Gaze and Judgement.

An Art Sociological Study of Aesthetic Perception in the Museum

Snippet from Benjamin Gilman, 1916, Museum fatigue, in: The Scientific Monthly, 2(1), 62-74.

PhD Project in the FWF/DFG-project "The Museum Gaze"

How do taste and class affect gaze and judgement of art?

In aesthetics, no judgement is conceivable without the gaze: it is at once the condition and the medium through which an object's sensory affect reaches the subject and, in doing so, gives rise to the judgement itself. Therefore, the gaze must be understood as a subjective tool that is shaped by acquired and collected knowledge, following Pierre Bourdieu’s dictum that to see (fr. voir) is to know (fr. savoir). 

The dissertation “Gaze and Judgement” aims to uncover those habitual entanglements within the realm of museum exhibitions. Embedded within the FWF/DFG-project “Museum Gaze”, it draws on three methodological pillars — mobile eye tracking, interviews, and questionnaires — deployed in field studies at the Belvedere, and brings them to bear on gaze, judgement, and taste alike. The following research questions guide the inquiry:

  1. What cultural profiles can be identified among the study participants? How do educational mobility and cultural capital affect taste and museum attendance?
  2. What linguistic and substantive patterns are present, and what connections can be drawn to the respective profiles? Which types of judgement can be identified?
  3. What notable features do the eye-tracking data reveal when examined comparatively alongside the aesthetic judgements? How can certain parameters of viewing behaviour be correlated with the judgements?
  4. Since the dissertation works with the medium of the art exhibition, the final set of questions turns to the respective exhibitions and the objects presented within them. The central focus here is on the question of what knowledge is conveyed, in what manner, and to which audiences.

                  

Project Members

PhD Candidate: Seda Pesen

Supervisor: Raphael Rosenberg (Department of Art History, University of Vienna), Jens Kastner (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)

Thesis Advisory Committee: Dirk vom Lehn (King's College London), Cliodhna Quigley (University of Vienna)