A time and a place for art perception.

Most empirical aesthetics research strips away the environments and experiences that art viewers commonly enjoy. These restrictions can be important to study specific aesthetic features (e.g., symmetry and contrast), but experimental limitations may inhibit viewers' ability to engage with artworks on a deeper level. We sought to explore how a typical experimental design impacts the art-viewing experience, in comparison to a museum visit. We focused on the exhibition Take Your Time, at M Museum in Leuven, which centered around a dialogue between past and present. The artworks were either viewed in person at the museum or on a computer in the laboratory. Participants either followed a free-viewing (self-selected order, unlimited time, and unrestricted distances/angles) or a rigid-viewing protocol (predetermined order, 10 s presentations, and restricted distances/angles). In total, 162 participants had their eye movements tracked and provided pleasure and interest ratings for each artwork, as well as their overall impressions of the entire exhibition. Exhibition pleasure and interest ratings did not differ between conditions; however, other exhibition-wide ratings (i.e., seeing connection between artworks, typicality, expectation match, and being more than sum of its parts) were higher in the museum, irrespective of viewing constraints. Participants' preexisting art style preferences were the strongest predictor of responses to individual works. Viewing behaviors (dwell time and fixation counts) also positively correlated with aesthetic appraisals. These findings suggest that the context in which we study art perception matters, particularly for in-depth appraisals, though this context may matter less for simple appraisals (i.e., pleasure or interest).