A few years ago, while working as a Gallery Guide, I learned about a metric museum professionals
use to evaluate how long visitors spend looking at works of art.
It’s called Sweep Rate Index and it’s calculated by dividing the square footage
of the exhibition by the average total time visitors spent.
The lower the sweep rate, the more time visitors spent in the exhibition.
It’s a metric, in combination with other data, that tracks the attentiveness and level
of engagement visitors have with the exhibition.
There are different types of engagement and they all have their value - maybe you spent
more time reading labels, listening to the audio guide, following a tour, or talking
to a friend about what you thought of the show.
All of it can be good ways of seeing and analyzing art.
But it got me thinking,
how long do people actually spend looking at individual works of art?
According to a study conducted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2001 by two professors at
the University of Oregon - people spent a mean time looking at a painting for 27.2 seconds,
a median time of 17 seconds, and with the longest time of 3 minutes and 48 seconds.
In 2016, they published another study that tracked more artworks and more people at the
Art Institute of Chicago, which had similar results of 28.63 seconds mean time looking
at an artwork, and a median time of 21 seconds.
These result revealed that in general, a typical museum visit is comprised of brief looks at
many works of art - rather than long looks at a few works of art.
Additionally, the similar results decades apart suggest that the age of smartphones,
with people taking art selfies and photographically documenting their visits
acts which I approve of by the way -
but they haven’t really changed the amount of time we spend
looking at works of art.
Of course, there is no right amount of time to look at an artwork.
Some artworks are small and simple in nature, some are large and complex.
Some artworks may personally interest you, some you may find boring.
Some offer explanatory panels or audio guides while others are self-explanatory.
So it is natural for us to spend more time looking at certain artworks than others.
However - it does appear that most art gallery visitors do not spend extended periods of
time looking at a single artwork, and that most of us rather see an abundance of everything
in quick succession rather than intensely observing a few individual artworks
Large, well known institutions like the MET tend to attract tourists, who generally like
to see as much as possible.
I’m definitely guilty of this myself.
When I’ve visiting a large gallery for the first time, I get the urge to just want to
see everything!
I’ve definitely spent 8 hours in one museum before, which I know is something most people
don’t do - as museum fatigue is definitely a thing.
However when I spent an entire day looking at everything I can possibly absorb in an
art museum, I wonder - how much did I actually see?
If I went to the library and spent most of the time glossing over the spines of books,
could I actually say to people - I read 100 books today?!
In recent years I’ve tried a different way of seeing art - going to a gallery, maybe
a small one, or just going to a small show within a large institution, and just look
at maybe 4-5 pieces of art, but observe them in detail, and spend as much time as possible
looking at each one.
After doing this, you may discover not only all the details you may have missed, you also
get an intangible amount of beneficial cognitive,
and even for some people - therapeutic results from doing so.
According to researchers at University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center,
looking at a work of art for 20 minutes or more “not only enhances one’s appreciation
of art, but can also have the same beneficial effects as meditation.”
Doing this is not easy of course.
It’s easy to get bored, and want to move on.
Perhaps you can try doing this with a friend,
as you can spend time discussing the work with them.
You can contemplate the visual elements of the artwork - its colours, lines, shapes and
analyses how the work is composed.
You can connect it with other artworks you’ve seen, or think about what things in life the
artwork reminds you of.
And of course you can ponder about how the artwork makes you feel.
Luckily there are a lot of resources on how to observe and analyze art.
I’ll leave some in the description below.
April 6, 2019 is also Slow Art Day - a day that was founded in 2008 where you are encouraged
to go to an art gallery, pick 5 pieces of art, observe them for 10 minutes or more,
and then meet with others to talk about the experience.
Hundreds of art institutions around the world officially participate in Slow Art Day.
I’ll leave a link in the description as well.
But you can basically do this anywhere, from any gallery.
Even if you have artworks hanging around your house - you can do a slow art day with that.
In the comments below please tell me what artwork you think you can spend more than
20 minutes with, and let me know what your observations are.
Thanks for watching!
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