Art museums, mobile media and education: A new way to explain art?

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

Summary form only given. The content of this paper forms part of a wider research on the educational possibilities of mobile media in art museums. Currently, museums are changing their relationship with the public based on the availability of Web 2.0 and new information and communication technologies, particularly the mobile media, involving the use of tablets and smartphones. New ways of communication have been developed by museums and users are invited to contribute to museum contents with their own contributions as well as museums reach out to new audiences through the new media. However, if we focus on a systematic analysis of mobile apps for museums, one of the more rapidly expanding mobile resources, we would like to determine whether educational function is one of the aims of these resources. Moreover, we would also like to find out whether the learning strategies developed to explain art are different than the strategies employed in art museums so far. These kinds of mobile resources provide a wide range of educational strategies not always used to engage art museums audiences. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to reveal the results of the analysis of mobile Apps designed by Art Museums in the Spanish context in order to determine whether they have become a valuable educational resource and to explore what type of learning strategies they have been developed through these technologies to explain art to a wider audience. Firstly, five Apps have been analyzed for this paper: Guggenheim Museum App, the Picasso Museum of Barcelona App, Reina Sofía Museum App, Thyssen Museum App Prado Museum App. The criteria to select this sample were on one hand, the Apps are about the collection and permanent exhibition of the museums and on the other hand, the Apps must be mobile applications not mobile audioguide or Web mobile. Secondly, the Apps have been analyzed by an analysis sheet designed previously for the research. This analysis sheet has two sections. The first one is a descriptive analysis which includes different categories such as country, year publication, category of Art Museum, devices (Smartphones, Tablets or both). Also whether Internet connection is needed, whether the App is free or not and which OS is used (iOS, Android or both). The descriptive analysis also include the context of use related to the museum visit (before, during or independent of the visit), the type of application as well as the target audience. The second section of the analysis sheet evaluates the educational factor of the applications according to several categories. In this case, the categories are the type of content, the type of learning strategies, aims, and resources like images, videos, social media, AR, etc. The outcomes of the descriptive analysis have been analyzed using descriptive statistics technics. Otherwise, the second section, educational factor, is not only a descriptive analysis, but an assessment analysis to determinate whether the Apps could be a valuable educational resource. To assess the educational factor each item of the categories has been coded with a number (1= low, 2= medium and 3= high). As result of this codification process there are five categories to evaluate the educational factor: (1= low, between 1 and 2= medium-low, 2= medium, between 2 and 3= medium-high, 3=high). According to the assessment of the educational factor of the five Mobile Apps selected for this paper, the outcomes reveal that the educational factor are low in the case of Prado Museum App, medium-low in the case of Guggenheim Museum App, the Picasso Museum of Barcelona App, Reina Sofía Museum App. And Thyssen Museum App is the unique App whose educational factor is medium-high. To conclude, it is possible to state that the answer to the title, Art Museums, Mobile Media: a new way to explain art?, would be negative in the case of the Apps of theses Spanish Art Museums. There is a change in the medium but not in the message. However, there are several challenges related to this research, one of these could be to analyze the learning process of the users of this kind of resources or to ask to museums whether they think about the educative potential when they decide to develop a Mobile Apps for their collections.