Assessing the Visitor Experience at a Traveling Aboriginal Art Exhibition
Client: Kluge-Ruge Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia | Location: Charlottesville, VA | Funding: National Endowment for the Humanities
We measured the impact of Madayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala, a traveling exhibition organized by the Kluge-Ruge Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia.
OVERVIEW
Between 2022 and 2025, we partnered with the Kluge-Ruhe to evaluate the visitor experience at Madayin, which traveled to four different locations, including the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, concluding its tour at Asia Society in New York City.
Our evaluation was designed to gauge visitor’s motivations for visiting, highlights, and extent to which they were able to internalize the exhibition’s themes related to Yolŋu artist agency, significance of Aboriginal proprietary knowledge, and historical and political documentation through art.
APPROACH
We implemented two data collection methods at each of the four locations Madayin traveled to:
Exit surveys with a random sample of 50 visitors consisting of closed-ended questions, such as multiple-choice questions, rankings, and scale questions, as well as a few open-ended questions to help nuance the quantitative data. The surveys also asked demographic and background information that was used to contextualize the data.
Follow up remote interviews with 5 survey participants, asking open-ended questions probing deeper into visitors’ motivations for visiting, aesthetic reactions to the artworks, and understandings of the exhibition themes.
We ultimately collected 200 surveys across the four sites, resulting in a large enough sample to run statistical analysis on the data to find significant relationships between variables, particularly between each of the different host sites.
CLIENT TAKEAWAYS
We found that visitors were not only profoundly struck by the beauty of the artworks, but were also able to appreciate and internalize the exhibition’s sophisticated themes. Overall visitors spent a significant amount of time in Madayin, taking in the wealth of contextual information provided about the artworks and at the same time were left wondering about certain aspects of Yolŋu art and culture–one of the exhibition’s goals. Visitors additionally reported that the multimedia components and other exhibition design details all worked together to tell a multifaceted story about a culture that was new and unique to a Western audience.
While visitors demonstrated comfort with the concept that as outsiders they are not meant to know everything possible about Yolŋu culture, they also expressed a desire for more contextual information through more physical means (e.g., a physical brochure, touch objects). Kluge-Ruhe staff will consider ways to bring more alternative ways besides text to contextualize art, and continue to strategize around diversifying their audience.
