Experiencing an Art Museum: A Formal and Contextual Analysis of Museum Visitor Experience in Thomas Struth’s Museum Photographs
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2024-09-24
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en
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The master's thesis "Experiencing an Art Museum: A Formal and Contextual Analysis of Museum Visitor Experience in Thomas Struth’s Museum Photographs" examines how Struth’s series reflects changes in late 20th- and early 21st-century art museums. By analyzing seven formal elements—light, colour, angle, scale, framing, focus, and composition—the study explores how Struth represents the museum visitor experience. It identifies four types of experiences: out-of-context, crowded, connected/disconnected, and middle-class. Struth critiques museum architecture for disconnecting visitors from religious art and comments on how overcrowding diminishes the contemplative experience. His photographs also challenge the notion of a homogeneous middle class in museum spaces. The research underscores the importance of crowd dynamics and museum design in shaping visitor engagement and calls for further study of art photography’s role in critiquing museum environments, including comparisons with other artists who explore similar themes.
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Faculteit der Letteren