Aesthetics and Astronomy: How Museum Labels Affect the Understanding and Appreciation of Deep‐Space Images. (July 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Smith, Lisa F.; Smith, Jeffrey K.; Arcand, Kimberly K.; Smith, Randall K.; Bookbinder, Jay A.
• Is Part Of: Curator. Volume 58:Number 3(2015:Jul.)
• Page Start: 282
• Page End: 297
• Publication Date: 2015-07
• Subjects: Natural history museums -- Periodicals; 069.05
• DOI: 10.1111/cura.12114
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0011-3069

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main" id="cura12114-abs-0001"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>How can we best communicate to museum visitors the science that underlies the incredible images of space that are generated through the data collected from satellites and observatories? The Aesthetics and Astronomy Group, a collection of astrophysicists, space image developers, science communication experts, and research psychologists, has studied how individuals respond to space‐image descriptions when viewing images on websites such as the Astronomy Picture of the Day and the Chandra telescope site. In this article, we turn our attention to the communication of scientific information in museum settings, in particular where the exhibit is comprised solely of images. We developed a traveling exhibition of space images expressly for this purpose, and interviewed 167 visitors to the exhibition at four major science museums. We asked the visitors what types of labels they preferred, what they would like to see in labels, and what impressed them about the images. The results of our efforts are presented here.</p> </abstract>