors.

Acknowledgments
We would like to cordially thank Prof. Stella Rollig and Margarethe Stechl from the Austrian
Gallery Belvedere for having given us the opportunity and support to investigate the reinstal-
lation of the permanent collection. Our heartfelt thanks also go to our colleagues with whom
we realized the “Belvedere Before and After” study, especially Prof. Dr. Raphael Rosenberg and
Dr. Hanna Brinkmann (CReA Lab, Department of Art History, University of Vienna), Prof.
Enkelejda Kasneci and Dr. Thiago Santini (Perception Engineering Group, Department of
Computer Science, University of Tübingen), as well as Prof. Helmut Leder and Dr. Eva Specker
(EVAlab, Department of Psychology, University of Vienna). We could not have realized this
 Visitor Studies 147

extremely laborious study without the precious help from research associates and interns in
the process of data collection and preparation, namely: Anna Cornelia Barbulesco, Jane Boddy,
Zoya Dare, Max Douda, Anna Fekete, Judith Herunter, Sarah Hübler, Rebeka Jovanoska, Jisoo
Kim, Katrin Kopp, Marthe Kretzschmar, Rosita Messmer, Kristina Miklosova, Anna Miscena,
Adrian Praschl-Bichler, Rebekah Rodriguez, Stephanie Sailer, Rosa Sancarlo, Berna Selin Sayin,
Hamida Sivac, Mariette Soulat, Julia Starke, Clara Swaboda, Magdalena Syen, Daniel Teibrich,
Veronika Vishnevskaia, and Sophie Wratzfeld.

Funding
Data collection was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) under Grant P25821 and
P27355; and the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF) under Grant CS15-036. Data
analysis with the sole focus on the use of exhibit labels was made possible through the financial
support of the Deanship of the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies of the University
of Vienna.

ORCID
Luise Reitstätter http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2021-7560
Karolin Galter http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2584-742X
Flora Bakondi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1405-6043

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About the authors

Luise Reitstätter is a senior researcher in cultural studies and holds a PhD in sociology. Her
research focuses on practices of contemporary art, museum and visitor studies as well as
empirical methods in social research. Since 2017 she has been the Head of the Laboratory for
Cognitive Research in Art History (CReA Lab) at the University of Vienna. Currently, she is
also the principal investigator of the project “Right to the Museum?” which deciphers museum
missions through archival and field research.
Karolin Galter, MA, is a literary scholar and art historian. She is currently working as a research
associate in the project “Right to the Museum?” at the Department of Art History at the
University of Vienna. Her research interests include exhibition labels and the art and literature
of Viennese Modernism.
Flora Bakondi, MSc, is a cognitive scientist. She recently completed the Central European
interdisciplinary master’s degree in Cognitive Science (MEi: CogSci) at the Eötvös Lorand
University in Budapest and the University of Vienna. For her master’s degree, she specialized
in Cognitive NeuroScience.