An Exploratory Study of Historical Representations of Love in an Art Gallery Exhibition

Abstract

Visitor responses to art exhibitions vary depending on visitor traits, the exhibition context, as well as the sensory engagement between visitor and exhibition. The present investigation explored visitors’ experiences of Love: Art of Emotions, a curated exhibition shown at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2017, which comprised a variety of artworks from the early modern period selected to address the broad theme of love. This article reports on a mixed-methods research project using a short survey and brief exit interviews with visitors to consider how the visitor experience was characterized, the factors that influenced this experience, and how the exhibition content was perceived, with ..