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It is currently part of the mission of art museums to actively involve children in learning experiences and empower them through a variety of programmes – including developing text panels specialized for children. To date, we have only a limited understanding of the semiotic resources in audience-sensitive exhibition text panels. Drawing upon Systemic Functional Linguistics, this paper analyses and compares 56 text panels in an exhibition from the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia. They are comprised of two versions of text panels for 28 artworks, targeting different groups of audiences, respectively (children and adults). It is found that the children's texts have been recontextualized to evoke interest in learning to paint, while the adults' texts focus on aesthetic appreciation. The comparative analysis shows that audience-sensitive text writing is interrelated with its social context in view of field, tenor, mode, and genre. This paper further explores how the production of audience-sensitive text panels contributes to the pedagogic, commercial, and community value of art museums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Do they read? Oh, yes, they do," was the conclusion of a paper identifying the proof of label use in visitors' in-gallery conversations versus the difficulties of observing them reading. This paper -methodologically refines this research question by asking how exactly exhibit labels are used. Answers are derived from an empirical study that analyzed viewing behavior both before and after the reinstallation of a museum's collection through mobile eye tracking (MET), subjective mapping, and questionnaires. As the introduction of interpretive labels was one of the major changes implemented, the paper demonstrates differences in visitors' responses to the artworks with or without contextual information. Analytical emphasis rests on the exploration of patterns in the process of decision making (differentiating between visitors' reading affinities); visual engagement (analyzing the combined activities of looking and reading); and memory (echoing label texts in visitors' artwork reflections). Our findings show that all visitors read, albeit to very different extents, the majority being medium-affinity readers; that the basic viewing pattern "art-label-art" becomes more complex with more text and more -visitors on-site; and that art interpretations deepen and differ through additional information. The power of labels to guide eyes and thoughts suggests their intentional use in museum and curatorial practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The main purpose of scheduling exhibition projects for art museums is to provide the visitors with more exhibitions and to utilize the galleries as fully as possible. Because the combinations of possible exhibitions for all galleries at any given time are numerous, it is difficult for the art museum’s planner to make an optimal decision. Therefore, this paper developed a decision support model with genetic algorithms, called SCHEMA ( SCH eduling E xhibitions for M useum of A rt). In the model the galleries are the resource which the exhibitions utilize in the sequence of their priority values. The model’s evaluation shows to be significantly effective in planning time, percent usage of the gallery, and the number of exhibitions scheduled. Because all the complex computations are done by the model, the decision making process of the scheduling stage is speeded up considerably. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]