Les sources de plaisir issues d’oeuvres d’art contemporain dans un contexte muséal
Today, the educational role of museums in society as a whole is indisputable. Museums of contemporary art are important learning environments where a significant proportion of visitors can experience pleasure during their visit. Given the necessity of improving our understanding of this phenomenon, the present Master's level research has allowed us to identify, within the framework of the most recent research by A.M. Émond and C. Dufresne-Tassé entitled Le grand public et l’art contemporain: du rejet au plaisir, sources of pleasure which could emerge amongst visitors from the general public during a visit to the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art. To do so, we analyzed 30 discourses of visitors from Émond and Dufresne-Tassé’s study. Our research favours the qualitative approach, being simultaneously exploratory, empirical and fundamental. Our results have demonstrated the existence of pleasures which emerge as a function of three broad categories (Museum Object, Visitors Themselves, General Impression) which can be subdivided into eighteen subcategories. We have described each of these categories and subcategories of pleasure with the aid of examples extracted from visitors' discourses. We believe that with our findings on the identification and importance of pleasure, educational sectors of art museums could benefit from our research in the development of educational strategies for a non-specialist public viewing contemporary art.
Art contemporain Plaisir Grand public Contemporary art Pleasure General public Museum education Museum didactic