Arts & Administration Master's Capstones, Projects, and Theses

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/212
This collection contains a selection of some of the Master's capstones, projects, and theses completed by students in the University of Oregon Arts and Administration Graduate Program. In 2017, the Arts and Administration Program was transitioned from a degree program to the Arts and Cultural Leadership field of interest in the University of Oregon's School of Planning, Public Policy and Management. Please visit the following blog for more information on the Arts & Cultural Leadership field of interest: https: //blogs.uoregon.edu/artsandculture/

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Browsing Arts & Administration Master's Capstones, Projects, and Theses by Subject "Aesthetics"

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    Eating as Experience: Connecting Gastronomy to Visual Art Through the Philosophy of John Dewey
    (2010-06) Rubin, Elizabeth Cutler
    The motivation for this capstone paper came from a recent internship at the James Beard Foundation, a culinary arts foundation in New York, NY. In this environment it was quite apparent that food and eating were regarded as intellectually stimulating and aesthetically inclined. The chef was admired as an artist, and the food, examples of his craftsmanship, was appreciated and enjoyed according to its sensory appeal. Through an extensive literature review of the aesthetic attitudes present in the fields of sociology, philosophy, and the fine arts it was understood that, according to many scholars, gastronomy and gastronomic experiences were not seen as aesthetically significant to the human environment, and, in some cases, were even documented as insignificant aspects. My approach to confront this gap in the research and to better understand the reverence observed in New York, involves the connection between the act of eating and the act of viewing art. The bridge was discovered through the writings of John Dewey (1934), a philosopher and education theorist whose seminal text, Art as Experience, expands the definition of art and aesthetic experience. The two questions that guided my process were the following: Can gastronomy be considered an aesthetic experience as Dewey proposes?; and are analytical methods used to evaluate museum experience transferrable to the aesthetic experience of gastronomy and, specifically, how can these tools be implemented to evaluate culinary events? Through close reading of Dewey’s definition of the terms “aesthetic,” “experience,” and “perception,” it was found that gastronomy could be connected to visual art through the shared relationship between the doer and the perceiver. It is by this affiliation that the perspective of the diner is augmented and the importance of sensory engagement enhanced. Despite the difference in their constituent parts, the experience of eating and the experience of viewing art can both be described as creating an aesthetic unity that brings participants closer to what they are experiencing, whether in a museum or restaurant setting. The last section strove to make practical the newfound alignment between eating and visual art. It was proposed that several museum theories used to analyze visitor experience be applied to diner experience. Specifically, the Model of Contextual Learning by Falk and Dierking (1992) was incorporated as a way to deconstruct the nebulous perceptual process of enjoyment.
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    In Search of the Transformational: Evaluating Exhibitions to Enhance Museum User Experience
    (University of Oregon, 2015-12-07) Ogden, Beatrice
    The National Association for Museum Exhibition set forth the Standards for Museum Exhibitions and Indicators of Excellence. An exhibitions ability to engender a transforming experience is addressed in the Indicators of Excellence, and is assessed by emotive and personal visitor responses that indicate when personal belief systems and perspectives have been reconfigured. Assessing a successful transformational museum experience is not only difficult, but also highly variable. This research project explores four elements of exhibition development and design, at eight Pacific Northwest museums. This research project hopes to cultivate an understanding of how aesthetics, education & comprehension, emotions, and interactives/technology work together to help create transformational moments. The museums include the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (Eugene, OR), Museum of Natural and Cultural History (Eugene, OR), Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), Oregon Historical Society (Portland, OR), Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (Portland, OR), Pacific Science Center (Seattle, WA), Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture (Seattle, WA), and the Experience Music Project (Seattle, WA). A single permanent exhibition was selected for analysis from each institution. The four exhibition development and design elements were chosen after an extensive literature review, and were highlighted as aspects of affective and effective exhibition design. Furthermore, this research project created and implemented a new evaluative questionnaire, one that departs from commonly used evaluation frameworks, which closely examines four specific elements. The eight Pacific Northwest museums were selected from four popular museum types – art, science, history, and natural history/anthropology – so that analysis between institution and across institutional type could occur. An across institution and across type analysis was elected to distill which elements were common and which were unique to institution. Furthermore, by comparing and contrasting across institutional type, trends were identified that recommended enhanced exhibition qualities, and trends were identified that hindered exhibition visits. This research project produced an original museum exhibition evaluative questionnaire, a robust collection of both qualitative and quantitative data from eight museum sites, a synthesis comparing and contrasting findings, and an interpretation which situates the findings and comparisons in relevant literature. Mixed methods techniques were employed to analyze data. Identifying the potential for transformational experiences is a complex task and a difficult conclusion to draw, in that each museum visitor will bring their own personal histories to their visit. Therefore, this study cannot conclusively determine if an exhibition will engender a transformative experience; however, this study was able to identify aspects of exhibition presentation that recommend enhanced experiences, and was also able to identify aspect of exhibition presentation that may pose obstacles to creating enhanced experiences for visitors. This study was able to conclude that orchestrating an experience for a museum visitor that combines observing, thinking, feeling, and interacting recommends not only an enhanced experience, but also a potentially transformative one.