The individual visitor's experience of museums: a study of six individual visits to the Museum of Wellington City and Sea

Abstract

Museums assume that their collections are important for the public good. This belief in the value of their missions to collect, preserve and interpret "objects" has blunted their perceptions of their audience. Audience research can provide the tools to help change these perceptions. Research information about the audience has been used for access and equity purposes and for sector goals such as building markets. However, the need to understand more of their visitors' needs for and experiences of museums has been jeopardised by a linear communication model implicit in museum planning. This model has limited the thinking about visitors to their role as the destination for the museum's messages. This dissertation looks at one context for museum visiting: the individual, and aims to construct an understanding of his/her subjective experiences of museum visiting. Drawing on mass media audience studies, cultural studies and visitor studies, two ways to frame audience activity are identified: the visitor experience model and a meaning- making model. These frameworks are explored for their appropriateness to construct answers to three main research questions: 1) What motivations do individuals have for visiting museums? 2) What are the strategies adopted by individuals on the visit? 3) What sense do the individuals make of the visit afterwards? To investigate these issues, a multi-method approach was used to collect data from six participants both during and after their visit to the Museum of Wellington City and Sea (MOWCAS). The data collected from participant observations, questionnaires and interviews was analysed to provide a layered construct of the individual visit experience. Elements of both frameworks were found to be valuable in constructing the picture of the individual visitor's experience.