The Effect of Educational Workshops in an Art Gallery on Children’s Evaluation and Interpretation of Contemporary Art

Abstract

Our experiment, conducted in an art gallery, was designed to investigate how educational classes, provided for children of different ages, affect their (a) esthetic judgment and (b) interpretation of contemporary art. We found that curator-led tours and art workshops affected the ratings given by the youngest children (aged 4–5 years), while interpretation was influenced by contextual cues only in the case of older children (aged 6–7 and 8–9 years). In addition, in the control condition (uncued exhibition tour), the oldest children (aged 8–9 years) rated the artworks higher than the youngest children (4–5). We conclude that the deeper understanding of the context of art increases its attractiveness and may change the way in which artworks are interpreted. Our results suggest that cognitive development is not an indispensable requirement to appreciate art, as contextual cues provided to preschool-aged children substantially affect their esthetic assessment of contemporary art.

Keywords

contemporary art child viewer art gallery space educational workshops esthetic assessment artwork interpretation

Introduction

Laypeople often struggle to understand and appreciate the value of modern and contemporary art (Furnham & Walker, 2001a, 2001b; Tröndle, Kirchberg, & Tschacher, 2014). Understanding of contemporary art requires one to go beyond purely esthetic categories. The appreciation of the artist’s oeuvre revolves around the creation process rather than its outcome (Leder, Belke, Oeberst, & Augusti, 2004). Reflection on the purpose of the work is also important and requires the viewer to enter into a dialogue with its creator in an attempt to read the message encrypted into a given piece of art (Jucker & Barrett, 2011; Jucker, Barrett, & Wlodarski, 2014). This is challenging for both laypeople and children, as their knowledge of art is usually quite limited. Lack of understanding translates into the perception of art as weird or dull (cf. Silvia, 2005). Nissel, Hawley-Dolan, and Winner (2016) report that children aged 4 to 10 years who were shown paintings by abstract expressionists and similar paintings made by young children liked children’s works better. A study of 6- to 10-year-old children (Kuscevic, Kardum, & Brajcic, 2014) revealed that they preferred 19th-century art to 20th-century art but still liked 19th-century art less than works of no artistic value. The children in the study preferred paintings with easily recognizable figurative elements and works depicting their subject in a realistic way. Modern, cubist, and abstract art were the least preferred categories. It is worth noting that in the study by Kuscevic et al. (2014) works of art were presented on a computer screen.

It has been argued that laboratory research on art perception lacks ecological validity and generalizability (Carbon, 2017; Tschacher et al., 2012), and so more and more researchers are choosing to conduct experiments on art perception in galleries and museums. To the best of our knowledge, however, such studies have been limited to adults thus far (e.g., Brieber, Leder, & Nadal, 2015; Brieber, Nadal, & Leder, 2014; Brieber, Nadal, Leder, & Rosenberg, 2014; Kirchberg & Tröndle, 2015). In our study, children viewed and rated original artworks in the exhibition space of a contemporary art gallery.

As art appreciation is perceived to be difficult for children, many museums and art galleries offer educational workshops tailored for particular age groups. They also offer some interactive guides (e.g., in the form of workbooks) and sometimes even arrange special activities related to their exhibition that take place in a dedicated space in the gallery. In such spaces, children can also play with toys related to the exhibited artworks. These initiatives are intended to raise young people’s interest in contemporary art. The contemporary art gallery where we conducted our research organizes thematic exhibitions specifically for children and also offers an interactive curator-led tour. This tour is a kind of educational workshop during which children can ask questions about the exhibits they see. After the tour, there is an art workshop based on the theme of the exhibition.

Experiments with adult participants have consistently shown that learning contextual information about art—such as the titles and descriptions of works and information about the artist—increases appreciation and contributes to positive feelings elicited by works of art. Having some knowledge about a piece of art also has a positive effect on the esthetic pleasure it elicits and on viewer’s esthetic evaluations of it (Belke, Leder, Strobach, & Carbon, 2010; Gerger & Leder, 2015; Jucker & Barrett, 2011; Jucker et al., 2014; Millis, 2001; Russell, 2003; Russell & Milne, 1997; Specht, 2010; Stojilović & Marković, 2014; Swami, 2013; Temme, 1992). To our knowledge, there has not yet been an experimental study of the effect of contextual information on children’s perception of art. The only study of which we are aware (Duclos, Philippeaux, & Poli, 2010) analyzed how contextual information influenced children’s perception of art using observational techniques and interviews conducted in Dauphinois Museum in Grenoble. The authors concluded from their interviews that children spontaneously used written descriptions designed specifically for them and that they usually rated them as interesting. However, some of the children in their study read only some of the descriptions or had difficulty understanding them. Some of the children did not find the special descriptions for children sufficiently informative and chose to read the descriptions designed for adult visitors. Children also asked their caregivers for more detailed information about exhibits. It seems that the adults who accompany children on a visit to a museum or gallery do most to educate them about what they see, with the written descriptions acting simply as a starting point for discussion. Talking and asking questions gave children an opportunity to learn more about exhibits that interested them.

Kirchberg and Tröndle (2015) reported that age influenced the esthetic experience of an exhibition. In a study of 8- to 13-year-old children in which reproductions of artworks were used, Smith and Smith (2008) found that the older children were better at interpreting the works. Kuscevic et al. (2014) also found developmental differences in esthetic judgments of art (including reproductions) from various historical periods. Twentieth-century art was rated higher by older children than by younger children. Kuscevic et al. offered two interpretations of this result. The first one was that older children (aged from 8 to 10 years) have had more opportunity to acquire knowledge about the language of art during their education and are therefore better equipped to understand and appreciate the “bizarre” aspects of modern art. The second interpretation was related to cognitive development: They argued that the younger children in their study, who were at the Piagetian concrete operational stage, preferred more realistic and concrete paintings, while the greater cognitive development of the older children, who were between the Piagetian concrete and formal operational stages, allowed them to appreciate more abstract art. We sought to determine which of these interpretations was valid. If the former, then educational workshops in the art gallery should enhance the esthetic appreciation of the exhibits, regardless of age; if the latter, then only older children’s esthetic judgments would be enhanced by participating in educational workshops.

On the basis of previous research, we hypothesized that children who attended the educational classes related to the exhibition (curator-led tour or curator-led tour plus an art workshop) would rate the exhibits higher than children who did not attend the educational classes. Furthermore, we expected older children to give higher ratings compared with younger children. We formulated two research questions: (a) Is the exhibition rated more highly by children who participate in an art workshop as well as the curator-led tour than by children who only participate in the uncued tour? (b) Does participation in such educational classes change children’s interpretation of the exhibits they see?

Method

Participants

Children from all kindergartens and schools in Lublin (Poland) interested in the temporary gallery exhibition were invited to participate in our study. However, only children whose parents provided written consent took part in the experiment (N = 345). We applied no other selection criteria. The participants were organized into 20 groups, ranging in size from 12 to 24 children. The final sample comprised 323 children (one group was excluded due to the presence of external distractors during their visit and one boy’s responses were rejected because he drew on the questionnaire instead of selecting responses). The sample consisted of 151 boys and 172 girls aged from 4.58 to 9.92 years and was divided into three age groups: 4 to 5 years (M = 5.2 years, standard deviation [SD] = 3 months; 49 boys and 48 girls), 6 to 7 years (M = 6.67 years, SD = 7.5 months; 34 boys and 49 girls), and 8 to 9 years (M = 9 years, SD = 6 months; 68 boys and 75 girls).

Materials

The materials used in the experiments were the works making up an exhibition entitled After Midnight, shown at the Labirynt art gallery in Lublin from October 16, 2016 until February 26, 2017. The exhibition was designed specifically for children and was made up of works by contemporary artists. The curators juxtaposed works that could be related to night, sleep, and dreams. The exhibition was composed of six artworks made using different techniques (see Appendix).

Procedure

The research was group-based and was carried out during a gallery visit for children. The visiting groups were randomly assigned to one of the three experimental conditions: (a) control condition—uncued esthetic judgment (groups in this condition were only told the title of the exhibition), (b) esthetic judgment after curator-led tour, and (c) esthetic judgment after curator-led tour and art workshop. Table 1 presents the order of the gallery visit.

Table 1.

Order of the Gallery Visit.

Group	Chronological order of the visit
Control group	(1) Exhibition tour	(2) Aesthetic judgment
CT	(1) CT	(2) Aesthetic judgment
CT&W	(1) CT	(2) Art workshop	(3) Aesthetic judgment

Note. CT = Curator-led tour; CT&W = Curator-led tour and workshops.

Children from the control group observed the artwork without commentary from the gallery staff or teachers. Children’s questions were only answered after the visit. The curator tour and the art workshop were led by members of the gallery’s education division. The order of viewing the artworks was the same for each group and followed the numbering given in Appendix. In Conditions 2 and 3, the children participated in a curator-led tour, during which they were told a short history of each exhibit as well as encouraged to ask questions and reflect on the exhibition. The educators encouraged the children to ask themselves why and how the artists had used the subject of dreaming in their works, what a “dream” was, and what things people could dream about. The educators also emphasized that in a dream, as in art, everything is possible, as both dreaming and art rely on imagination. During the visit, the children were also told the names of the artists whose works were included in the exhibition and taught some history of art terminology (e.g., collage, video-fresque, hybrids, expressionism). In Condition 3, the children also participated in an art workshop, during which they created a work of art in response to the exhibition (i.e., a hybrid). The workshop took place in a room different from the exhibition hall. The curator-led tour and the workshops lasted for around 30 minutes each.

The participants rated the exhibits at the end of their visit to the gallery. The esthetic judgment task was carried out in the exhibition room. Children gave ratings while observing the artworks for the second time. They used a 5-point scale composed of emoticons (e.g., a widely smiling face emoticon was the left pole) to indicate how much they liked each exhibit. They were also asked to choose the exhibit they thought best fitted the title of the exhibition (After Midnight). Those who had problems with writing were helped by experimenters (they were asked to indicate their choice by pointing to the image of the chosen artwork with a finger).

Results

Aesthetic Preferences

We performed a 3 × 3 analysis of variance with attractiveness as the dependent variable and age (4–5 years, 6–7 years, and 8–9 years) and educational activities (control condition, curator-led tour, and curator-led tour and workshop) as between-subject factors. The analysis revealed a main effect of educational activities, F(2, 313) = 9.62, p < .001, η² = .06, no main effect of age, F(2, 313) = 0.45, p = .637, and a significant interaction between age and educational activities, F(4, 313) = 3.35, p = .011, η² = .04. Bonferroni post hoc tests revealed that only children aged 4 to 5 years rated the exhibits as more attractive if they had participated in a curator-led tour or in a curator-led tour and art workshop than if they had not participated in any educational activities (p < .001 and p = .005, respectively; see Figure 1). The children in the other age groups rated the exhibits similarly regardless of participation in educational activities (p > .05 for all comparisons). Moreover, only in the control condition, children aged 8 to 9 years rated the artworks higher than children aged 4 to 5 years (p = .038; see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Mean attractiveness ratings presented for each experimental condition in each of the three age groups. Error bars represent ±1 standard error. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Interpretation of Art

We calculated separate Pearson’s chi-square (χ²) tests for the sample as a whole and for each age-group, with interpretation (operationalized as the choice of the exhibit that best matched the exhibition’s title) as the dependent variable and educational activities (as earlier) as the independent variable. Except in the case of the youngest group, interpretation was influenced by educational activities, whole sample: χ²(10) = 37.32, p < .001; 8 to 9 years: χ²(10) = 19.29, p = .037; 6 to 7 years: χ²(10) = 21.80, p = .016; and 4 to 5 years: χ²(10) = 13.14, p = .216. Table 2 shows the frequency distribution for choice of the exhibit best matching the exhibition’s title.

Table 2.

The Percentage of Choices of a Given Image as the One Best Reflecting the Exhibition’s Title.

Experimental conditions	N	Titles of the paintings rated
Experimental conditions	N	The Sleepwalker (%)	New York Marathon (%)	Wonder Wonder Land painting (%)	Wonder Wonder Land video (%)	Darwin (%)	Winter Story (%)
4- to 5-year-olds
Control	38	5.3	23.7	13.2	31.6	15.8	10.5
CT	42	23.8	14.3	7.1	28.6	9.5	16.7
CT&W	16	31.3	0.0	6.3	37.5	6.3	18.8
6- to 7-year-olds
Control	31	12.9	16.1	22.6	6.5	29.0	12.9
CT	25	60.0	4.0	8.0	12.0	4.0	12.0
CT&W	27	33.3	7.4	11.1	22.2	14.8	11.1
8- to 9-year-olds
Control	51	19.6	3.9	35.3	29.4	7.8	3.9
CT	49	40.8	6.1	20.4	12.2	6.1	14.3
CT&W	37	45.9	0.0	18.9	24.3	8.1	2.7
Total	316	29.1	8.9	17.7	22.5	11.1	10.8

Note. Percentages of choices have been computed relative to the each subsample size (horizontally). CT = Curator-led tour; CT&W = curator-led tour and workshops.

In the next step, we ran separate χ² distribution tests for each age-group, with choice of artwork best matching the title of the exhibition as the dependent variable and educational activity as the grouping variable. In the youngest group, choices were evenly distributed in all conditions, control: χ²(5) = 10.32, p = .067; curator-led tour: χ²(5) = 8.57, p = .127; and curator-led tour and workshops: χ²(5) = 6.50, p = .165. In the group aged 6 to 7 years, choices were randomly distributed except in the tour plus workshop condition, χ²(5) = 34.76, p < .001. McNemar’s tests revealed that The Sleepwalker was chosen as the best match more often than New York Marathon (p = .001), Wonder Wonder Land painting (p = .002), Wonder Wonder Land video (p = .008), Darwin (p = .001), and Winter Story (p = .008). Similarly, in the oldest group, the only condition in which preferences were not randomly distributed was the tour plus workshop condition, where The Sleepwalker was chosen as the best match more often than New York Marathon (p = .001), Darwin (p = .004), and Winter Story (p = .001).

Discussion

The results showed that having some contextual information about artworks at the art gallery led to higher ratings of contemporary art in the case of young children (i.e., 4- to 5-year-olds), which partially confirms our first hypothesis. It is possible that the information provided during visits contributes more to the understanding of the exhibits in this age-group than in older children. Deeper understanding of art may increase its appeal, as “understanding” is often a crucial element in models of esthetic experience (Leder, 2013). We concluded that young children found exhibits more attractive when viewing was combined with educational classes (curator-led tour or curator-led tour plus art workshop) than when they viewed them without any contextual information. Similar effects have been observed in adults (Belke et al., 2010; Gerger & Leder, 2015; Specht, 2010). Semantic consistency between the title and the content of a work of art (Belke et al., 2010; Gerger & Leder, 2015) and having information from the artist about the work both result in higher ratings. Our results confirm that contextual cues lead to higher ratings of works of art, as they help viewers to interpret the works and understand the artists’ intentions (Silvia, 2005; Jucker & Barrett, 2011; Temme, 1992). For maximum impact on the viewer’s artistic experience, interpretive cues should encourage the viewer to reflect on the work rather than merely describe its subject (Jucker et al., 2014; Millis, 2001; Swami, 2013). The curator-led tour in which the children in our study took part falls into this category, as the participants were encouraged to propose alternative interpretations of the exhibits, to speculate about their messages, and to look for links between the contents of the exhibits and the title of the exhibition.

As (a) the oldest children (aged 8–9 years) in the control condition gave higher ratings than the youngest children (aged 4–5 years) in the control condition, and as (b) there were no differences in ratings between control and experimental groups aged 6 to 7 and 8 to 9 years, we conclude that age plays an important role in the understanding of contemporary art. This means that the second hypothesis has been partially confirmed. Considering that the ratings given by the youngest children participating in curator-led tours and art workshops were as high as the ratings given by older children from the control groups, higher stage of cognitive development cannot be regarded as an indispensable requirement to appreciate art. Some basic concepts of the history of art—acquired at school—might have provided a good theoretical frame of reference for the esthetic assessment of contemporary art. On the other hand, this effect can be also explained by the fact that children in our study viewed original works of art in an art gallery. Previous research with adult participants has shown that works presented in an art gallery are viewed longer, are rated as more attractive and more interesting, and evoke greater positive arousal than reproductions (Brieber, Nadal, & Leder, 2014; Brieber, Nadal, Leder, et al., 2014). It is also worth noting that mean ratings of the exhibits were fairly high in our study, which conflicts with previous reports suggesting that, in general, children do not like contemporary art (Kuscevic et al., 2014; Nissel et al., 2016). Based on our findings, it appears that school-aged children respond to the ambience of the art gallery and appreciate the special experience of being confronted with an original piece of art, even when no additional contextual cues are provided. Research with adults has shown that the esthetic attitude derived from the context in which art is presented influences how it is perceived (Cupchik, Vartanian, Crawley, & Mikulis, 2009; Leder, 2013). People perceive objects differently in everyday situations and dedicated artistic spaces, and this effect may have influenced our results, that is, viewing art in a space dedicated to art—the art gallery—may have had a positive effect on the children’s perceptions of it. Therefore, our study extends the scope of previous findings (Kuscevic et al., 2014) by yielding similar results for a younger age-group and in a more natural context.

In addition to the positive effect of curator-led tours and educational workshops on the youngest children’s esthetic judgment, differences in ratings between the youngest and the oldest children from the control groups suggest that, in order to compensate for the lack of knowledge, preschool-aged children require informational support to be able to fully appreciate the perceived artworks. We have found that it is especially important for young children to have an opportunity to discuss the viewed artworks and to create their own art pieces related to the exhibition. Another important issue could be the fact that that during the curator-led tour children were more focused on the presented artworks than during a standard uncued exhibition tour. Alternatively, it is possible that younger children were more enthusiastic about participation in the interactive tour and workshops, which in turn influenced their ratings of the artworks.

The answer to our first research question—Is the exhibition rated more highly by children who participate in an art workshop as well as the curator-led tour than by children who participate only in the tour?—proved to be negative. In both conditions, children rated the exhibition highly. Thus, additional art workshops related to the theme of the exhibition do not make contemporary art more attractive. It is possible that participation in art workshops enhances some component of esthetic evaluation other than “attractiveness”—for example, evaluation of the artist’s creativity; alternatively, it may deepen participants’ knowledge of the history of art. This issue remains to be resolved in the future research.

The second research question—Does participation in educational classes change children’s interpretation of the exhibits they see?—was answered in the affirmative but only in the case of the two older groups of children (aged 6–7 and 8–9 years) who participated in the curator-led tour followed by workshop. An earlier study reported, similarly, that older children had higher abilities to interpret art compared with younger children, (Smith & Smith, 2008), as was evidenced by their more accurate responses. It is possible that the contextual information acquired when participating in a curator-led tour and in exhibition-related workshops changes children’s interpretation of works of art. However, young preschool-aged children find the task of art interpretation too difficult even when some contextual information is available. Therefore, we conclude that the knowledge itself cannot be useful for child viewers unless they (a) have a cognitive predisposition to make use of the information provided and (b) they not only obtain some theoretical background but also have an opportunity to put it into practice, for example, during art workshops. In addition, qualitative analysis showed that contextual cues made the interpretations produced by the entire oldest group (8- to 9-year-olds) less literal. In control conditions, the oldest children the most frequently stated that the artworks made by Paulina Sadowska (both the traditional painting and the video-painting) best fitted the title of the exhibition. These were the most distinctive artworks in the exhibition because of their monochromatic color scheme (black, grey, and white), which offered a scotopic perspective. This is how people see the world at night (in the absence of artificial illumination). The artwork that the group of 8- to 9-year-olds who participated in the curator-led tour judged the worst fit with the exhibition’s title was The Sleepwalker. It depicts a sleepwalker and it presents what he has to cope with in his dream metaphorically.

Finally, it is worth noting that all the art presented in the exhibition After Midnight can be considered figurative. Research has shown that adult laypeople like and understand figurative art better than abstract art (Furnham & Walker, 2001a, 2001b; Gerger & Leder, 2015; Millis, 2001; Swami, 2013). Further research should therefore focus on how children in different age categories rate abstract art when it is presented in a dedicated artistic space. It might be that educational workshops contribute more to children’s understanding and esthetic appreciation of abstract art than they do to their understanding and esthetic appreciation of figurative art. This question needs further investigation.

Limitations and further suggestions: The relatively small number of the presented artworks might be considered a limitation of our study. This, however, was a deliberate art gallery choice, as exhibitions with more of artworks are not suitable for children, making the visit too long for them. Therefore, to maintain natural conditions, we included all of the stimuli available. Moreover, we did not account for mood fluctuations, which may have influenced younger children’s esthetic judgment. Researchers are therefore advised to take them into account in future studies. In addition, in order to better investigate the pure effect of educational classes, the ratings given to exhibits could be compared in a repeated-measure design, that is, before and after the interactive tour (and art workshop).

Appendix: Works Shown in the Exhibition After Midnight

1. Tomasz Kowalski, The Sleepwalker (2012) [Pol. Lunatyk]

Technique: collage on paper, pastel, gouache, ink, spray

Size: 88 × 60 cm.

2. Dominik Lejman, New York Marathon (2003) [Pol. Maraton nowojorski]

Technique: video-fresque

Length: 1 min. 29 s.

3. Paulina Sadowska, Untitled from the Wonder Wonder Land series (2010)

Technique: oil on calico

Size: 100 × 73 cm.

4. Paulina Sadowska, Wonder Wonder Land (2010)

Technique: digital animation (archival photographs)

Length: 2 min. 28 s.

5. Zbigniewa Dowgiałło, Darwin (1983)

Technique: oil on canvas

Size: 141 × 120 cm.

6. Katarzyna Kozyra, Winter Story (2005-2006) [Pol. Opowieść zimowa]

Technique: video (film convention)

Length: 11 min. 27 s.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the contemporary art gallery Galeria Labirynt in Lublin, and especially Agata Sztorc and Emilia Lipa for their cooperation and assistance in conducting this study.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Magdalena Szubielska is an associate professor at The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. Her research interests are in the area of contemporary art and scientific aesthetics. She cooperates with cultural institutions in the field of aesthetics in education and media literacy.

Marta Ratomska is a PhD candidate in Psychology Insitute at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. Her main research interest focuses on the implicit learning of spatio-temporal structures and its effect on attentional orienting. She uses EEG technique in the ERP paradigm, as well as eyetracking. She is also interested in cognitive trainings and art perception.

Marzena Wójtowicz is a PhD candidate in Psychology Institute at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. She is engaged in several research projects conducted in the Perception & Cognition Lab at KUL. She is interested in multimodal perception as well as in the effect of social relations on emotional functioning. Additionally, she is undergoing a training in the cognitive-behavioral therapy to work with young adults.

Anna Szymańska is a psychologist, art historian and a PhD student at the Department of Experimental Psychology, and Perception and Cognition Lab at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland.

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