Lab for Cognitive Research in Art History (CReA)

The Lab for Cognitive Research in Art History (CReA Lab) advances art-historical research through empirical methods. Our projects examine how artworks are perceived and connect art history with empirical aesthetics, visual culture, and museology. A core focus is eye tracking research in museum and lab settings. We do this as an interdisciplinary team that brings together expertise in art history, museology, digital humanities, philosophy/aesthetics, linguistics/philology, sociology, and computer science. CReA was founded in 2006 at the University of Heidelberg as the world's first eye tracking lab embedded in an art history department. It has been based at the Department of Art History at the University of Vienna since 2009. Our projects have been funded by DFG, FWF, ÖAW, and WWTF.

News

2026 ▼

Feb 6: Xingyu Long gave a talk "Visions of Veins: Eye-Tracking the Irregular Symmetries of Book-Matched Marble" and Chao-Shan Hsu did a poster presentation "Cultural Differences in Gaze Patterns over Paintings and Photographs" at the conference "Vision and Depiction - II" at TU Delft.
Jan 15: Seda Pesen gave a talk "Der Blick als politische Praxis: Gabriele Sprigaths Bildergespräche" at the workshop "Engagierte Kunstgeschichte" at TU Berlin.
Jan 5: Welcome to Pablo Fontoura, who has joined CReA as our new head of the lab and moved to Vienna from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris.

2025 ▼

Dec 31: Luise Reitstätter, Seda Pesen, and Raphael Rosenberg's chapter "Mobile Eye Tracking: Visualizing eye movements in exhibitions" and Carola Korhummel's chapter "Observation: Understanding exhibitions as spaces of experience" were published in the edited book "Methods of Exhibition Analysis".
Dec 23: Our research was featured in international media outlets, including Artnet, National Geographic, MSN News, The Charlotte Observer, The Kansas Courier, and Phys.org - What's the Point? New Study Reveals How Old Masters Used Gestures to Steer Our Eye
Dec 8: Temenuzhka Dimova and Raphael Rosenberg's paper "Brief Glance, Lasting Effect: How Pointing Gestures Influence the Perception of Paintings" was published in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts.
Nov 10: Temenuzhka Dimova gave a talk "Gestures in Early Modern Painting: From Conception to Perception" at the University of Giessen.
Nov 3: The Following the Festaiuolo project received wide media coverage, including Scilog FWF, ORF, APA, Die Standard, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Kurier, Salzburger Nachrichten, and Kronen Zeitung - Fingerzeig der Alten Meister
Oct 31: Anna Miscenà successfully defended her PhD thesis. Congratulations!
Sep 14: Temenuzhka Dimova gave a talk "Figurative Arts in Service of Mnemonic Hands and Vice Versa" at the workshop "Knowing Hands" at the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (CAS-E) in Erlangen.
Sep 9: Raphael Rosenberg's paper "Since when have stone slabs been laid symmetrically – and why?" was published in ASMOSIA XIII: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference of the Association for the Study of Marble and Other Stones in Antiquity (Vienna, 2022).
Aug 23: Anna Miscenà organized the symposium "Connoisseurship to Computation: Rethinking the role of visual analysis in the study of art and its perception" at Visual Science of Art Conference (VSAC) 2025 in Wiesbaden and gave a talk "Free, easy, bold, soft? Connoisseurship and the evolving science of visual analysis".
Aug 1: Raphael Rosenberg gave a roundtable lecture "The Emblematic Gaze: Eye Tracking in Art History and Emblem Studies" at the 13th International Conference of the Society for Emblem Studies in Vienna.
Jul 11: Temenuzhka Dimova gave a talk "Gazing chirograms: perception and embodiment of old master paintings via hand gestures" at the 10th Conference of the International Society for Gesture Studies in Nijmegen.
Jun 17: Carola Korhummel and Luise Reitstätter gave a talk "¿Amantes del Arte? Citas Rápidas en Museos como Método de Investigación" at the conference "Otras Corazonadas: Tramas Emocionales en la Historia del Arte y Literatura" in Bilbao.
May 23: Chao-Shan Hsu, Xingyu Long, and Sara Leitner all successfully passed the FÖP qualification, thereby officially becoming the newest generation of CoBeNe PhD candidates from the CReA Lab.
May 13: Farewell to Luise Reitstätter, who led CReA for many years and played a central role in shaping our museological work.
Apr 30: A VRVis project in which the CReA Lab collaborated was featured by the Austrian Ministry of Innovation - Kunstgeschichte neu erleben: Wie VR beim Eintauchen in die Kunstbildung hilft
Mar 6: Teresa Kamencek gave a talk "Gustav Klimt nach der Secession: Kunstgeschichte und Visual Analytics im Dialog" at the conference "Digital Humanities im deutschsprachigen Raum (DHd) 2025" in Bielefeld.
Feb 25: Raphael Rosenberg's chapter "What Guides the Beholder's Eye: Figures, Ground, or Perspective?" was published in the edited book "Between Figure and Ground: Seeing in Premodernity".

2024 ▼

Dec 25: Chao-Shan Hsu gave a talk "Art History and Empirical Science: Interdisciplinary Art History Research in Vienna" (in Chinese) at the National Central University in Taoyuan.
Nov 26: Our project The Museum Gaze was featured on ORF Science.
Oct 25: Temenuzhka Dimova co-organized a workshop "Image Reading and Meaningful Spaces" at the Vienna Cognitive Science Hub, in collaboration with the Institute of Egyptology, University of Vienna.
Sep 26: Temenuzhka Dimova gave an interview for Gebärdenwelt TV, an Austrian news portal in sign language - Nachgeforscht: Erste Forschungsergebnisse von Dr. Dimova
Sep 2: Xingyu Long presented his paper "Multimodal Detection of External and Internal Attention in Virtual Reality using EEG and Eye Tracking Features" at the conference "Mensch und Computer" (MuC) 2024 in Karlsruhe.
Aug 6: Anna Miscenà, Zoya Dare and Raphael Rosenberg's paper "No such thing as the female eye: ditching gender-binary categories in art perception" was published in Feminist Media Studies.
Jun 16: Raphael Rosenberg held a visiting professorship at the University of São Paulo.
May 24: CReA represented the Department of Art History with a stand at the Lange Nacht der Forschung 2024.
May 6: Raphael Rosenberg concluded his fellowship at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies of Columbia University in New York.
Feb 14: Luise Reitstätter's paper "Alone together? Solitary and shared visiting practices of pairs in the art museum" was published in Museum Management and Curatorship.
Feb 8: Anna Miscenà did a poster presentation "Picture-surface, picture-subject: an empirical assessment of Wollheim's theory of Twofoldness" at the conference "Vision and Depiction" at TU Delft.
Jan 29: Raphael Rosenberg's paper "À quoi sert l’oculométrie en histoire de l’art ?" was published in "L'œil mouvementé. Esthétique des images et oculométrie".
Jan 17: Temenuzhka Dimova gave a talk "Unveiling the Chirograms: Four Methods to Study Hand Gestures in Painting" at the roundtable "Show Me Your Hand" at Instituto Svizzero in Rome.