Exhibit for Children: The Behavior Study of Child Audience in Children’s Museum of Art

• Main Author: 廖沛怡
• Other Authors: Jui-Chen Yu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/64191517201547986235

碩士 === 國立臺南藝術大學 === 博物館學研究所 === 97 === Since the 1980s, setting up a museum or exhibition for children has become increasingly popular in Taiwan and its target is, with no doubt, children. Between nearly 30 years, from beginning the issue of children’s museum was scientific culture, and then extending to the domain of topic and art domain; nevertheless, comparing the using situation of children’s museum with study quantity of children audience, related study is still deficient. However, most related studies have discussed this issue regarding a child as a member of the family audience, instead of regarding the child as the main target audience. The approach that this research uses is—non-participant observation with a visitor oriented method as the tactic to focus on the visiting behavior of the children. In order to understand the visiting behavior of the children, there are five issues brought up based on the research purpose: first, how do children behave in an exhibition that is designed for them? Second, do children behave differently due to the differences of the exhibitions? Third, what kind of characteristic of an exhibition attracts the children? How do those various exhibitions keep their charm in a child’s mind? Fourth, what particular traits exist when children interact with other family members? Fifth, what are the principles and criteria for an exhibition that is designed for children? This research was carried out during the exhibition-- “Fantasy Is Beauty: Enjoy a Surrealist Adventure” (2007~2008) presented in Kaohsiung Children’s Museum of Art. By discussing the impacts between different types of exhibition in this research and characteristics of the child’s development, highlighting the interaction of the audience and the exhibition to analyze each element that has influences on and generalizes various dimensions of the child’s visiting behavior in response to the research’s purpose and questions. The research analyses are depicted as follows: 1. During holiday periods, there are more preschool children participating in these exhibitions. It is not necessary that members always stay as a family unit, but they sometimes split into groups or individuals when visiting the exhibition. 2. Children tend to follow their own planning routes instead of those marked out for them, in accordance with their experience towards the surrounding and they establish the connection with their environment by visual, hearing, tactile, motion perception… etc. The type of exhibition influences children’s visiting behavior. 3. It is helpful that child realizes the concepts as well as the tactile goal through reading descriptions, where the appearance and location play a significant part in information delivery. 4. At the Children’s museum of Art, children interact with the exhibition; therefore, the type of the exhibition does have definite influence on child’s participating behavior. 5. Children play different roles in different groups, and their social interaction with group members are influenced by the environment and the type of the exhibition. Finally, return to the original intention of this research- exhibit for children, in response to the research’s issues five simultaneously, and held up suggestions for exhibit practice. In addition to continuing accumulation of this kind of research results, researcher dished out suggestions of the following research from the social context, physical context and personal context.